Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery

Updated Much less mystery now surrounds a Web site which Intel appears to still own and which is selling PC kit over the Internet. The pistol now appears to be billowing forth streams of smoke. The site, called PC Com, appears to belong to a Singapore company, but information at WHOIS shows that it is an Intel-owned domain name. The domain name was first registered by Intel in 1996. Further evidence that this is, indeed an Intel site, can be obtained by clicking on the FTP root at PC COM, which goes straight to the FTP Intel site and which includes a read me file containing this information (and more): "Welcome to ftp.intel.com! For Intel product questions/comments/requests, please send mail to support@intel.com For issues or problems with this FTP Server, please send mail to ftp-admin@intel.com" &c. (The Web moves oh so fast. Although this was the case all day Friday and Saturday, we have just noticed that clicking on this FTP link above from our machine brings up a little box asking for password and user name. 21.07 UK time, Sunday. Our readers in the US report they are still able to access it... ) And if you click on this Intel page, go down to the "Buying PCs in Asia Pacific" section, then go to Click Here, it appears to take you straight to...yes, you guessed it...PC COM. Several readers have pointed out that the 'database last updated' date refers to the time that the Whois database at whois.networksolutions.com was last updated with changes to any domain. As this is regularly updated, it therefore has no significance whatever. But further investigation, also supplied by a helpful Internet-savvy reader, shows that the mail for sales@pc.com seems to be redirected to sales@intel.com. The PC Com site acts as a merchant site for a number of third party companies, and sells PCs, some Intel networking equipment and notebooks. The only microprocessors the site sells with the PCs are Intel CPUs, but none above 600MHz. The WHOIS reference shows the following: "Record last updated on 02-Dec-1996. Record created on 02-Dec-1996. Database last updated on 6-Jan-2000 13:12:51 EST. Domain servers in listed order: MINOS.INTEL.COM 134.134.214.6 AURORA.INTEL.COM 143.183.152.2". The PC Com domain is registered to Intel's HQ in Santa Clara. Intel tell us it is investigating whether the domain name still belongs to the corporation, whether it has leased the site to some other firm, or perhaps whether there is some other reason. The company has still failed to respond to questions about the nature of this site at the time of this, the second update on the original story. As PC COM now does appear to be an Intel site, many of Chipzilla's customers -- that is to say PC companies, distributors and resellers -- will be very interested to know why they are now having to compete with their supplier. An answer to the mystery, please, someone at Santa Clara... ®

Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery