5th July 1999 Archive

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Intel turns Pentium III/600 price screw on AMD K7

Will introduce 600MHz PIII cheaper, introduce Celeron 500 earlier

c't magazine in Germany is reporting that Intel will ratchet its price screw on AMD when it releases its 600MHz Pentium III part later this month. Last week, we reported that Intel will also cut prices on its mainstream Pentium III/500 parts to compete aggressively with AMD's soon-to-be-released K7 Athlon chips. (Story: Intel to …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 05:23
Loss hit AMD renegotiates loan terms

A year ago But it's just a precautionary measure, says company

From The Register, July 1998 -- a year ago In the wake of stinging losses announced earlier this week AMD has renegotiated its credit deal with its banks. On Wednesday the company reported a net loss of $65 million, having been badly hit by R&D spend and poor demand for communications products. According to the company it has …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 05:42
Europe hit by re-marked Intel chips

Crooks nicked in Hong Kong

A report on NEWS.COM over the weekend suggests that the problem of re-marked CPUs in Europe this year was greater than earlier anticipated. Hong Kong local authorities seized more than £500,000 of re-marked Intel microprocessors last week. Crooks had re-marked more than 3,000 Pentium IIs to look like Pentium IIIs. The chips were …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 05:54
Intel, Sun, HP to aid $1 billion investment in Hong Kong

Intent is to create Silicon Harbour

The South China Morning Post is reporting that major IT firms are to help sponsor a $1 billion IT project in Hong Kong. The newspaper, which has a Web site here, says details of the venture will be announced later today. The project will supplement an early $13 billion HK project called Cyberport. According to the report, other …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 06:06
CompaQ rejigs Europe

And...in other news...

The triumvirate ruling Compaq Corporation made further decisions affecting Europe over the weekend, in the wake of the retirement of former general manager Andreas Barth. Barth was closely associated with ex-CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer and the triumvirate, headed by chairman Ben Rosen, has effectively mirrored the US reconstruction …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 07:16
Intel joins Japanese in appliance memory alliance

Another one of those industry standard things seems to be forming...

Intel and Hitachi have agreed to support a common industry specification for memory in consumer electronics devices. The pair join Mitsubishi and Sharp, the prime movers behind stacked chip scale packages (S-CSP), a format designed to produce small, dense storage modules for mobile phones, hand-helds and so on. Intel's support …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 08:57
Dissent at MS over trial? Nope, PR spin…

MS on Trial Have those spinmeisters been planting stories again?

A strange Dow Jones News story suggests that there is internal dissension at Microsoft over the antitrust case, although no relevant sources are named. At first it looks as though it's a mildly critical piece designed to assert independence. But closer examination suggests that Microsoft PR could be involved. There is a …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 09:18
VNU buys CMP UK and France: nightmare scenario realised

intro

There’s going to be an awful lot of computer journalists at CMP in London quaking in their boots today. For they are to be sold by new owner Miller Freeman to VNU. This was the nightmare scenario that CMP’s British hacks feared most. They breathed a collective sigh of relief a couple of months back when Miller Freeman outbid VNU …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 09:34
VNU buys CMP UK and France: nightmare scenario realised

intro

There’s going to be an awful lot of computer journalists at CMP in London quaking in their boots today. For they are to be sold by new owner Miller Freeman to VNU. This was the nightmare scenario that CMP’s British hacks feared most. They breathed a collective sigh of relief a couple of months back when Miller Freeman outbid VNU …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 09:34
Intel share price ramping up

Steady boys, steady

If you look at Intel's share price over the last seven days it is a wonder to behold. But then, the reasons why shares go up and down is a mystery to mostly everyone on the planet. Last Monday, the INTC price started at just a shade above $50, and closed on Friday at $63.5, briefly touching $64. The USA is on holiday today, but …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 09:57
Y2K bug eats into VC deals

Investments will be held over to avoid impact of date change

UK venture-capital firms are delaying business deals for fear of the Y2K bug, according to a BDO Stoy Hayward report. Venture-capital houses are postponing acquisitions and sales until next year due to concerns that companies are not ready for the millennium threat. Around 34 per cent of the 96 venture-capital firms questioned …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 10:56
Compaq, IBM converge on anti-MS stand

Corporations can spend more on projects that way

Over the last year or so, we've noticed that every time we speak to our friends at IBM, they start talking about how Linux-friendly they are. That's won them a lot of friends in the open source community but the friendliness is likely to be prompted more by head than heart. That's according to Malcolm Macsween, who works for Red …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 11:10
Nescafe navigation – inside world's biggest cybercafe

Report Starbucks - bid for the next concession, please

Easyjet's Easy Everything cyber-Nescafe near London's Victoria is now fully open, with 380 terminals. This probably makes it the biggest in the world, although the next of four more that are planned for London is likely to have 500 screens. Future expansion sites will include Amsterdam, which is an important EasyJet route. HP …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 11:32
AMD stands firm on Athlon K7 pricing

Intel price fork doesn't frighten them yet

A senior executive at AMD Europe said today that speculation Intel is cutting its prices would not alter its position its Athlon K7 pricing. (See Intel turns Pentium III/600 price screw on AMD K7) Meanwhile, an industry observer said he doubted whether Intel would take such steps pro-actively and wondered whether the company was …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 11:37
Copyright climb down at Yahoo!

Now it's saying it doesn't own contribs' work after all

Yahoo! has finally buckled to public pressure over its assertion that it owns the copyright of everything posted on its portal and altered its Terms of Service. In a clear case of enforced capitulation, Yahoo! has finally admitted that it "does not own" content. But it has left the door open for future changes to this policy. It …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 11:54
Taiwanese monitor makers set to withdraw from UK market

Wales, Scotland, and England suffer

Reports from Taiwan claimed today that a number of manufacturers are set to pull their monitor production out of the UK. The report, from the organisers of the Taiwanese Computex trade fair, said that Acer Peripherals, a world-class manufacturer, has changed its plans for manufacturing monitors in its Welsh plant and will move …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 12:23
Cadence, TSMC team up on system-on-chip toolkit

They'll SOC it and see, fnar

Design company Cadence and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) have struck a deal to create a high end toolkit for system on a chip designs. According to the companies, the deal means 10 to 30 per cent better chip performance, plus a shrink of the chip size (die) by around 10 per cent. TSMC, a major foundry, can now …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 12:35
Intel pulls plugs on plans for Kahneeta PC

Philippe's daughter? No, we hadn't heard of it either. Quiet funeral, evidently...

Want to know about Intel's Kahneeta reference platform? Well you're too late, Intel seems to have pulled the plugs on it well in advance of most of the world having heard of it. If you look here, you'll see that Kahneeta is no more, "due to limited supply," as Intel enigmatically reveals. Other references to what it is/was are …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 12:54
Motorola sells two Asia Pacific IC plants

Advanced Semiconductor Engineering named as buyer

As predicted here last week, Motorola is to sell two Far Eastern chip packaging and testing plants to Taiwan's biggest chip builder, Advanced Semiconductor Engineering (ASE). Story: Motorola spins off two factories The deal came to pass and the confirmation came over the weekend. Once ASE takes ownership of each facility, in …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 13:18
Credit card details published on Web after hack attack

Suspicion aimed at former employees after dormant site's security is busted

The names, addresses and credit card details of around half a dozen people have been published on the Net after a redundant site was hacked at the weekend. The site belonged to Ecstatic, a virtual marketing company that sold radiation shields for mobile phones before ceasing trading last month. Ecstatic's MD, Rash Naggar, is …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 13:31
QXL plans UK's second biggest Web float

Hopes to cash in on Internet stock bonanza

Online auction house QXL is planning a £500 million float in September, which would make it the second biggest public offering by a UK-based Web company. The float would lap-up the current buyer frenzy of Internet stocks, fuelled by Dixons’ Freeserve upcoming float, according to today's Financial Times. QXL has come a long way …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 13:32
Web flotation will be absolutely fabulous, sweetie

Former PR man has serious ambitions for Funmail

The man who ran the firm that inspired cult comedy Absolutely Fabulous plans to float his Internet company on the stock market. The former MD of Lynne Franks PR, Graham Goodkind, aims to raise £5 million for his latest venture, Funmail, according to today’s Times newspaper. The flotation, tipped to take place on the Alternative …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 13:33
Morgan leaves C2000 to join Datrontech

New position created to focus on SMEs

Datrontech has poached James Morgan from Computer 2000 to be sales director as part of a series of management changes. The Basingstoke-based components distributor has also promoted Fiona Squire from business manager to product marketing director. Morgan joins Datrontech after five years at rival Computer 2000, where he was …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 13:34
Lucent sues Micron, expects counter suit

Bickering over alleged patent infringements continues

Lucent has taken legal action against Micron Technology for allegedly refusing to pay it royalties for the last two years. At the heart of the dispute are a series of Lucent-ownned patent which it claims were licensed to the memory chip company by Lucent's former parent, AT&T, in 1988. Lucent says it took over ownership of those …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 13:35
C&W buys INS

So that explains the Networks Telecom no-show

"As a private company INS is wholly accountable to itself and its customers." But not for much longer. Internet Network Services, the venture capital-backed ISP, has sold itself to Cable & Wireless. Terms were undisclosed... although the Evening Standard reckons the deal was struck at "between £50 million and £100 million". In …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 13:37
Samsung to sell through Microtronica

Hard drive to push hard drives

Microtronica has announced that it is to distribute hard drives for Samsung. The distribution specialist says that the deal will improve its offerings to its customers. "Samsung has focused only on drives using the IDE/ATAPI interface and this boosts our strength in this area," said Robin Varley, marketing manager at …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 14:43
Scots bank debuts ISP package

And it's free – so no tight-fisted Scots jokes please

Following hot on the heels of Barclays Bank, the Royal Bank of Scotland is launching its own ISP operation, called Quista. Operating through a portal site, its service will offer online banking, news and other information facilities. MSN is believed to be supplying the news for the site. The Royal Bank of Scotland says that its …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 14:51
Watchdog to rule on local loop competition

Is the free market to have its day, or will Oftel make dog's breakfast of it?

Staff at Oftel -- the telecomms watchdog -- were remaining predictably tight-lipped this afternoon ahead of tomorrow's publication of a report into the future of broadband access in the UK. No one at Oftel's kennel was prepared to spill the dog food about what is contained in the report Access to Bandwidth: proposals for action …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 15:01
UK Asian Web foundation heads for float

Community service looks to raise £800,000

An Asian portal established in 1996 is looking to raise £800,000 through the issue of two million shares. Asian Online -- dubbed the "Brown Pages" -- has more than 30,000 Asian businesses registered on its site and is valued at around £5 million. Everything from Indian cuisine and fashion to insurance services are covered. There …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 15:21
Doubts emerge over Intel chip tracking

...because Intel admitted earlier this year it tracked everything.

The massive haul of Intel Pentiums that the Chinese (HK) government caught last week should be trackable by Intel itself, it has emerged. Earlier this year, Intel admitted that processor serial numbers (PSNs) were embedded in Pentium IIs and Celerons as well. And earlier today, facts and figures emerged from Hong Kong about the …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 15:35
July the Fourth? We Scots say Pah! Humbug

The inglorious 12th interests us...

One of us had a very interesting email yesterday from a Yankee who uttered: "We're sorry about you Brits who can't celebrate Independence Day." What a laugh. Three directors here share Keltic roots, and two thirds are Scots, so we have to admire big time the Yanks (or should it be Tanks) who threw tea into bostoon harbour. Here …

Business 5 Jul 1999, 16:12