20th November 2000 Archive

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P4 system specs

Details of the first systems

Intel says P4 systems will be 'widely available' in Q4 and lists the following vendors as having systems: The list HP, Dell, Compaq, Gateway, Dixons, IBM, Fujitsu Siemens, Acer, Dan, Toshiba, Saturn, NEC, Unika, Media Markt, Formoza, R&K. Expect to see other manufacturers as well. Some PC makers, notably Tiny in the UK, have …

Channel 20 Nov 2000, 07:32
P4: How fast is it?

The $64,000 question

How long is a piece of string? What everyone wants to know is what kind of speed benefit can be expected from Intel's new flagchip. We've had a vanilla P4 system on test for a while now and the answer varies depending on what you want the box to do. If you only run office applications, you don't need to pay the extra for a P4. …

Channel 20 Nov 2000, 07:32
Pentium 4 ships today

They're heeeeere!

We've been banging on about Willamette/P4 for longer than I care to remember. Now at last it's arrived and we can concentrate our speculative powers on Itanic, Tualatin, Foster and co. The flagchip launches at 1.4 and 1.5GHz at $644 and $819 respectively (1Ku quantities), moving rapidly to 1.7 and 2GHz in Q1. Intel currently …

Channel 20 Nov 2000, 07:32
Pentium 4 dissected

Gory details of inner workings revealed

What do the 42 million transistors on a Pentium 4 actually do? Willamette, aka Pentium 4 is the first new processor Intel has launched since the Pentium Pro. Sure, there's been Pentium II, Pentium III, Celeron and Xeon, but these all use the P6 microarchitecture introduced with the Ppro. The problem P6 has is that, due to the …

Channel 20 Nov 2000, 07:32
Pentium 4: Overclocking

How fast will it go?

Intel frowns on overclocking, but has always released engineering sample (ES) chips which are free from muliplier locking, allowing the brave to experiment with trying them at higher than rated speeds. Our 1.5GHz P4 is an ES part and the BIOS of the Intel Garibaldi mobo allows clock speed to be set at 100MHz increments between …

Channel 20 Nov 2000, 07:32
P4: How's it different?

Will it fit into my socket 370 mobo?

Please don't try fitting a P4 to your existing mobo. You'll need an entirely new one and for the time being you'll have to make it an Intel Garibaldi D850GB, 'cos it's the only one there is. And you'll need to upgrade your power supply too. Willamette/P4 needs an ATX 12V supply that has an additional 12 volt supply that plugs …

Channel 20 Nov 2000, 07:32
Pentium 4: The story so far

Mostly we were right...

It's not easy forecasting what Intel's going to do. Chipzilla's sheep-like bleating of not commenting on unannounced products makes it hard to get any sense out of the corporation when a juicy leak comes our way. Usually we can make a few calls, use our skill and judgement and come up with something pretty close to the truth. …

Channel 20 Nov 2000, 07:32
Your Cow Is In The Ditch: Reg readers explain

Letters That's 'oma lehma ojassa' to you

When we spoke to the world's most celebrated Finn, Linus Torvalds last week we were curious about the Finnish expression "Your cow is in the ditch", and appealed for help. As ever, erudite Register readers have come to the rescue. The expression means roughly: "he has selfish reasons for seeing this one succeed", points out …

Letters 20 Nov 2000, 10:48
Vint Cerf takes ICANN hot seat

Dotty Queen Esther hands over the poisoned chalice

Genial Internet veteran Vint Cerf will take over from Esther Dyson as ICANN chair at the end of the month for a one year, unpaid stint in the hot seat. As an engineer Cerf worked on early ARPANET protocols and co-authored what became TCP/IP in the early to mid 1970s, and served the first chair of the Internet Society. He's also …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 10:50
Apple retail chain to open doors in April

Gateway-style Mac stores coming

Apple's much-rumoured High Street retail operation is inching towards a launch, with three stores set to open their doors in California next April. The first store can be found at the corner of University and Kipling in Palo Alto, the San Jose Mercury News revealed on Friday. The second will be located in Glendale, though the …

Mac Channel 20 Nov 2000, 11:13
We are Borg, er, Rambus

Resistance is futile

How to win friends and influence people is patently (sic) a book one is unlikely to find on the shelves of Rambus Inc. Not content with threatening every memory maker on the planet with the wrath of its monstro legal department, the outfit is now warning chipset makers that they're next. Once Rambus has assimilated the last …

Channel 20 Nov 2000, 11:24
Record labels plan to sue MP3.com – again

Sob! Wail! But Universal got more than us...

Are the world's leading recording companies a bunch of spoiled, ungrateful, money-grabbing so-and-sos or what? Having happily reached a settlement with MP3.com over its unlawful use of music they own, they are now considering re-suing the online venture because they now know they would have done better had they stuck to their …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 11:46
P4: the verdicts

Intel demands a recount

In that peculiar variant of masochism, known only to CPU manufacturers, Intel has submitted its P4 chip for review to a motley collection of hardware headcases. The reviews are already rolling in, and they're proving to be a mixed bag. We'll do a manual recount at the end of the week, and see if the vote's changed. The …

Channel 20 Nov 2000, 12:21
Ready2Shop till your VC drops

Harrods gambles on future

Fourteen staff at Ready2Shop.com received redundancy pay-outs on Friday in a bid to cut costs at the fashion site. The outfit is now being run by a skeleton staff of just five people. The founders of the multimedia content company, Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine (above), said they would continue with their offline …

Business 20 Nov 2000, 13:15
Compaq sued for $60m over video patent

Apple, HP and Dell taken to task too

Compaq has been slapped with a patent infringement lawsuit demanding at least $60 million in damages. The patents cover the compression of video data, and the plaintiff is a consortium of seven companies, including consumer electronics operations JVC and Matsushita. The seven filed the suit in the US District Court of …

Business 20 Nov 2000, 14:11
How to be a whistleblower and keep your job

The Reg guide to protecting our sources

Ever wonder why The Reg continually comes up with scoops and insider information when our rivals seem content with rewriting press releases? Quite simple really. Trusted sources and, more and more frequently, from readers. However, while we have always been discreet and careful to keep our sources anonymous, recent changes in …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 14:15
Net ‘drug smugglers’ face death penalty

Execution is everything

Five Brits have been arrested in the United Arab Emirates under suspicion of involvement in an Internet drug smuggling ring. UAE, which observes Islamic Sharia law, takes drug-related crimes very seriously. If found guilty the group could face execution - the maximum penalty for drug dealing. Two UK citizens are currently …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 14:15
M$ pays Madonna £0m for online gig

You scratch my back, I'll Webcast yours

Microsoft is to pay pop star Madonna the grand sum of nothing to broadcast her upcoming UK gig over the Internet. You may have heard figures of £30 million, but as an M$ spokeswoman kindly pointed out, this figure is "equivalent media value". Which means that Microsoft will spend about £28 million advertising the gig and the …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 14:15
Pentium 4 launch special

Pentium 4? What's that then?

It's been a long time coming, but today's the day. Intel's Pentium 4, aka Willamette, is here. We take a look at various aspects of the new flagchip. As good a place to start as anywhere would be here - Pentium 4 ships today Can't wait for one any longer? Order a system today - P4: first system details Oh no, it's another …

Register Full Coverage 20 Nov 2000, 15:17
Gordon Brown raises VAT on ADSL by 3.71%

Well, IG Click thought he had for a while

Hot on the heels of tax-based political arguments, we thought that Chancellor Gordon Brown had blown it for a minute when we saw IG Click's ADSL prices. For the monthly rental on a 512Kbps line, IG Click was charging £99 excluding VAT but £120 including VAT. Which meant either it had cocked up its pricing or our Gordon has …

Bootnotes 20 Nov 2000, 15:53
xDSL sales to increase

More shock news from IDC

Shipments of customer-located xDSL equipment is set to rocket by more than 1100 percent over the next four years, from one million in 2000 to 12.4 million in 2004, according to the latest research from IDC. Germany is set to remain the largest xDSL market in Europe followed by Britain and France. Growth will be generated by …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 15:54
Toshiba fingers biometric laptop

Whorlygig

Toshiba is to give customers the option to replace the traditional name-and-password style logon with an optical fingerprint reader. The company is working on a line of notebooks which will ship with a biometric PC card and BioLogon software supplied by Identix, a biometric authentication specialist. Identix CEO Robert McCashin …

Business 20 Nov 2000, 16:15
EMI picks partners for Euro digital music trial

Takes a cautious approach to Net music market

British 'big five' music company EMI is to bring its digital music distribution trial to Europe, signing two further partners to offer its content. EMI's latest signing emerged over the weekend. DX3 (which is short for Digital Distribution Domain, apparently) and On Demand Distribution will separately take EMI's digital content …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 16:20
SouthAfrica.com sues South Africa the country

Cry, the beloved dotcom

An American company is suing the nation of South Africa in a bid to hang onto its prized domain name southafrica.com. Seattle-based Virtual Countries, which owns a battalion of country-name-based sites, has filed a suit in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York against both the Republic of South Africa and …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 16:41
Micron samples 256MB DDR modules

And on Rambus' special day, too

Micron is touting 256MB DDR SDRAM modules, but in industry samples only. Not that the timing has anything to do with what has been, with today's Intel Pentium 4 launch, a damn fine day for Rambus Ink. Micron has announced availability of PC133 (said to be comparable in price with PC100 SDRAMs) and 2.5V 266MHz DDR versions. …

Business 20 Nov 2000, 17:23
How healthy is your Hard Drive?

Find out - for a price

A new diagnostic tool for ATA hard drives hits the market this week Made by Quantum, this handheld device checks the health of all your systems. The QTest-ATA determines whether or not an ATA hard drive is the cause of a system failure, so cutting down on unnecessary tests and repairs, and saving money, Quantum says. The Qtest …

Business 20 Nov 2000, 17:28
ICANN rulings lands Big Biz with $75k yearly fees

Registrars rub hands in glee

ICANN's decision to add more TLDs means at least one group of dotcoms will be able to put bread on the table this holiday season - domain name registrars. Companies such as Network Solutions and Register.com stand to make big bucks, Gartner Group claims. Especially with the addition of Japanese, Chinese and Korean characters, …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 17:47
Echelon discoverer gives masterclass in paranoia

You won't like him much, but he's the real deal

At a recent conference for UK journalists explaining the full ins and outs of the RIP Act and what that means for our profession, leading investigative journalist Duncan Campbell gave a talk about the nastier side of governments. You may know Duncan Campbell as one of the men behind the publicising of GCHQ, Echelon and other …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 18:05
MS responds to Europe's move to open up Windows

But we're still in the slow phase of this antitrust 'trial'

Microsoft filed its response to the European Commission's "statement of objections" on Friday, but both sides are keeping quiet about the case, and it could be months before the next move is made. The Commission can move fast if it wants to, and Microsoft can request an aural hearing to support its defence, although it has yet …

Software 20 Nov 2000, 19:44
Yahoo! loses Nazi trinkets case

Vive La France!

A French court has ordered Yahoo! to stop French Web surfers buying Nazi memorabilia on its online auctions. The US Internet giant was told today it must prevent French people from visiting its English-language Web pages where items such as Nazi books, medals, weapons and uniforms are up for sale. The judge gave Yahoo! three …

Music and Media 20 Nov 2000, 21:54