26th October 1999 Archive

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Bug in 733MHz Coppermine? No one has stocks anyway…

Updated Jaw hits flaw. Stone the crows and strike us pink

Authoritative German magazine c't is reporting that there could be a bug in Intel's latest flagship desktop chip, the 733MHz 0.18 micron Pentium III. But Intel says that the problem is down to the defect in the i820 chipset the magazine used to test the Coppermine chip. In the latest printed edition of the magazine, which …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 07:30
Pssst… wanna buy a Camino mobo?

Intel thought police pop round for a chat

The dead hand of Chipzilla's marketing goons appears to have fallen on the shoulder of the plucky US Web site taking early orders for Camino mobos. US outlet NECX Direct had full details of the Cape Cod and Vancouver mobos up on its site last week (see Camino mobos go on sale), but the delayed (aka dysfunctional) Intel parts are …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 10:00
‘No catch’ 0800 access opens for UK business

North American Gateway comes gunning for BT

A North American company that took on the might of Canada's ruling monopoly telco -- and won -- has come to Britain to go head-to-head with BT. North American Gateway (NAG), which boasted a turnover of $145 million last year, has teamed up with mobile phone retailer Phones4u, F1 Racing magazine and British ISP CallNet to offer " …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 10:16
Micron secures $20bn DRAM deal with Compaq

Or is it the other way around?

Micron Technology yesterday announced a five-year deal to provide Compaq with chips for its PCs. Through the move, the US chip vendor will become Compaq's single biggest provider of memory. It will supply almost the majority of Compaq's memory products worldwide, Micron said. The two US giants were keeping the financial details …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 10:23
MS makes U-turn on MVP programme shutdown

After all, why get rid of unpaid tech support people?

Microsoft has reversed its decision to dump its Most Valuable Professional Program, announcing yesterday that it would reinstate the programme "as a result of feedback from customers and MVPs". But the memo to MVPs from Joseph Lindrom, Microsoft director of business development, claimed that it was "due to customer feedback, and …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 10:46
US spammer flouts British court restraining order

Very naughty

A US spammer is still bombarding Net users with thousands of junk e-mails a week despite being the subject of an interim court order against him. Sam Khuri, who runs the Net-based company Benchmark Print Supply, was taken to court by British ISP BiblioTech for sending spam to its users. In April, BiblioTech rejected an out-of- …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 10:55
Solaris on IA-64 is undead

Oh no it isn't

Fujitsu Siemens' decision to go with its own SPARC chip in its servers, rather than Sun's UltraSPARC III or Intel's Itanium (aka Merced) caused some of the UK's more rabid hacks to blether on about the death of Solaris on IA-64. However, Sun itself, with a little help from Chipzilla engineers, has quietly got on with it and …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 10:56
Solaris on IA64 'is dead'…oh no it isn't

Boots up on Itanium

Fujitsu Siemens' decision to go with its own SPARC chip in its servers, rather than Sun's UltraSPARC III or Intel's Itanium (aka Merced) caused some of the UK's more rabid hacks to blether on about the death of Solaris on IA64. However, Sun itself, with a little help from Chipzilla engineers, has quietly got on with it and …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 11:01
Register site news: links update

Time for change

Our links page is undergoing an long overdue makeover. Register links are not meant to be comprehensive -- There are hundreds of superb "amateur" or semi-pro IT sites out there that knock the socks off the supposedly professional competition. But we don't have the time, the space or the energy to list them all. We've decided to …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 11:24
IBM extends Aptiva retail ban to Europe

Only Spain and Germany escape

IBM has taken steps to pull its Aptiva range of PCs from retail in EMEA to concentrate on Web sales. From January, retailers in EMEA will only be able to get IBM consumer products through distribution. The move follows Big Blue's announcement last week that it would stop putting the Aptiva consumer PCs on store shelves in the US …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 11:43
ATI readies Rage 128-based mobile part

Fastest mobile chip in 2000, company claims

ATI has begun sampling its next-generation notebook-oriented graphics accelerator, based on its Rage 128 Pro chip. The Rage Mobility 128 is due to ship in volume early next year and will be, in the company's words, the fastest notebook accelerator chip available throughout 2000. A proud boast, to be sure. ATI backs it up with …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 11:53
Is an i810e mobo a good buy?

Looks like it's lagging a bit in the gaming stakes

The Taiwanese manufacturers we met at Computex earlier this year gave a great collective yawn to Intel's big 810 push. That yawn turned into a snarl when repeated problems with the initial iteration meant problems for those mobo makers who decided to give it a whirl. So now the i810e chipset is in place, is it being welcomed …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 11:57
Smart money still on Rambus Ink

Buy now, rake it in later

The share price of memory company Rambus hovered just below the $70 mark yesterday after precipitous falls in its value since June. But analysts, both financial and technological, believe that the Rambus platform is still likely to dominate the market and could do so within a year. Although attention has been focused on Rambus …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 12:41
Red Hat selects Ingram for Europe

And SuSe sets up in Britain

It's hotting up on the European commercial Linux scene. Linux vendor Red Hat has selected mass market IT wholesaler Ingram Micro to distribute its software in Europe. And German contender SuSe is opening its first UK office "in the Greater London area". From today, Ingram will distribute the full range of Red Hat's Linux …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 13:27
Freeserve icircles around women's portal

This sector's getting very crowded

Freeserve is underwriting the cost of a new women-focused portal designed to compete with the likes of Handbag.com and Charlottestreet.com. Although the people behind iCircle.com think it will draw readers from all over the Web, its first job will be to cash in on the 700,000 or so women who already use Freeserve to access the …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 13:51
Congress meddles with cybersquatters

Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works suit chucked out, meanwhile

There's a lot happening this week on the cybersquatting front. Different interests are lobbying in Washington over the House Bill intended to stop cybersquatting, which is being considered today. Trademark holders like the Motion Picture Association of America members are trying to push the Bill, while the Association for …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 13:54
MS, Intel to drive Dow Jones stock index

Great Stans displace Goodyear, Chevron, among others

Microsoft and Intel, both traded on Nasdaq, will be included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average from 1 November. This is the first time companies not traded on the New York Stock Exchange have been included in the Dow. The intention is to give the technology and communications sector more representation on the 103-year-old …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 16:57
Northamber snaps up CHS Electronics' customers

220 jobs lost as receivers fail to find buyer for business

Northamber is buying CHS Electronics Plc, resulting in more than 200 redundancies. Receivers BDO Stoy Hayward have agreed to accept Northamber's offer to buy the customer base of its former rival, according to Peter Rigby, who today lost his job as CHS marketing director. Today's 220 layoffs included such top-level staff as …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 17:21
US banking bill computerises you like never before

'Quit whining -- it's for your own good,' says Congress

A banking reform bill due for a vote in Congress this week will allow mergers among banks, insurance companies and securities firms, and so place Gargantuan reams of personal data at the fingertips of nosy auditors, marketing strategists and of course the dreaded "service consultants", as American sales people like to call …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 17:28
Microsoft's X-Box PlayStation 2 killer resurfaces

No new detail, but MS is trying to drum up games industry interest again

Microsoft's mysterious X-Box project, its would-be PlayStation 2 killer, has made another appearance, courtesy of the Dow Jones newswire. The Dow Jones article offers little more in the way of detail than we already know: X-Box is essentially a PC crammed into a console case and will be based on a high-end x86 CPU and Nvidia's …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 17:29
Huge shortages, technical problems hit Intel Coppermine debut

Mobile PIIIs delayed, heat sink problem with S370s

Internal Intel documents have revealed a massive shortage of Coppermine parts, just a day after Chipzilla beat its chest to the world's press, and bellowed: "Look how well I've done". The mobile Pentium III is in particularly short supply, with distributors and dealers being told that boxed units are now unlikely to arrive in …

Business 26 Oct 1999, 17:33