4th September 2001 Archive

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HP to buy Compaq for Battle of the Bulge

That'll be $25bn to you, madam

So this was Compaq CEO Michael Capellas' grand plan to transform the company within 180 days: sell it to competitor Hewlett-Packard for $25 billion in shares. The two companies last night announced a mega-merger in which HP shareholders will have 64 per cent of the combo and Compaq shareholders will take 36 per cent. HP CEO …

Business 4 Sep 2001, 08:10
Telewest halves cost of broadband installation

Must be catching

Telewest has halved the cost of installation for its broadband blueyonder service to just £25 as part of a one-month special offer. The promotion is understood to be effective immediately. The cut follows hard on the heels of a similar announcement yesterday by BT Wholesale in which it cut the cost of ADSL installation from £ …

Broadband 4 Sep 2001, 09:13
Middle East connection in £20m Sun server thefts?

Embargo-busting theory

Stories that Sun Microsystems kit is being stolen to order by gangs supplying Middle Eastern dictators have resurfaced in the UK press. Yesterday's Sunday Times carried a front page story reporting that £20m of equipment stolen during break-ins to British firms is being earmarked for the supply of countries covered by hi-tech …

Channel 4 Sep 2001, 09:31
HP makes Don Capellas an offer he can't refuse

Memowatch Value, Vision, IT PowerHouse, blah, blah

As Hewlett-Packard and Compaq announced plans to stage the biggest ever IT merger this morning, Big Q boss Michael Capellas wasted no time to blast out a trademark 2000-word memo to staff. Workers, who must be wondering if they'll still have a job in a future merged firm, were told that 15,000 of 145,000 workers will lose their …

Business 4 Sep 2001, 09:39
Princess Fiorina kisses the Ugly Frog

Analysis Mirror, Mirror on the wall - who's the vainest of us all?

You see - fairy tales do come true. For Prince Don Capellas, having butchered most of the assets he inherited from the acquisitions of DEC and Tandem, his wish of Compaq becoming a services company finally came true. Meanwhile, HP's Princess Fiorina has kissed the ugly frog - in the hope that it will turn out to be an ersatz …

Business 4 Sep 2001, 09:44
Marconi saga ends as Hurn and Simpson quit

Another 2000 jobs down the pan too

Two months to the day that Marconi suspended its shares and announced a profit warning that saw shares in the British behemoth plummet, the final bloodletting has come. Chairman Sir Roger Hurn and chief exec Lord Simpson have both quit, but not before announcing a further 2000 job cuts on top of the 10,000 already announced. …

Business 4 Sep 2001, 10:37
Kingston caps ADSL usage for new service

Net users are revolting

Kingston Telecommunications, the East Yorkshire telecoms company, has angered Net users by imposing a daily bandwidth cap for its newly launched ADSL service. Subscribers to Karoo RapidTime, Kingston's residential high-speed Internet service, will be limited to a daily download quota of 700MB. Net users in Kingston are …

Media 4 Sep 2001, 10:40
Email worm is one-day wonder

Germany weakest link in minor virus outbreak

A worm, which threatened massive network disruption, has turned into a one-day wonder. Apost, which travels as an attachment to emails and infects Windows machines, was discovered yesterday by antivirus firms. But after an initial flare up of infections in Germany, the outbreak seems to have been contained. Whether this is …

Security 4 Sep 2001, 11:08
Motorola mixes silicon, gallium arsenide for super-chips

Potential licensees sitting in smoke-filled rooms already

Motorola scientists have figured out how to get bring silicon, the basis of commodity semiconductor chips, and gallium arsenide, used to make expensive, high-performance parts, to co-exist on the same device. The move paves the way for cheap chips that combine electronic and optical connections, the company reckons. Actually, …

Channel 4 Sep 2001, 11:11
AOL declares war on Internet Explorer

Even the thought of using it invalidates your right to tech support

Here's a fascinating story that demonstrates just how customer-friendly AOL-Time Warner is. One of its UK subscribers - a woman who while not technically minded does know a little bit about the Internet - rang up the AOL helpline to ask a technical query. In the course of the call she happened to mention that she used the …

Media 4 Sep 2001, 11:15
SirCam tops Virus charts

This Worm is not for Turning

SirCam has retained the dubious distinction of being the most infectious computer virus for the last month. The privacy-threatening, bandwidth-stealing worm headed the monthly chart of virus reports compiled by antivirus vendor Sophos and accounted for 48.9 per cent of calls to its support centre in August. It was followed by …

Security 4 Sep 2001, 11:49
SanDisk redefines ‘megabyte’ in capacity con

Updated Why its 256MB CompactFlash cards store less than everyone else's

When is a 256MB CompactFlash card not a 256MB CompactFlash card? When it comes from storage specialist SanDisk, it seems. According to the company's Web site, SanDisk doesn't accept the definition of megabyte that world+dog does, and has imposed its own view. But, like most of the World's pain, it's all Microsoft's fault. In …

Channel 4 Sep 2001, 11:50
So what the hell does mmO2 actually stand for?

Updated [With suggestions] You'll never guess. Well actually, guessing is the point

Yesterday BT announced a million-pound rebranding of its wireless arm. No longer would it be plain old BT Wireless - no, it would be young, sexy mmO2. Oh yes. Aside from the fact that - fuelled by the mischievous media - some London shopping centre called O2 that is thinking about going into Europe is saying it will talk to its …

Data Networking 4 Sep 2001, 11:56
‘Hero’ loses Dixons domain battle

WIPO rules against protest site

A self-proclaimed hero has lost his domain name battle with Dixons over a protest Web site. WIPO decided that dixons-online.net and dixons-online.org, owned by student Abu Abdullaah, were 'confusingly similar' to Dixons' trademark, and were registered in bad faith. Last month it ruled that both URLs should be transferred to …

Media 4 Sep 2001, 12:00
BT to cut cost of Home Highway

End of the road for high prices?

BT is to cut the cost of its Home Highway ISDN service to help stimulate demand for high (ish) speed Net access. The price cut is in recognition that the take-up of broadband services has been stifled by the high price of ADSL and the limited availability of the service, according to insiders familiar with the situation. By …

Broadband 4 Sep 2001, 12:05
Epson PhotoPC 3100Z

Review Digital camera

Epson sets a high standard in image quality and the capabilities of the PhotoPC 3100Z won't disappoint. Professionals may find the lack of manual configuration limiting, but it's a good choice for novices looking to upgrade. The Epson is an easy-to-use, mid-range camera with great picture quality. However, there have been …

Personal 4 Sep 2001, 14:47
ECTS 2001 redux

All the best bits, without a trip to Docklands

A quick look at the more interesting aspects of this season's European Computer Trade Show. Things kicked off with a range of talks, from the future of graphics technology to an exploration of the Xbox's audio systems. The latter also looked at the highly optimised implementations of DirectSound and DirectMusic supported by …

Channel 4 Sep 2001, 15:28
Scotland inches towards broadband heaven

It's enough to make ya weep

The Scottish Executive has published a report into how it intends to tackle the problem of encouraging the roll-out of broadband services in rural areas. Connecting Scotland: our broadband future takes its lead from the report UK online: the broadband future published earlier this year by the British Government. In both cases …

Broadband 4 Sep 2001, 15:37
British schools in Net frenzy

96% of primary schools online

The government claimed today that virtually all British schools were now hooked up to the Net. Just four per cent of primary schools are still waiting to get online, compared to 83 per cent in 1997. Meanwhile, 'almost all' secondary schools have Internet access, according to the report. The ratio of computers to pupils has …

Media 4 Sep 2001, 15:49
HP/Compaq should corner 26.4% of Euro PC market

15 points ahead of Dell

Hewlett-Packard and Compaq will kick Dell off the top slot for PC and notebook sales in the UK. Assuming of course the synergy leveraged in the take over deal doesn't mean they end up selling less PCs combined than they did individually. Which is probably what will happen. According to Gartner's data for Q2 2001, Dell had 19 …

Business 4 Sep 2001, 16:06
HP/Compaq: Formula 1 sponsorship fall-out

Brrrm-Brrrrm, Nnyyeeeaaaaarrrrrr

IT hacks looking for a free trip to next year's British Grand Prix are unlikely to be happy with today's announcement that Compaq and Hewlett-Packard are to merge. If the deal goes ahead, two of Formula 1's biggest sponsors from the IT sector will be reduced to a single sponsor, cutting in half the opportunities junket-hungry …

Bootnotes 4 Sep 2001, 16:07
Chip sales fell 37% in July – SIA

Weren't they supposed to have been improving by now?

If the world's semiconductor companies are expecting the depressed chip market to cheer up this quarter, they had better start selling some product. Fast. According to the Semiconductor Industry Association, chip sales in July were down a massive 37 per cent year-on-year. Some $10.86 billion worth of semiconductors were sold …

Channel 4 Sep 2001, 16:34
Users petition telco over ADSL cap

Kingston's silence speaks volumes

Net users in East Yorkshire believe that consumer pressure will help force Kingston Communications to reconsider its decision to cap its new ADSL service. An online petition has been set up for users to lobby the telco and is due to be handed in to Kingston on Friday 14 September. Not only does the petition question the …

Broadband 4 Sep 2001, 16:57
ECTS dies on its arse

Buzz free zone

The European Computer Trade Show (ECTS) in Docklands was a very low key affair with hardly any of the monster sized stands usually associated with the major European event. There was so little buzz about the show that the best attendees could say was that it represented a return to the early days when the event was all about ' …

Games Industry 4 Sep 2001, 17:00
DivX revolution closer than you think

Reader feedback

On Friday, we wrote a piece on the latest method for video compression, DivX, which reduces entire films at full-screen and near-DVD quality to 600-800Mb. Film studios have been making big noises about its capacity for piracy as have those that are using the latest technology to rip DVDs and make them available to anyone over …

Media 4 Sep 2001, 17:04
MS eBook cracker keeps findings secret

Security research frustrated by DMCA

An anonymous developer has created a program which cracks the security of Microsoft's eBook reader software. The development puts a fresh spin on the case against Russian programmer Dmitry Sklyarov. According to the MIT Technology Review, a "home brewed decryption program" has been developed which defeats the digital rights …

Security 4 Sep 2001, 17:10
Government Gateway – no smoke without fire?

Site down for 2nd day

The Government Gateway experienced a second day of inaction today. The Web site, plugged as the cornerstone of e-government in the UK, went down yesterday morning. At first a representative blamed the problem on maintenance, but later stated it was actually due to the power supply at the data centre "overheating". Today it …

e-Business 4 Sep 2001, 17:13
Princess Fiorina addresses subjects

Memowatch She did it HP Way

Not to be outdone by Don Capellas, Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina has sent out a message to Compaq employees after today's announcement of plans to merge the IT giants. The memo, which at 630 words is a third the size of the Capellas missive, shows that Carly is already on first name terms with potential staffers …

Business 4 Sep 2001, 17:41