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| Tech News for Thursday July 13th 2000.Windows 2000
Service Pack 1 - Soon. Microsoft reported yesterday "the expected summer release of Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 (SP1) remains on target." The first service pack will address issues reported by a very select group of testers, which include some MSDN subscribers, hardware vendors, and premier support customers. Overall reliability of the operating system will be improved, along with better methods for installing service packs. For more information visit Microsoft. Japanese firms team on Linux OS
for mobile devices. It's not surprising to see Linux being deployed on portable devices because of the operating systems low resource requirements: Toshiba and 22 other Japanese consumer electronics and software firms said today they have agreed to cooperate in developing Linux-based operating systems for digital electronics products.The move, which aims to create industry-standard operating systems for use in items such as mobile phones and car navigation systems, is in line with a global industry trend for competitors to join forces to share hefty development costs. The united effort by major consumer electronics makers may also help expand the use of Linux, a freely distributed computer operating system that runs on a number of hardware systems and performs functions broadly similar to the Windows system of U.S. software giant Microsoft. Initial members of the consortium include Sony, NEC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and TurboLinux Japan, a subsidiary of U.S.-based TurboLinux. Tokyo's Waseda University and Toyohashi University of Technology in southern Japan will also participate. WorldCom, Sprint Cancel Merger. NEW YORK -- WorldCom and Sprint canceled their $120 billion merger plan Thursday in the wake of regulatory complaints, making the long distance phone companies attractive takeover targets. The deal's demise, which was widely expected, came two weeks after the Justice Department sued to block the merger. The companies said the changes in their merger pact demanded by the Justice Department "would have eliminated the customer benefits and financial synergies that supported the proposed merger." 16x Write, 1.4GB CDR storage. With 1.3 gigabytes of storage, consumers will be able to store twice the number of compressed audio files or family photographs and can back up more conventional data on a single CD, an affordable medium that is reusable many times over. In the drive market, where high speeds are imperative, Cirrus Logic is the proven speed leader. `The explosion of Internet entertainment is just one example of the increasing demand for storage capacity. Notably, 1.3 gigabytes translates into 60 minutes of real-time video, or 144 minutes of real-time audio, which translates into more than 500 MP3, or 1,000 WMA Internet audio files on a single, removable CD. The CR3490, ATAPI CD-RW encoder/decoder is packaged in a 128-pin LQFP package and is priced at $8.00 each in quantities of 25,000. The device will be available in September. The 1ghz
Laptop Race. The Register takes a look at the two runners up for first place on the 1ghz race for laptops. AMD AMD is launching its 1GHz
Athlon in Q1 next year. But before it gets round to engaging in that war, its
reduced voltage Duron notebook parts will start sampling in Q3, using the S2K
bus interface and a low profile, 462-pin, lidless PGA package,
incorporating 192KB of on die cache. Its target is to deliver power of between
18-22W. Intel The most recent notebook
roadmaps from Intel shows that the firm is humming-and-hawing on whether to
include its SpeedStep battery saving technology on all future mobile chips,
including the mobile Celeron. And, at the same time, the firm is set to intro
the new Tualatin .13 micron core in the second quarter
of next year for notebook processors, allowing speeds of 1GHz+
for mobile warriors toting StinkPads and the like. Tech News for Wednesday July 12th 2000.Microsoft
Unveils 64-Bit Windows 2000 Preview. Anticipating the third-quarter release of Intel's Itanium chip, Microsoft (stock: MSFT) unveiled Wednesday a preview version of its 64-bit Windows 2000. The OS will be available to more than 5,000 developers who have Intel's Itanium chips in-house, an Intel (stock: INTC) spokesman said. Intel plans to have the 64-bit chips in production in the third quarter, with systems scheduled for release in the second half of the year. Microsoft plans to ship the final version of 64-bit Windows 2000 in the second half. Internet
Explorer 5.5 final released. Good luck trying to download the update. The servers are already crawling. http://download.microsoft.com/download/ie55/Install/5.5/WIN98/EN-US/ie5setup.exe
- English Wireless
DSL Consortium formed by leading companies. The six founding members of the consortium are ADC Telecommunications Inc., Conexant Systems Inc., Gigabit Wireless, Intel Corp., Nortel Networks, and Vyyo Inc. The consortium is intended to develop a standard to enable multivendor solutions for the broadband wireless market. The standard will incorporate multicarrier technology that will be enhanced by smart antenna and smart system technologies to increase system capacity and coverage. The consortium members will implement an air interface based on the Data-Over-Cable Service Interface Specification (DOCSIS) with enhancements for the media access control (MAC) and physical layers to support wireless operation. The air interface is expected to serve as an initial reference point for the consortium's definition of an open standard. The physical layer is based on the time division multiple access/frequency diversity duplex (TDMA/FDD) technology intended to bring services to the public later this year. Sharp,
Pioneer to partner on recordable DVD players. "We are aiming at integrating our technologies and efficiently developing digital products whose growth potential is substantial," said Magohiro Aramoto, vice president of Sharp. Sharp, one of Japan's leading consumer electronics makers, will integrate its semiconductor laser and video signal processing technologies with the DVD recording and playback technology of Pioneer, a top audio equipment maker. They hope to launch rewritable DVD players, or DVD-RW, with a retail price of $934 (100,000 yen)--less than a half that of Pioneer's current products--by March 2002, aiming to boost their market share amid competition with other top Japanese electronics makers Matsushita Electric Industrial and Sony. Privacy
groups protest FBI email scanner. Yesterday it was announced that the FBI was scanning public email looking for "tell-tale" signs of possible threats to national security. Not surprisingly there is much uproar over this violation of privacy. Civil liberties and privacy groups railed against a new system designed to allow law enforcement agents to intercept and analyze huge amounts of email in connection with an investigation.The system, called "Carnivore," was first hinted at on April 6 in testimony to a House subcommittee. Now the FBI has it in use. When Carnivore is placed at an Internet service provider, it scans all incoming and outgoing emails for messages associated with the target of a criminal probe. In a letter addressed to two members of the House subcommittee that deals with Fourth Amendment search-and-seizure issues, the American Civil Liberties Union argued that the system breaches the Internet provider's rights and the rights of all its customers by reading both sender and recipient addresses, as well as subject lines of emails, to decide whether to make a copy of the entire message. V.92
Modems soon to be released. Cisco Systems and Conexant each contributed key technologies to the new V.92 dial-up modem specification, which significantly reduces the time it takes to establish a dial-up connection, improves upload rates, and adds the ability to receive and initiate phone calls during a dial-up modem session. Additionally, Conexant will be hosting a Plugfest testing event in September to promote interoperability between V.92 products from a wide variety of manufacturers. Windows
Media Player 7 Final - July 18th. Microsoft has sent word that
the final version of Windows Media Player 7 will be released next Tuesday the
18th July. We'll post an in-depth review of the player this coming weekend and
setup an interview with the team behind it. Tech News for Tuesday July 11th 2000.Internet
Explorer 5.5 Newsgroups. For those of you who like to keep up to date with new Microsoft newsgroups, in preparation for the impending release of Internet Explorer 5.5 gold tonight/tomorrow Microsoft has posted up a whole bunch of new 5.5 newsgroups on their msnews.microsoft.com server. LiveWare!
3 For Windows 2000 Released. Creative have finally got off their asses and released LiveWare 3 for Windows 2000. The whole of the program isn't up yet, but the drivers are. Now all we need are drivers that will enable Hibernating on Windows Me. You can download them here. Intel
Pentium 4 Pricing & Information. Speaking of anti-trust tactics - take a look at this regarding the Pentium 4: Intel, as expected, has now placed the Almador family of microprocessors on its roadmap, and has started talking about the Pentium III running at .13µ. And the company, the same sources reveal, will not licence the Pentium 4 buses to other companies, implying that the chipsets will stay firmly in Chipzilla mitts. The system price with Rambus RIMMs and an Intel motherboard based on the Tehama chipset is expected to be high. We shall have more details later this week. And regarding the Pentium 4 and prices: Intel has ordered its plant in Israel, Fab
18, to drop everything and produce 5,000 Pentium 4 wafers - each containing
around 200 little P4s - within six week will be rated at 1.7GHz. Tech News for Monday July 10th 2000.Intel
Tests Show PC133 SDRAMs Beating Rambus. This one cracked me up: Intel's own internal tests show PC133mhz SDRAM beating out their much hyped RAMBUS. This comes as no surprise since RAMBUS showed only 5-10% performance gain over PC100mhz. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that 133mhz RAM would beat RAMBUS. Let me also add that RAMBUS will cost you over $700.00 for 128mb compared to around $160 for 133mhz SDRAM - You do the math. In nine of 11 standard industry benchmarks, the 815E/PC133 SDRAM implementation beat out the 820/Rambus configuration for desktop PCs. The two chip sets and different memory formats are about equal in three of those tests, according to results on Intel's website. IE
5.01 Service Pack 1 Causing Trouble. Sometimes it seems wise not to download the latest and greatest of every package that is available but it's fun using the most recent software. According to an article written by Paul Thurrot this weekend, installing Windows IE 5.01 SP1 may not be worth it at all. It seems that the installation has caused problems with Microsoft's Office 2000, and Office 2000 SR1a. The update to Internet Explorer apparently breaks the help available in these programs, but can be fixed with the proper registry editing steps. Thurrott reports, "it is with some reluctance that I must advise users against downloading and install IE 5.01 SP1, unless you're comfortable with a little Registry editing." For more information about how to fix the problem visit WinInformant. Internet
Hosts 2.1 Billion Unique Pages. 2.1 billion unique Web pages are publicly available on the Internet, 85 percent of which originated in the U.S., according to an Internet company on Monday. The study -- "Sizing the Internet" -- conducted by Cyveillance, Washington, D.C., also found the Internet is growing at more than 7 million pages each day. At that rate, the number of pages will be doubled by early 2001. Cyveillance projects that the Internet's highest rate of growth is still to come. 3dfx
Rampage details. Once again rumors are floating around the net on 3dfx's next generation video card. The only two cents I wish to add is that 3dfx has been negating nVidia on the T&L technology and now they will be supporting it on the new chip! If the rumor is true then you can expect impressive performance when using the SLI (scan-line interleave) configuration which means you add two of these cards that run in conjunction on the same PC. The question I have - is how they are going to achieve that with only one AGP bus on the system and two PCI cards will suffer from major "bottlenecking". Maybe it is simply one card with two processors. RampageAGP4x 32-512 MB memory support (200MHz) 32 bit rendering 4 pixels/clock Rampage SLI ATA/100
Investigation. If you are just as curious about the new ATA/100 hard drive spec then the article over at iXBTLabs will answer most of your questions. Since Intel has recently launched its new i815E and i820E chipsets supporting ATA/100, the world turned to this interface. A lot of companies launch controller cards supporting ATA/100 protocol, such as HighPoint and Promise, for instance. Besides, almost all harddisk manufacturers are already offering their models with the new interface support as well. So, the interest in this new interface standard is constantly growing and that's why we decided to take a look at ATA/100 major peculiarities and features. Tech News for Friday July 7th 2000.SRAM
at over 2 GHz speeds. YORKTOWN HEIGHTS, N.Y -- Researchers at IBM Corp. today announced the world's fastest embedded SRAM with on-chip speeds greater than 2 gigahertz--twice as fast as anything available on the market today, according to the company. IBM said the embedded SRAM design will help boost performance of a new chip - - code-named "Blue Flame" - - which is being readied for the company's next generation of mainframe computers. These systems are expected to be released early next year. The Blue Flame chip is now running in the lab at clock speeds of 1 GHz, according to IBM. The embedded SRAM was produced with copper interconnects and a 0.18-micron CMOS process technology. The embedded memory will provide 34-kilobits of level-one cache at 2-GHz speeds on the Blue Flame chip. The 1.5-volt embedded SRAM has a read access time of less than 430 picoseconds, or about one billionth of a second, said IBM researchers. Internet
Explorer 5.5 to be released July 12th. ActiveWin Reports that Microsoft will be post Internet Explorer 5.5 for download to the public on July 12th. Tech News for Thursday July 6th 2000.Microsoft's
Second-Generation Optical Mice. Groan - I just purchased my Microsoft mouse and then they release a new version. That will teach me to purchase the 1st generation of any computer product - a lesson I find hard to learn. Earlier this
year, Microsoft Corp. introduced its new family of optical mice, which delivered
unprecedented speed and precision, while eliminating the need for a mouse pad
and cleaning procedures. Now, not even a year later, Microsoft will unveil its
second wave of IntelliEye compatible mice, which are proven to be 33 percent
faster than their predecessors. Microsoft
Internet Explorer 5.01 SP-1 released. I think it's really odd to be releasing 5.01 SP-1 when version 5.5 is just around the corner. Internet Explorer 5.5 has gone gold and we are just waiting for Microsoft to officially release it to the public. Download Internet Explorer 5.01 SP-1 here. Need
A Video Screen? Print One Out. Usually the bizarre and the wondrous is left for Friday's news but I could not pass this one up for today's news bite. Cheap plastic wrapping could soon be something to watch a movie on rather than be discarded. Cambridge Display Technology, whose futuristic research lab was opened on Monday by British Science Minister Lord Sainsbury, hopes its new plastic screens will consign today's LCDs to the rubbish heap. Prospects for its designs won a boost a week ago when it announced it and Japanese partner Seiko Epson, an affiliate of watchmaker Seiko, have managed to make the screens just by printing them on an ink-jet printer. The screens use light-emitting polymers (LEPs), a type of plastic that can be charged to change color speck by speck, and are bright and sturdy. They need little power and no backlight, can be read at almost any angle, and are cheap to make. PCStats
technology articles. PCStats has sent me an email with links to two interesting articles they have posted online. Got a Good Multi-Layer
Memory? Sony
To Double CD-ROM Capacity. With the price of recordable CD's falling under $0.25 a disc it's rather difficult to imagine that things could be better. Sony will attempt to double the density of the conventional CD format, potentially increasing the capacity of CD-ROM discs to 1.3 Gbytes by 2001. On Wednesday, Sony (stock: SNE) said it will begin licensing the so-called "double-density" CD technology in September alongside Royal Philips Electronics, which also owns several CD patents. Sony executives said the enhancements to the media will double the storage capacities of CD-ROM, CD-RW, and CD-R drives, and that the technology should require little or no changes to the hardware. Texas
company plans supercharged cable modems. Advent Networks, a company co-founded by former Time Warner cable technologist David Pangrac, says it can supercharge many existing cable networks to handle Internet speeds 20 to 50 times faster than what subscribers typically get from cable modems. That would leave most consumer high-speed, or "broadband," Net access options in the digital dust--if Advent can deliver. The company hasn't yet set up its "Ultraband" technology inside a full-scale network, leaving some questions about the technology's viability. But many analysts say they are cautiously optimistic that the company can follow through on its promises. "There may be hiccups along the way," said Mitch Shapiro, research director for Broadband Markets, a San Diego-based research firm. "But (the founders) have a proven track record." Palm
lends a hand in roadside emergencies. Whatever will they think of next? A new service is aiming to let stranded drivers use their Palms, rather than their thumbs, to flag down help.A wireless version of an auto club, 1-800-TOW-TRUCK's Traveler SOS service provides free tow truck referrals and taxi requests to stranded drivers using the Palm VII wireless device, the company announced with Palm today. In addition, drivers can use the service to find nearby food and lodging while they're waiting for a spare tire. Via
to equip Intel processors with DDR SDRAM. Initially Via was only developing DDR RAM based chipsets for AMD Athlon/Duron processors because of politics involved with Intel. Basically Intel has turned up the heat on any motherboard chipset maker not to develop DDR RAM support because Intel wants the customer base to begin supporting RAMBUS. As you know by now RAMBUS is outrageously expensive and barely performs over 5% when compared to today's SDRAM. Last but not least the RAMBUS chipsets have been plagued with numerous bugs. A settlement was reached that allows Via to develop DDR RAM supporting chipsets for Intel processors. This is a huge win for Via. In what some have described as a sea change for Intel Corp., the company's settlement yesterday of a lawsuit with Via Technologies Inc. will pave the way for Via to launch core-logic chipsets that support Pentium III and Celeron microprocessors with double-data-rate SDRAM main memory. Intel
Xeon CPU Plans Cancelled. No we are not related to Heise.de at all - except our last names are spelled the same. Anyway, Intel plans to phase out the Xeon processor for many obvious reasons. One, being the extremely high cost and the lack of upgrade ability on servers that only support 100mhz FSB. Note the other interesting information in the clip below: Intel does not want to continue the Pentium III Xeon Processor line further with the large L1 and L2-Caches of 1 and 2 MByte because lack of demand. The 800-MHz launch planned for autumn is removed. These processors are only 100Mhz Frontside bus (FSB) therefore as serve as upgrade for old servers.For new systems the versions with the smaller Cache (512 KByte) are many more attractive, since they at present already operate with the faster FSB of 133Mhz and with up to 933Mhz clock. They are however not only clearly faster, but also clearly more inexpensive. The 933-MHz-Version is to cost only one third of the version with 2 MByte Cache (794 US Dollar instead of 1980 US Dollar OEM price). However they are specified only for binary systems. In the autumn Intel wants to bring out the long expected 64-Bit Itanium Processors out with external L3-Caches of 3 and 4 MByte for the server market instead of new Xeons. And also with the Pentium 4 Processors is a server version under the code name Foster at the beginning of 2001 on the market to come. At the Foster family, Intel later will offer the Jackson in specified Technology feature: several (logical) processors in a housing. Future
AGP Standard : AGP 8X ixBTLABS has posted an article regarding Intel's next generation AGP 8x standard which we should see sometime in the first half of 2001. Although we have AGP 4x capability today, none of the current software titles are taking full advantage of the extra bandwidth to the video bus. Most PC's today still use AGP 2x. If you are not familiar with AGP (Advanced Graphics Port), it is one of the card connectors on your motherboard designed for video cards. Here's some of the highlights of AGP 8x:
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