2nd July 1999 Archive

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Microsoft, AOL giving users free PCs

The trouble with MS special offers is that there's always a long-term Bill attached...

The free PC is almost upon us, with AOL, Microsoft and Prodigy all promising to give them away, effectively, in exchange for a three year commitment to use their services. Does this mean Microsoft intends to cut off the entire PC industry's air supply, browser style? Could happen. All three companies are experimenting with a …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 07:15
Apple sues Koreans over iMac knock-off

Back to those halcyon days when Apple busted anything that moved...

Things are clearly entirely back to normal at Apple, post-turnaround. Not only is it selling machines again, it's suing its competitors, just like the good old days. The company has filed in San Jose District Court against Future Power, Daewoo Group and Daewoo Telecom over an Intel-based iMac lookalike, the E-Power, launched at …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 07:17
IPO bags AskJeeves a tidy sum

Float sees shares jump 364 per cent - good egg

AskJeeves -- the upper-class meta search engine that lets you ask Jeeves the butler to trawl the Web for you -- has completed its initial public offering (IPO) of 3,000,000 shares of common stock at a price of $14 per share. The shares started trading yesterday on NASDAQ and rose quickly to more than $77 a share before falling …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 09:06
SK scraps CPU tax

PC sales stimulant

South Korea is scrapping import duties on CPUs from August 1. The current CPU tariff is 4 per cent -- adding around $1.5 million in extra costs for every million units imported. Not a huge burden, then. More of an irritation, not to mention a covert tax on the domestic population. Under WTO rules, South Korea was supposed to …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 09:17
Blue Macs – IBM decides on merit

Four years ago Crazy? It ain't necessarily so

From The Register No. 19 -- four years ago A couple of months back we ran a fairly crazy piece about IBM building PCI PowerMacs for Apple, but last week it started to look less crazy. It seems IBM is going to be running up machines of this class for Radius instead. So where does this get us? It's not exactly epoch-making that …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 09:20
DRAM prices keep on falling

What would Nostradamus have to say about that?

DRAM prices are continuing to fall across the world, the latest price survey from ICIS-LOR reveals. Average prices fell between 3 and 6 per cent between June 4 and June 11, according to the Reed- owned market research firm ICIS-LOR produces a 30-day rolling average trade price for 64Mb DRAMs (PC100, 8M x 8) in North America, …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 09:47
Thomas the Tank Engine in porn mix-up

Rhyming slang to blame - what would Dick van Dyke have to say about this?

Thomas the Tank Engine's owners were all steamed up this week after discovering the character was connected with net porn. Britt Allcroft have started cracking down on unofficial use of the grinning choo-choo on Web sites after it was linked to several porno pages. And the official site, where kiddies can create their own pages …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 12:07
System builders form new alliance

US body aims to improve communications with component makers

White-box system builders have a new trade group in the US, aimed at promoting contact between themselves and component vendors. The Atlanta-based North American System Builders Association (NASBA) formed this week and aims to give smaller PC assemblers a united voice. It represents independent system builders with 10 to 100 …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 12:30
NEC debuts NT graphics accelerator

Claims new baby is industry's fastest

NEC has launched what it is claiming is the world's fastest 3D graphics accelerator for NT-based workstations. The NEC TE4E Graphics Accelerator scored 30 on the industry-standard Viewperf ProCDRS-01(1) benchmark. It will come as part of NEC's Express5800 workstation range, and will be pre-loaded on to the 5800/55Wb and 5800/ …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 13:09
No PC slowdown, says Dell

He's not reading from the same script as the CompaQ Three, evidently

Michael Dell, thirty-something billionaire chairman of a certain well-known PC vendor, has said he sees no sign of a slowdown in the PC market. While sales in Europe were growing slower than in the US, Dell said that sales into Asia were looking particularly strong. He was speaking during a broadcast Q&A from the offices of US …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 13:43
Computacenter beats off BT challenge

Might even make a profit this time

Computacenter has retained the BT account for another three years. The reseller fought off competition from ICL and Compel for the UK's biggest PC supply contract, worth an estimated £60 million a year. It has also secured an option from BT for another two years worth of PC business. Better still, it is teaming up with BT to …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 13:54
Happy birthday to the notebook PC

Ten years old - my, haven't you grown, err.. smaller

Toshiba has launched a new line of portable PCs for the Japanese market today to celebrate the 10th birthday of the first notebook. The Japanese vendor introduced eight models and 16 variants. Among these was the Libretto ff 1100, which can record visual images and music and comes with a detachable C-MOS camera for digital …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 14:02
Toshiba touts for Web business

Wants to keep resellers sweet

Toshiba UK is now selling PCs on its web site. Another nail in the coffin for PC dealer squealers? Not quite -- Toshiba is doing what it can to keep resellers sweet. It has set up links from its homepage to its resellers' websites -- keeping the channel happy while selling online. Toshiba says that it is acting simply as a …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 14:11
PCs over the Web from Toshiba

Says it will involve the channel in ecommerce initiative

Toshiba has hopped on the ecommerce bandwagon and is now selling its PC's through its homepage. The company says that the move is about expanding customer choice, but with Dell claiming to generate around $18 million a day in PC sales over its Web site, you can see why Tosh is keen to do it. Toshiba has been careful to keep its …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 14:12
SGI still not for sale, shock

Our Graham sticks his neck out

Another day has dawned, and SGI is still intact, and despite rumours to the contrary, we stand by our original story. The only thing that has happened is that Keith Watson, the sales and marketing vp departed. Kenneth Coleman was made svp of Global sales, service and marketing on Tuesday, and Jan Silverman's appointment as vp …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 14:27
There's one born every four seconds

Mobile phone owners, that is

Four seconds. That's the time it takes in Britain for a new mobile phone owner to be born. At the rate we're buying them, half the population could own a mobile phone as soon as the year 2001. But are we getting the best deals from the providers? Oftel, the phone regulatory body, thinks not. With the industry expanding so fast, …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 14:43
Murdoch loves Web. True

What made him change his mind?

Wasn't he supposed to be on honeymoon? The inexhaustible Rupert Murdoch is flogging mortgages over the Net, courtesy of a $22 million stake in a US-based online provider. He's stumping up the dosh through a joint venture between Epartners, his new Web investment vehicle, and Softbank, the hyperactive Japanese VCs-to-PCs …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 15:00
PC give-away from CompUSA

No such thing as a free lunch, nor a free PC it seems

CompUSA -- the US's largest chain of computer superstores -- is following hard on the heals of AOL, Microsoft and Prodigy after deciding to give away PCs for nothing. For this weekend only shoppers looking for a PC can get $400 off the price the price of machine at a selected number of CompUSA stores. And it just so happens that …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 15:09
Orange debuts Wirefree data service

Third gen services to run on second gen network

Orange has announced the launch of the UK's first wirefree data service, along with new tariffs and record customer growth. From 1 October, customers will be able to access Web services, including news and travel information through standard handsets, the mobile phone operator said. Orange will launch an ISP, provisionally …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 15:17
Network Associates teams up with Nostradamus

Opinion Our man Tim Richardson witnesses the world end and he's not happy about it

If you believe all the twaddle about Nostradamus and his notion that this weekend will see the end of the world as we know it, then you need your head examined. But, in a strange kind of way, this great prophet of doom and gloom was almost right -- he was just out by a couple of days, that's all. You see my world nearly ended …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 15:58
Quantum slaps OEM customers, chins Seagate

And you thought storage was dull...

A senior executive at the Quantum Corporation said today that HP, IBM and Seagate will fail to deliver on their Ultrium tape storage solution. IBM and HP are major customers of Quantum's DLT tape storage, which the hard drive manufacturer acquired from the Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), some years back. Quantum was at …

Business 2 Jul 1999, 20:12