9th September 1999 Archive

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Yahoo gets interested in apps service via ‘concept’ demo

The demo seems to have made Yahoo come over all enthusiastic...

Citrix seems to have hit the spot far more accurately than it had intended with its browser-based "Program Neighborhood" strategy, unveiled at the company's iForum show in Florida today. Citrix is planning to give user any time, anywhere access to multiuser applications via a browser, and ears on the Internet are starting to …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 05:46
Dell buys storage firm

First acquisition sees Dell move upmarket

Dell threw itself into the storage market fray yesterday, by splashing out $300 million-plus on ConvergeNet Technologies. Dell will exchange around 6.9 million shares for all outstanding shares and options of the Californian storage networking company. The deal -- Dell’s first acquisition -- values ConvergeNet at $340 million, …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 08:30
ilion rejects suitors

No one willing to pay what it wants, apparently

ilion Group today said that all takeover talks with prospective buyers had been terminated. It claimed none of the offers had adequately reflected the value of the company, in a statement to the stock exchange made this morning. On 15 April ilion announced it was in "very preliminary discussions" with a number of interested …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 10:33
Big Blue uses NatSemi Geode in NetStation

Why isn't IBM using its own chips?

NatSemi has won a major contract with IBM, and is supplying its Geode system-on-a-chip to drive its latest family of Network Stations. The Geode GXlv plus supplementary chips, is to be used in Network Station Series 2200, said NatSemi. In other news, NatSemi struck a deal with two Taiwanese organisations to assist in the …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 10:37
Intel talks performance desktop talk

Intel Developer Forum i820 ATXflex, low profile PCI cards

The Intel Developers Forum ran a series of tracks on designing the next generation performance desktop system. Richard Malinowski, engineering director of the personal computer group at Intel, talked the talk about the i820 chipset and the sort of bottlenecks Intel hoped to address. He was also keen to promote AGP 4X. Malinowski …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 11:11
Compaq still advertising Alpha NT…

Oops...

Leaked Compaq Q&A, 25/8/99 from The Register: Compaq will end 32-bit Windows NT Alpha systems development with V4 SP6, late in 1999, and will not support either 32 or 64-bit Windows 2000 on Alpha systems Compaq double-page ad, in Computing, 9/9/99: Compaq's Alpha 64-bit servers have captivated the most eligible software …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 11:16
Morse profits leap like a salmon

There's gold in them thar Unix boxes

Morse Holdings today reported a 60 per cent leap in profit for the year ended 30 June 1999 in its maiden preliminary results. The Sun/HP systems integrator posted pre-tax profit of £18.9 million, compared with £11.8 million for the previous year. Sales jumped 31 per cent to £283.9 million, against last year's £216.1 million. …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 11:16
Commodore wannabe don't want to be Commodore no more

Iwin tiptoes past Tulip

Iwin, the European IT company at the heart of a controversial scheme to relaunch the Commodore Business Machines (CBM) brand with a line of Amiga-compatible computers, has decided that actually... er... it's not interested in CBM after all. And research from Amiga-oriented Web site Amiga Extreme suggests Iwin may never have been …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 11:49
Feds to prosecute eBay hoax baby dealers

Guess that game's over, then

The people who advertised babies and vital organs for sale on eBay are be tracked down and prosecuted. Federal authorities in the US are already investigating the macabre auction of kidneys and babies, although as yet no one has been arrested. As well as investigating those people who placed the ads, the authorities are also …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 11:54
DRAM price hike dead handy for Intel (and Rambus)

Rambus premium could shrink as SDRAM supplies shrink

Life is full of little coincidences and sometimes companies, just like individuals, are subject to lucky strokes of fate. Take Chipzilla, for instance. Not so long ago, it looked like it had a big struggle on its hands to seed Rambus-designed RDRAM quickly into the market. One problem to overcome with cost-neurotic OEMs was the …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 11:58
Argos £3 TV fiasco provokes test-case lawsuit

Vultures circle hapless retailer (lawyers, not The Register)

A ground breaking case in Internet law is on the cards today, as an unhappy customer is to sue retail giant Argos over the erroneous £3 TV offer on its web site. The legal position of either party in the case is not entirely clear, as there are no precedents relating to sales online. The disgruntled customer who is bringing the …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 12:02
So who's going to make a £3 TV options market?

Just a thought

The Register has received several emails from readers quoting friends of friends who "bought" Sony TVs from Argos at £3. One buyer is thought to have placed an order for 1,700 TVs, another for several hundred. So how many orders were placed in toto? Will Argos have to make a provision for this in this year's accounts? Answers on …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 12:25
Acer Labs pumps Nvidia TNT2 into Aladdin chipset

Mixed comments from analysts

A new product from chip maker Acer Labs Inc (ALi), is attracting mixed comments from industry watchers in the run up to the company's over-the-counter stock listing. "ALi definitely have the right product at the right moment," said Andrew Lin, an analyst at Jardine Fleming Taiwan. ALi's Aladdin TNT2 chipset combines the …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 12:53
Speech-enabled web surfing --- now that is cool

IBM ViaVoice speaks to the masses

IBM's latest speech recognition offering, ViaVoice Millennium, made its US debut today. The recognition accuracy has been improved making it easier to use for every day tasks, the company said. The products learn the speech patterns of a number of users, so that accuracy improves with use and is not limited to one staff of …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 13:07
Beeb applies for ‘unrepresentative’ trade body

BIPA says it will look into it

David Atter, S&M director at beeb.com, has hit out at the British Internet Publishers Alliance (BIPA) calling it "partisan". In an interview with The Register Atter said that despite its name BIPA was not representative of the whole industry. Atter is all for trade groups, despite the tirade of criticism that the alliance has …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 13:40
US crypto export controls are bunk

Who's afraid of the NSA now?

The American intelligence establishment has suffered its share of embarrassments lately, from a North Korean missile sailing over Japan in spite of the CIA's repeated insistence that no such development was possible, to Chinese scientists nonchalantly walking off with the country's most jealously-guarded nuclear secrets, to the …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 14:51
Oftel blames Net for phone changes

We're talking telephone numbers,here

Three out of ten people would consider using video on demand, Net access via their TV and broadband Net services when they become available, according to the telecoms watchdog Oftel. It also claims one in ten residential consumers said they intended to get a mobile phone or get hooked up to the Net within the next six months. …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 15:13
Sign up for free colour printers here

Tektronix offer contains more strings than a violin

Tektronix is handing out free colour printers with so many strings attached you could probably knit a scarf with them. The company has launched a website --live as of yesterday -- to handle applications at freecolorprinters.com But there really is no such thing as a free printer, since companies must agree to maintain a monthly …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 15:39
Chipset vendors insist world is wafer flat

Linda Harrison questions heady market share predictions

The arithmetic skills of the world's top chipset vendors were in doubt today. SiS has promised to mark its territory with a spray covering 35 per cent of the chipset market by 2002. Oh, Yeah? The Taiwanese vendor stated it would be shipping over 52 million chipsets by 2002, more than double this year's expected 21 million. To …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 15:47
Waitrose donates free ISP revenues to charity

Posh grocer won't charge tech support, either

Posh supermarket chain Waitrose has joined Tesco and Iceland in the race to attract shoppers online. Launching its subscription-free ISP today the food division of John Lewis plc claimed that Waitrose.com marked "a radical departure from the recent mould of ISP packages". Part of that "radical departure" is to offer a "quality …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 16:45
Time for another memory surcharge

Vendors capitalise on market uncertainty

Yet another PC builder is adding surcharges to prices in response to memory price hikes, as 64Mb DRAM today hit record levels. Time Computer Systems said price rises will start next week for its PC range. Time is copying moves by rivals such as Carrera, Mesh and Panrix, who slapped surcharges of around £60 on higher end PCs …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 16:51
How the whole Rambus thing looks

Analyst has a dekko at the Seven Dramurai™

Rambus is not the technology it's hyped up to be, according to an American analyst. At last week's Intel Developer Forum, Burt McComas, of Inquest, expressed his doubts about Rambus performance figures to The Register. Now he has produced what he claims is one of the most definitive documents on Rambus, on this planet. Go here …

Business 9 Sep 1999, 20:07