19th October 1999 Archive

Browse by publication date, or search the site.

Round and round the hardware sites

Well Hard

The good Dr Pabst's site over at Tom's Hardware has an interesting interview with a 113-year old Tarot card reader which is a hoot. 3DFX and its future....tealeaf reading et al. It's a little while since we look at Ars Technica, a site which always turns up interesting anagrams when you feed those letters of the alphabet into a …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 06:41
Intel's i840 is a chipset that works

AGP 50, crumbs, jings and cor blimey stone the crows

When we met Raghu Murthi, the workstation marchitecture manager at Intel Dupont last Friday, he would not publicly comment about the i840 chipset and associated motherboard which the company launches on the 25th of October next. But he did enthuse about how his team had designed a powerful and very wonderful chipset and fell …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 07:12
MS lobbies senate to lean on Europe, WTO

Concerned about piracy control and tax mitigation, apparently...

It's becoming clearer what Microsoft and other major software developers want to achieve at the World Trade Organisation ministerial meeting in Seattle next month (related story). We now have the text of the presentation by Eric Koenig, Microsoft's senior federal government affairs manager, to the Senate Committee on Foreign …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 07:31
Intel mobo prices and spex for the 24th: we got the lot

Slot one creeps into Dodoland

Irregular sources close to Intel's plans have now given us the complete price list for its motherboards as from next Sunday. We have already given prices for the Coppermine processors it will release in earlier stories which can be found here and here. The SE440BX (Seattle) mobo which uses the 440BX chipset with Coppermine …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 07:38
Red Hat to publish Compaq Linux mods under GPL

All the PC companies love Linux, but the Compaq approach might show how they can prove it

A support deal announced yesterday by Compaq and Red Hat gives some indication of how development of Linux by commercial PC companies can operate within the open source model. Typically a company like Compaq will have its own systems for modifying operating software, but as these have historically operated in conjunction with, …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 08:13
Telinco's free Net service is a sitting duck

Details leak out about next week's launch -- we suspect fowl play

Cheshire-based ISP Telinco is to launch its 0800 dial-up service next week. Details about the new service are still sketchy since the ISP is trying hard to keep it under wraps until next Wednesday. Unfortunately, the little that is known is rather puzzling, even bordering on the weird. For Telinco's not very well-kept secret is …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 10:04
MS spin doctors ‘explain’ Win2k slippage to 2000

When people say 'that's what we always said,' you should note the moving goalposts

Microsoft's marketing elves seem to be spinning busily, following the latest fix on Windows 2000's final ship date. From these it looks like Microsoft will make it to finally beta (Release Candidate 3) immediately before Comdex, but RTM (Release to Manufacture) clearly won't be achieved for a big launch at Las Vegas. So for …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 10:22
Apple announces another G4 order policy

Updated Fourth change of mind in as many days

Apple's attempts to take control of what has rapidly become a PR gaffe of monumental proportions took yet another turn last night when interim CEO Steve Jobs announced the company's fourth policy on shipping already-ordered Power Mac G4s to customers in almost as many working days. Now, said Jobs, Apple will honour orders from …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 10:35
UK management blamed for Ingram woes

Distie's senior execs set out stall for planned recovery

Ingram Micro yesterday blamed former management for the UK misfortunes of the company. Greg Spierkel, president of Ingram Micro Europe, told journalists in London that the company could not pretend its woes were solely due to poor market conditions. Spierkel said ex-Ingram Micro UK MD Sandy Scott "didn't know the industry and …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 10:42
Intel attempts to bankrupt Register

Or is Chipzilla just strapped for cash?

When we arrived at Szechuan Towers this morning, we were handed an ominous looking envelope with three crowns on it. This, we thought, must be serious. And it was. Intel had mailed us a CD featuring its new Webfitter service for the Pentium III. And hadn't put any postage stamps on it. For which we had to dole out 51 pence. …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 10:55
Linux beats NT, but Unix is top for enterprise claims report

Bloor Research climbs aboard the controversy

British outfit Bloor Research has -- "by coincidence," it says -- intervened in the Linux versus NT wrangle with some tests of its own. The results of these, Bloor says, show that Linux is superior to NT in six of nine categories devised to test the two "from the standpoint of how they operated in practice to support real …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 11:36
Motorola unveils Palm-powering Dragonball upgrade

VZ version takes speed to 33MHz, integrates colour LCD support

Motorola has upgraded its Dragonball processor, the chip that powers the Palm family of organisers and their clones. The Dragonball VZ runs at 33MHz, more than twice the speed of the current Dragonball EZ, which will itself be upgraded to 20MHz from 16MHz. However, the real innovation in the VZ is not raw speed, but built-in …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 11:47
NEC to build chip fab to service $2.8bn Nintendo Dolphin deal

$755m plant to fab Dolphin graphics processor, DRAM

NEC, the semiconductor company chosen by Nintendo to produce graphics and RAM chips for the console vendor's next-generation Dolphin machine, today said it will build a new plant to service the Nintendo contract. NEC said the deal is worth $2.8 billion in total, more than enough to cover the cost of the new plant, estimated to …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 12:11
Intel pulls into fast lane as workstation plans unfold

Roadmap Chipzilla wants Desperate Dan size pie

UK readers will be aware of Desperate Dan, a cartoon character in the Dundee publication The Dandy. Pictured as a cowboy with an insatiable appetite, Dan used to shave with a blowtorch and eat enormous cow pies*, complete with horn and tails. What has Desperate Dan to do with Intel? Well, aside from the fact that its CEO Craig …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 12:16
Taiwan quake blamed for Dell profit slip

Customers to shoulder increased PC prices

Dell has warned that its third quarter profits will not be up to scratch because of the after effects of the Taiwanese earthquake. The direct PC seller said chip shortages resulting from last month's quake would effect profit for the three months ending 31 October. The 25 per cent hike in contract chip prices experienced over …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 12:38
BT kills off ADSL trial

New service will be slower and more expensive

BT is scrapping its current ADSL trial and replacing it with a poorer service that is more expensive. In an email, the telco giant said that that the BT Interactive trial would end on 7 November 1999. However, the pre-launch beta trial (BT is looking to roll-out ADSL nation-wide early next year) would be available to all current …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 12:40
MS piracy losses claims don't stack up

Contradictory claims and dubious statistics underpin them. Not.

In trying to scare consumers, businesses, governments and institutions into having licensed software, Microsoft is making unsupportable claims about the jobs that it says have been displaced as a consequence of the piracy, and the ensuing loss of taxes to the state or country. Microsoft's new anti-piracy campaign is being so …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 13:53
Tiny telco offers bargain broadband access

But you can only get it in Hull

Net users in the north east of England can get always-on broadband ADSL access to the Internet for just £15 a month. Kingston Communications -- which operates exclusively in Kingston upon Hull -- announced the tariff today after launching its new interactive TV (iTV) service. Known as Kingston Interactive Television (KIT), the …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 14:36
STMicro sees 33 per cent profit jump

Strong Q3 and first nine months for Euro chip maker

Healthy demand for chips for mobile devices has powered a 33 per cent increase in profit for STMicroelectronics. For its third quarter, ending 2 October, Europe's number two chip maker saw profit up to $135.3 million, from $101.6 million for last year's Q3. Sales for the period were up 23 per cent to $1.27 billion, against last …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 15:12
Gates and Ballmer mount buddies act in Fortune

Ah yes, I remember it well...

There's a love-in conversation between Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in the 25 October issue of Fortune magazine. It's billed as the $100 billion friendship, the pre-eminent buddy act in American business. They have known each other for 25 years, since their days at Harvard. Gates boldly claims "That summer [1975] I wrote BASIC …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 16:05
Camino egg on face to be wiped away by i840?

...it's no yolk

If you were a major chip manufacturer with a problem chipset, you might like to have something on the back burner to take its place. And as luck would have it, Chizilla is in just such a position. Camino may have deposited a lot of egg on Intel's corporate face, but the Great Satan of Chips appears to have the luck of the devil …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 16:27
Brit firm shows US Senators ‘the real turd in the Y2K punchbowl’

Ask not for whom the bowl flushes....

An analyst with London Y2K consultants International Monitoring lashed out at numerous US government agencies for soft-pedalling international Y2K threats during a Senate Y2K Committee hearing last week. Chief among these is the Clinton Administration's special Y2K working group, whose recent, soothing report IM analyst Nick …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 20:56
365IPO

Shoots up non-Net revenue streams

365 Corporation has confirmed its intention to IPO on the London Stock Exchange. Blue-blood broker Cazenove is to be joint lead bookrunner alongside Durlacher, the niche investment bank which has re-invented itself as successful Internet upstart. No market cap figures have be mentioned yet, but we suspect 365 will be in the £ …

Business 19 Oct 1999, 20:56