4th October 1999 Archive

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Middle-aged men dominate BritNet Spend

Another symbol of our vicious class-ridden patriarchal society

So what does your Big Internet Spender look like? Well if he (it’s probably a he) is British, he is aged 45-to 55, and spends more than £1,000 a year buying stuff online. Big Internet Spender gets to make some savings on his phone bills – as he has net access at work, according to BRMB Internet Monitor. And there’s not a whiff …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 06:58
States MS trial lawyer – was he pushed or did he jump?

MS on Trial Politics and pressure may have taken their toll on Houck

The resignation last week of Steven Houck, a tough Microsoft opponent who led the antitrust case for the 19 states, was almost certainly forced upon him, for two reasons: one political, and one as a result of Microsoft's lobbying. Houck was chief of the State of New York's antitrust bureau, and was the leading lawyer for the …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 07:26
Morita, architect of Sony, dies

Marketing genius who helped build postwar Japan

Sony co-founder Akio Morita died yesterday, aged 78. Aside from building Sony, which started up in the ruins of Tokyo at the end of World War II, Morita was a (arguably the) major force in the construction of the Japanese consumer electronics industry, and in changing the image of Japanese products from cheap trash into the IT- …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 07:29
Crap HP sales reps get new cars

Ford Taurus symbolises 'plodding, conservative culture'

Carly Fiorina, the $90m Woman, is to let her top US salespeople choose their "own" cars, in a radical shakeup at HP. HP’s American Unix systems sales reps are performing like dogs -- and their (fleet) cars are to blame. They have to drive around in Ford Tauruses, poor things. This symbolises HP’s "plodding, conservative culture …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 07:29
Quake ripples and Rambus fiasco hit Dell, HP

It appears there's a slight snag to short inventory tails...

Although Taiwanese production is now coming back on-stream after the quake, knock-on supply disruption is causing problems for some PC manufacturers. On top of this, the Rambus fiasco also looks like messing up the supply chain. Analysts think Dell has been hit by what you might call Compaq's Revenge. One of Dell's advantages …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 07:31
Micron crows over Rambus roadkill

But he who crows last crows loudest...

Here's a puzzle. US PC manufacturer Micron didn't commit to Rambus, and so has seen orders for its PC-133-based machines climb since Intel announced its unfortunate 820 accident. A Micron 21-day backlog on some models is reported in today's WSJ, but at the same time Micron looks set to make matters worse by kicking off an ad …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 08:01
K7s cheaper than PIIIs ‘at all speeds’

CPU Review gets out its slide rule

AMD's Athlons are cheaper than the P3 at all speeds, following today’s price cuts. K7+ mobo combinations are cheaper than P3+BH6 at 550 & 600MHz. And no we haven't cranked the numbers through RegMark, our famous/infamous benchmarking standard. This time it's CPU Review’s William Henning, who's getting out the bangs per bucks …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 10:04
Ecommerce in the Palm of your hand

But only if you happen to live in the US

Wireless buying, bidding and broking using Palm pilots kicked off in America yesterday with the US roll-out of the new Palm VII, the first wireless capable product in the Palm range. Using a cut down version of HTML, e-businesses are able to offer services direct to Palm users whether in their tractors or cappuccino bars. 3Com, …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 10:33
It's jocks away for Motorola

One thousand new jobs created near Edinburgh

Motorola is to create another 1,000 jobs in Scotland, making it one of the country's biggest employers. The company will add the jobs to its mobile phone plant near Edinburgh as part of a £50 million expansion. This will bring its number of employees at the facility to 4,000 and in the whole of Scotland to 7,500. It will boost …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 11:27
HP slips as profits dip

Unix sales team gets a kick up the Taurus

Top Hewlett Packard salesmen will not be forced into driving a standard issue Ford Taurus, the company's chief executive Carly Fiorina said on Friday, in a trading update that led to a fall in the company's share price of nearly five per cent. This freedom to choose policy is part of a move to shake up an under-performing Unix …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 11:32
Taiwan to get big Hitachi chip contracts

Electronics company outsources chip production

Hitachi is to outsource around 10 per cent of its chip production to companies in Taiwan, it announced today. Starting from April, its next financial year, the manufacturer will farm out production to two Taiwanese companies - UMC (United Microelectronics Corp) and Episil Technologies, according to today's Dow Jones. This will …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 11:51
E-millionaires cash in big time

UK is a ker-ching friendly zone for UK Web entrepreneurs

The UK has more e-Midases than you can shake a stick at, according to a survey by The Sunday Times. The nation's top 100 cyber millionaires were said to be worth a combined £4 billion. Yorkshireman Paul Sykes, founder of ISP Planet Online, netted first place with a hefty personal worth of £500 million. Steve Bennett, founder of …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 12:16
Let it be Thus, Scottish Telecom decrees

Open and Thus case

Scottish Telecom, owner of Demon Internet, one of the UK's biggest ISPs, is changing its name to Thus, in a bid to save this fine Old English-derived adverb from the dustbin of new English archaisms. These days, most English speaking people use the words so or therefore, rather than thus. But it could soon change if language …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 12:21
Chip sales soar as PC market balloons

Figures hit a four year high point

August saw a massive 22 per cent jump in chip sales, way ahead of the 3.5 per cent growth seen in July. Latest figures from the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) value the 22 per cent hike at just shy of $12 billion. The Japanese and Asian markets saw the strongest gains, rising 31.7 per cent and 30.1 per cent …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 12:26
Merced now called Itanium

Brand name unveiled

So the brand name for Merced is Intel Itanium, as revealed --sort of -- by The Register back in May. Still billed for launch in the middle of next year, the first IA64 chip is already sampling to a select few OEMs. And with the chip behemoth smarting from the Camino debacle, let's hope this one appears on time. Itanium processor …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 15:16
Psion rubbishes Palm, aims Revo at wireless, ‘lifestyle’

Pulls a cute little rabbit out of hat, might not be screwed after all...

As exclusively (and to be honest, almost entirely fortuitously) revealed here on Thursday (Revo escapes early) Psion unveiled its latest consumer palmtop, the Revo, in London earlier today. But more important, the company unveiled a new strategy that makes it clear it's been paying attention to its mobile phone buddies in …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 15:32
Different strokes for cellphone folks

Reading too many mobile phone scare stories will probably damage your health as well…

Forget brain tumours -- it could be strokes that mobile phone addicts will have to worry about. The Bristol University team of academics that revealed earlier this year that mobile phones heated up the brain (but couldn't find anything wrong with that) have now begun a new research project to examine a link between mobile phone …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 15:33
Nine new PIII flavours revealed

A Chipzilla in time launches nine…

Intel is due to launch nine more versions of its Pentium III chip this quarter. The chip giant is on track to add 733 and 667MHz versions of the processor, with SECC2 Package, .18 micron process technology, supporting 133MHz system bus, by the end of 1999. They will come with 256KB on-Die full speed L2 Cache. These will have the …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 16:25
Cyber narcotics to outwit police

Download your dope via the Net, or not -- as the case may be

Virtual reality narcotics are, err, just around the corner and the elite police forces are already worried about them, national newspaper The Observer reliably informed its readers this weekend. Users will soon implant silicon chips into their bodies and activate high-inducing hormones with radio waves or the Internet, or …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 16:49
Pentium-killer PCs are go

UK assemblers ship Athlon 700s to a waiting world

Evesham Micros, Panrix, Carrera and Mesh were among the UK PC builders launching systems with the Athlon 700 today. Evesham launched four systems with the AMD Athlon 700MHz. These range from £1,409 + VAT, with 128MB DRAM, 12.9Gb hard drive, 16Mb graphics and DVD, to £2,039 + VAT, with 256Mb DRAM, 20Gb hard drive and 19" monitor …

Business 4 Oct 1999, 16:57