26th July 1999 Archive

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Congress roasts NSI at ICANN hearing

New CEO catches roasting, fluffs pitch badly

The rhetoric was rough, mean-spirited, and distinctly partisan when the House Commerce Committee convened Thursday over the question, "is ICANN out of control?" Nonprofit ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, was created by the Clinton administration last year, ostensibly to promote competition in the …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 06:09
Intel recaptures sub-$1000 PC market

Beats AMD for first time in 11 months -- just

Intel has taken the lead from AMD is the chief supplier of processors for the sub-$1000 PC market for the first time in almost 12 months, according to PC Data's latest figures for the US retail and mail order channels. The stats, for June, saw Intel take 45.4 per cent of the cut-price PC market, nudging ahead of AMD, which …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 10:53
Dos alive and well in Millennium, claims pundit

The code MS is shipping is nothing like as radical as rumoured, allegedly

The 'Dos is dead' claims made in association with Microsoft's next rev of Win9x, codenamed Millennium, have come under heavy fire from Paul Thurrott of WinInfo. In a scathing article published over the weekend Thurrott blasts early reports of the content of Millennium as largely rumour, and if he's right, Dos is a lot healthier …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 11:00
Infineon makes profit shock

IPO set for Feb/March 2000

Siemens' spun-off semiconductor operation Infineon scored itself a $22.75 million profit for its latest fiscal quarter, ended 30 June. The division recorded sales of $1.25 billion. And Infineon is now set for a February/March 2000 IPO, according to Siemens CFO Heinz-Joachim Neuberger. Infineon has been well known for its overall …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 11:07
Philips and LG ink LCD deal today

Joint venture is signed, sealed and delivered

The joint venture between Philips and LG Electronics to produce flat panel screens has been finalised today. The 50-50 deal which saw Philips part with an investment of $1.6 billion, will realise instant profit for the Dutch electronics giant, which only last week announced lacklustre results. It is the largest single foreign …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 12:30
Man arrested over alleged hacking offence

Exclusive Bailed until October pending further investigations

A 19-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the alleged hacking of a Web site owned by a Wapping-based business premises. The man -- who has not been named by police -- was arrested last Wednesday and released without charge. He was bailed to appear at Holborn Police Station in October pending further investigations. …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 12:57
Big Blue Shark attacks StorageTek

Storage bust up sees long-standing partnership shaken

IBM has dumped StorageTek's SVA disk array and developed its own rival product – due to be launched today. Big Blue has had an OEM agreement with StorageTek since 1996, reselling StorageTek's SVA (Shared Virtual Array) which it rebranded RVA (Ramac Virtual Array). IBM sold all StorageTek's SVA stock. Big Blue was said to be weak …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 13:10
GE Cap opens Gateway to corporate accounts

Direct seller forms alliance with multi-national reseller group

Direct selling PC giant, Gateway, has teamed up with multi-national channel monolith GE Capital IT Solutions, to target the corporate market. Despite a strong presence in the home and small business markets, Gateway’s attempts to win a significant share of the corporate market have yet to set the industry alight. The GE Cap deal …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 13:32
NTL acquires CWC cable unit

Two left, only Telewest to go

Two years ago the UK had 24 cable operators. But now there are only two, following today's news that NTL is to acquire the cable television interests of Cable & Wireless Communications for £8.2 billion in cash and stocks. Meanwhile, Cable & Wireless, owner of 53 per cent of CWC, is buying out the data and business divisions, …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 13:39
Compaq man joins board of CallCentric

Consultancy firm adds big-hitter to its arsenal

A little-known call centre consultancy firm has had its board bolstered by the addition of Compaq UK's managing director Joe McNally. The company is CallCentric, it was founded in 1997, and lists companies such as Lloyds TSB and Credit Suisse among those it has advised on establishing call centres. The consultancy received a £2 …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 13:45
Compaq still top of the PC pops

Q2 global PC figures suggest a bumper year is on the cards

Worldwide PC sales increased 27 per cent for the second quarter, but at the expense of smaller vendors. Global PC shipments rose to 25.6 million compared to the same period last year, IDC reported. This was the biggest growth for several quarters, beating IDC initial forecasts of 21 per cent growth, according to today's Wall …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 14:03
Free calls for a tenner as Freecall goes live

Wait for details comes to an end for 180,000 registered users

Freecall-UK -- the UK Net company that promised toll-free access to the Internet -- has finally launched its service after keeping people guessing for more than two months. Snag is though, it's not free. Anyone who wants to take up the offer first has to part with £6 ($10) to register in what is described as a "one-off …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 14:09
TechWorks debuts new cards

Claims will set gamers hearts a-beating

TechWorks has introduced a new range of PCI 3D sound cards – aimed at the serious PC gamer. TechWorks claims that its budget £19.99 PowerVortex1, based on the 8820 chip from Aureal and supporting the A3D 1.0 protocol, is the only true 3D sound card in its price range. At the high end is the PowerVortex2 SuperQuad. The £50 card …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 14:39
Gold star and a tick for Ciscom

Added to elite of Cisco's channel

Teddington-based reseller Ciscom has become a Cisco Systems Gold Partner. It joins 17 other resellers in this elite networking channel group in the UK. Ciscom has the biggest number of Cisco sales staff in Europe and more Cisco Internetworking Experts (CCIEs) than any reseller or distributor in the UK, according to a company …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 14:53
Keyword auctions ends at AltaVista

Search site no longer taking cash for cash-linked searches

AltaVista has scrapped its Relevant Paid Links Program in the wake of mounting criticism about its practice of selling keywords to the highest bidder. In return for a stash of cash, AltaVista gave advertisers prime spots when Net users searched for certain products. These auctioned results were published ahead of the regular …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 15:00
Maxtor sees loss for Q2

But not as bad as it could have been

Hard drive maker Maxtor has announced its Q2 financials for the period ending 14 June. Turnover was $524.6 million, down on last Q2's $531.3 million. The company made a net loss of $30.9 million -– it made a profit of $5.4 million for last year's Q2. It had expected to make a loss of around $50 million for this quarter. ®

Business 26 Jul 1999, 15:01
TurboLinux outsells Win 98, MacOS 8.5 – sort of…

But there's good news for emulation fans

This week's spurious statistic comes from Japanese market research company Business Computer News via TurboLinux, the Linux distributor formerly known as Pacific HiTech. Launched last week, TurboLinux's Japanese edition of its Workstation 4.0 edition, apparently managed to rack more retail sales than Windows 98, MacOS 8.5 and …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 15:34
Associated Newspapers takes 50% share in free ISP

Buys into Arcadia's Zoom Net access/e-commerce offshoot

Associated Newspapers, publisher of UK tabloid the Daily Mail and local paper the London Evening Standard, today bought a half share in up-and-coming free ISP Zoom from its owner, clothing retail giant Arcadia. Arcadia owns High Street emporia TopShop, Principles and Burton. The deal values Zoom at £30 million -- rival free ISP …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 16:02
Sign here for cheapo UK domain names

Price war in our time

Our namesake, Register.com, is muscling into the UK with cut price domain names. The US-based reseller is offering co.uk and .org.uk extensions for the bargain basement price of £49, compared with the usual rate of £80-£90. UK-specific registration costs are almost twice as expensive as .com or .net domain names, according to …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 16:14
Sun to buy Linux competitor to MS Office?

Picking up a battle-ready productivity suite could be pretty handy...

Sun is poised to buy German software company StarDivision, according to Germany's c't. The magazine says that a deal is rumoured to be ready to roll next month, with Star Division poised to become a wholly-owned Sun subsidiary, under the banner StarOffice GmbH. StarOffice is StarDivision's major product, a potential Microsoft …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 16:45
Freeserve soars in first day trading

Text-book IPO

Hats off to Dixons and its serried ranks of financial advisors for getting away (with) the Freeserve IPO. Shares catapulted nearly 50 per cent on the first day of trading, valuing Freeserve at an astonishing £2.2 billion. Astonishing because Freeserve turns over much less than £10 million and loses money, its customers don't …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 16:47
Mail wars: the Microsoft versus AOL square-off

Microsoft leads the charge for open standard chat clients (cough)

Here's a shocker: Microsoft is seeking immediate penetration with a product it has only just developed, into a market someone else has cultivated. Only days after its release, Microsoft's new knockoff chat client, MSN Messenger Service, has been twice booted from America Online's well-developed and costly chat networks. …

Business 26 Jul 1999, 20:58