21st January 2002 Archive

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DRAM up, telecom chips down – Infineon

Big losses

Infineon blamed a deteriorating market for telecom chips for a pretty awful quarter. An upturn in DRAM prices and demand was not enough to compensate for the depressed state of what the company calls "wireline communications". But the performance of Infineon's memory products group shows that the company and DRAM market still …

Business 21 Jan 2002, 08:42
AMD chip bug snares Linux users

And how to fix it

An old bug in AMD’s Athlon family of chips may still be snaring Linux users. Affected users will need to be running a 2.4 kernel, an AGP and an Athlon or Duron CPU. At cause is a compatibility issue with Intel’s 4MB page size. (x86 processors have used 4k pages, ever since paging was introduced in the 80386). AMD issued a …

Channel 21 Jan 2002, 09:05
AMD tunes Duron to 1.3GHz

Performance on a budget

AMD is cranking up Duron speed a notch or so to 1.3GHz, the fastest version of its budget CPU line to date. The new chip costs $118 in OEM quantities of a thousand and as it's merely a speed revision (and not a platform change), it is already supported by scads of mobo makers. You can read the press release here in full. ®

Channel 21 Jan 2002, 09:35
Egg to buy Zebank?

Update Confirms talks are underway

On line bank Egg has confirmed that it is holding exclusive negotiations to buy French financial ebusiness Zebank. Earlier today a spokeswoman for Egg refused to comment on newspaper reports concerning a possible tie-up describing them as "rumour and speculation." However, in a statement issued at lunchtime the company …

Business 21 Jan 2002, 10:45
The 2.2GHz P4 on Linux and Win-XP

The jury's still out...

Whether Intel's new 0.13-micron Northwood P4 is a good buy for Linux or Windows users I won't be able to say until I compare it to a similar high-end system by AMD later this week; but for now I can definitely say that, paired with the 850 mobo and 512M RDRAM, it's fast on both operating systems, if not spectacularly reliable. …

Software 21 Jan 2002, 11:20
Logica builds SMS roaming service

Operator Friendly

Logica Plc last week sought to polish its credentials as the world's most operator-friendly SMS systems supplier, and announced a service that will take the pain out of organizing and operating SMS roaming deals. The London, UK company's Global Interconnect Network adds a new service dimension to its short message service …

Data Networking 21 Jan 2002, 11:24
EU e-commerce directive fails to make impact

UK misses deadline

The development of e-commerce within Europe could be hampered by the failure by several European Union member states to meet the deadline for implementing the European Union E-Commerce Directive, according to research house Gartner. The UK was among several member states that confirmed it failed to meet the January 17, …

e-Business 21 Jan 2002, 11:25
IBM to use Power4 across the pSeries line In 2002?

ASAP

How ready is IBM to put the Power4 processors across its pSeries and iSeries lines of midrange and enterprise servers? Apparently a lot more ready than many of us had been led to believe, Timothy Prickett Morgan writes. According to IBM chief financial officer John Joyce, who was speaking to Wall Street analysts during the …

e-Business 21 Jan 2002, 11:25
Avaya dismisses potential H.323 and SIP standards merger

IP to the SIP trip

Enterprise networking equipment vendor Avaya Inc has dismissed the idea of any potential unification between the two key standards in enterprise communications, H.323 and the emerging internet engineering task force (IETF) standard SIP. The session initiation protocol is now close to final ratification by IETF, whereas H. …

Data Networking 21 Jan 2002, 11:38
Getting sexual with Virgin textual

Flirting by SMS

Virgin Mobile is to launch a text message flirting service on Valentine's Day as part of a new focus on "adult services". The mobile phone operator has created a new team to probe the opportunities of adult-orientated content and services. Those behind the service claim it will let mobile users "flirt, tantalise and tease …

Data Networking 21 Jan 2002, 11:41
Intel takes on graphics world from April

845G launch

The 845G integrated chipset, Intel's new attempt to mop up the graphics business, is to launch in April, according to Digitimes. Citing industry sources, the Taiwanese chip news service reckons that Intel could take 10-30 per cent of the low-end graphics business simply through its dominance of the market for so-called 'system …

Channel 21 Jan 2002, 12:48
Vizzavi UK MD stars in Pop Idol

Takes a pop at 'Mr Nasty'

It should come as little surprise that the MD of Vizzavi UK was in the audience of TV "talent show", Pop Idol, on Saturday night – after all, Vizzavi does sponsor the programme. However, according to one vulture-eyed reader, Geraldine Wilson was picked from the audience to ask a question and used it to launch an "eloquent" …

Bootnotes 21 Jan 2002, 15:01
Samsung retains XBox DRAM gig

Roll out the press release

Samsung has retained the contract to supply memory for the Microsoft Xbox games 'puter and is so pleased that it has issued a press release to celebrate. Memory makers aren't usually in the habit of trumpeting the retention of contracts, but Xbox does have that special PR glow. And sales should sky-rocket with this year's debut …

Channel 21 Jan 2002, 15:15
Windows wipe utilities fail to shift stubborn data stains

Arcane flaw

Several Windows file-wiping utilities fail to completely wipe some files on Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP that use NTFS file systems, security researcher Kurt Seifried has discovered. But computer forensic experts reckon the privacy implications of the advisory are limited, as standard packages, such as Word or Excel, …

Security 21 Jan 2002, 17:14
Genie webmail broke

Six days and counting

Users of Genie's web based-email service have been unable to use the service since last Tuesday. They must wait until Thursday before the service is running again. The mobile Internet business of mmO2 (formerly BT Cellnet) declined to say how many people have been hit by the outage. A spokesman would say only that Genie has 5.8 …

Music and Media 21 Jan 2002, 17:20
Ala-KaZaA-m!

Oz firm displays Napster-style sleight of hand

KaZaA.com has resumed its Napster-style software downloads after the sale of assets by developer Fast Track to privately-held Australian firm, Sharman Networks Limited. Terms of the deal, which includes the license for the FastTrack P2P Stack, the KaZaA.com Web site, name, and logos, were not disclosed. Sharman has issued a …

Music and Media 21 Jan 2002, 22:31