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Tech News for Friday December 1st 2000

IBM claims faster encryption technology.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: ZDNET  Added by: Kim Heise

Here's a bit of good of news for privacy advocates:

IBM Corp. announced Thursday a secure method for digitally scrambling and signing data that it claims will take half the time of today's fastest techniques.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) billed the combination encryption-authentication technique as especially suitable to secure mobile communications because of its lower processor requirements.

TOP    MORE

Plug to be pulled on PowWow IM.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: ZDNET  Added by: Kim Heise

PowWow was one of the first IM (instant messenger) services on the Internet and I remember using it frequently to chat with friends/family overseas. It's sad to say good-bye to PowWow and maybe someone (unlikely) else will pick up the technology. 

The company (CMGion) that purchased Tribal Voice (PowWow developer) decided to close down the service and no longer support it. 

PowWow, the instant-messaging client developed by Tribal Voice Inc., will die a quiet death early next year when CMGion, the company that acquired Tribal Voice in September, stops supporting it.

CMGion, an arm of troubled Internet incubator CMGI Inc. (Nasdaq: CMGI), is in stealth mode currently while it develops a network-based platform for content delivery. At the time of the Tribal Voice acquisition, the company said that PowWow would be integrated into CMGion's offering.

TOP    MORE

Amazon Site Crashes Again.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

Online shopping this season is going to beat any past records (obviously because the internet is growing) as more and more users turn to online shopping to avoid all the angry Christmas shoppers. What's happened to Christmas these days? It's not much fun anymore with all the angry shoppers who are taking out their frustration by driving like idiots and hitting you with shopping bags.

Amazon was faced with another outage which was caused by an internal problem.The outage was not related to heavy network traffic.

The main website of online retailer Amazon.com Inc. crashed briefly Thursday, the second time in the first week of the crucial holiday shopping season that the virtual store has been shut down.

The site appeared to be down for about 15 minutes, but came back up around 12:30 p.m. PST, spokeswoman Patty Smith said.

A message on the site said its products, including books, music, and electronics, were unavailable, but that the auctions page and zShops area that offers goods from thousands of other retailers were open.

"It was an internal glitch, nothing that we can attribute to traffic," Smith said.

Wanted: one contract killer.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise

Saw this little news clip over at the Register that should make your Friday go a little quicker.

An obsessed man offered £100,000 on a Web site for the murder of a woman he had met online, a court heard yesterday.

Paul Clark began exchanging emails with American Brandy Arnett after she advertised for an email pen pal.

The 32-year-old electronics engineer from Portsmouth quickly became obsessed with his American pen pal. Within weeks he had proposed and offered to fly to Texas so they could start a family, even though they had never met.

When Brandy told him she was already married he "exploded," the jury was told. He emailed Brandy, threatening to kill her, saying: "You have signed your own death warrant. I have contacts in the US who will gladly carry out the task of terminating you."

He is alleged to have put up an offer of £100,000 for her murder, saying payment would be dispatched upon receipt of photographic evidence of her death.

When Arnett sent him photographs of herself and her husband on their wedding day, he used the material to set up another Web site, offering £25,000 to anyone who "terminated" the couple.

Market Expected To Rise.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

All the ridiculous events going on in Florida with the recounts, recounts, recounts.... (ad nauseaum) are making investors very nervous and therefore our stock market took a major dive. It's amazing how much the press jumped on the stock market drop several months ago and this time it dropped a full 35% and it was barely mentioned. We are far too busy watching the rental truck transporting ballots all day long. 

A co-worker mentioned that Florida TV showed the entire trip for the rental truck - wouldn't it be wonderful to have that much time on one's hands to sit and watch that all day.

NEW YORK -- Stocks are expected to rise at the open on Friday a day after worries about slowing growth at technology companies sent the Nasdaq to its lowest level since August 1999.

Warnings of weaker sales and unexpectedly soft fourth-quarter results from the likes of PC maker Gateway Inc. (stock: GTW) and specialty chip maker Altera Corp. (stock: ALTR) ignited a fury of selling on Wall Street on Thursday.

Building an AMD Athlon system.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: 3D Hardware  Added by: Kim Heise

Building a AMD Athlon system is not as cut and dry as it is for Intel systems. Most AMD motherboards/chipset are going through some early revisions and therefore you must choose your components wisely before building a system. Expect next year to yield more mature products for AMD systems.

In the end you will end up with a fast, low-cost machine that will beat any competitor when comparing clock speeds. 

I think you will find the material that follows will show a meticulous and analytical approach that everyone can benefit from when dealing with computers.
This article, the first of two, will deal with the tools you will need, such as specific configurations, drivers, Windows options, and most importantly, where your initial testing should start. You will find by the end of this first article the system as whole will be fairly bare in comparison to what it is supposed to look like in the end, much less what any normal system would look like.

How to setup a LAN.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: SysReview  Added by: Kim Heise

Setting up a LAN in your home or office is a rather uncomplicated process. SysReview has written up an article to help you get started on setting up your very own LAN if you are planning to network several computers for internet or file sharing access.

Structuring a local area network (LAN) is not only easy, but fast and cheap. Doing this can enable lag free gaming, file transfers and printer sharing. All versions of Windows make the drudgery of setting a network up effortless. The hardest aspect of building a LAN within your home or office is buying the right interface cards, then wiring it together. This guide is fundamentally for those that have two or more computers around the home or office and want to set up a LAN, assuming you already have a cable modem installed.

Transmeta bug may affect 13,000 Sony PCs.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise

This is what I mean when it's not a smart idea to purchase any first-generation product. The competition is far to fierce in this industry and so companies cut various corners to release products on time.

Sony has confirmed problems with Transmeta's Crusoe processors shipped in two of its Vaio sub-notebook computers, despite assurances from Transmeta earlier this week that such an outcome was "unlikely".

Sony yesterday calculated that some 13,000 Vaio PCG-GT1 and PCG-C1 machines - out of 28,200 units shipped - containing 600MHz Crusoe TM5600 CPUs may fail thanks to a manufacturing glitch in the some chips which is said to affect the contents of its L2 cache.

However, unlike NEC, whose recall of Crusoe-powered PCs alerted buyers to potential problems with Transmeta's chip, Sony said it will not recall its own computers. Users who suspect their machines contain the defect should contact Sony, the company said, who will test the chip and replace it if necessary.

Red Hat drops Sparc support.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise

I suspect that 95% of Linux users run the operating system on x86 based machines and so it should not affect the Linux market much. It all depends on how the media ends up spinning the press release.

Red Hat has canned the Sparc version of Red Hat Linux 7 "due to insufficient demand".

The admission, made in an interview with Cnet, comes just days after Compaq trumpeted Red Hat's support for its Alpha processor, which, apart from some custom-made versions for IBM servers, is now the only non-x86 CPU Red Hat supports.

Via announces new 650- and 667-MHz CPU's.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: SemiBizNews  Added by: Kim Heise

Intel's foothold on the processor and motherboard chipset is very much threatened by VIA. VIA does have a long way to go and a huge battle to fight but the company has made surprising inroads for this year. I predict next year the company will make even further inroads into Intel's motherboard territory. It's far too early to make any predictions on the Via processor and how strong it will be accepted by the industry. The recent scare with Transmeta's' Crusoe CPU is going to have companies scrambling back to Intel and AMD.

Based on an advanced, 0.18-micron process technology, the two new Via Cyrix III line of processors from the Taipei-based chip maker run at speeds of 650- and 667-MHz. The chips are targeted for the "value" segments of the x86-based desktop, notebook, and information appliance markets, said Wenchi Chen, president and chief executive of Via.

"The launch of these two new Via Cyrix III processors demonstrates our growing momentum in the value PC market segment," Chen said. "They provide OEMs and system integrators with an economical solution for building competitively priced PCs targeted at value conscious consumers and businesses."

3dfx Voodoo 3/5 incompatible with P4 motherboards.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise

The year 2000 is one year that 3dfx would love to forget. The company made so many blunders this year that one could fill a page. Hasn't the AGP standard been about for over two years now?

Voodoo 3 cards are incompatible too. Only Voodoo 4 boards can be plugged into P4-equipped PCs.

"3dfx does not advise the purchase either Voodoo 3 or Voodoo 5 products for Pentium 4 systems," the company has warned its customers.

New AMD "Palomino" plans.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise

This is very interesting news since AMD's new Athlon core will feature Intel's new Pentium 4 "Screaming Sindy" instruction set. (Did you get all that?)

AMD's new Athlon core, codenamed Palomino, is due to ship at 1.4GHz in January, 1.5GHz in Q2 and 1.7GHz in 2H 2001. Key improvements will include much improved branch prediction, cooler running (see AMD tests 'super silicon' to beat heat problems), hardware prefetch and core optimisations to improve FPU and ALU performance.

But most intriguing is a suggestion from sources close to AMD that Palomino will also be the first AMD chip to incorporate Intel's original Screaming Sindy (Katmai) instructions first implemented with the Pentium III. AMD is known to have plans to adopt the Pentium 4's extra 144 Screaming Sindy 2 instructions, but it's thought unlikely these will appear before the arrival of the Hammer family in 2002.

Windows 2000 Hints and Tips V1.1 update.
Posted: 12/01/2000     Source: Adrian's Rojak Pot  Added by: Kim Heise

Adrian has sent me word that he has updated his Windows 2000 hints and tips section, bringing it up to version 1.1.

Adrian's Rojak Pot (http://www.rojakpot.com/) has just posted revision
1.1 of the Windows 2000 Hints and Tips guide! If you want to know how
to regain your mouse's pixel-level accuracy, change drive letters,
improve CD audio quality and other things about Windows 2000, check
this guide out!
In this revision, there are two new tips and also some additional notes
about improving CD audio quality.

Tech News for Wednesday November 29th 2000

Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Others Form Huge Standards Consortium.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: eFront  Added by: Kim Heise

It will be interesting to see if this consortium holds up and does not fall to mindless bickering and actually produces some results that doesn't hurt the average consumer. What makes me nervous is that these big heavy weights control huge sectors in the market and can thus dictate any standards they wish.

Some of the world's biggest high-tech companies - and some of the largest corporate egos - today said they are forming a consortium designed to arrive at a set of unified technology and business standards for e-commerce.

Microsoft Corp., Intel, IBM, Compaq, Dell and about two dozen other companies all are members of the new industry group, dubbed the "Business Internet Consortium." The group, which has held unpublicized steering committee meetings over the past several months, will address such issues as security; use of extensible markup language (XML) by traditional businesses; integration of existing business systems with new e-commerce systems; addressing network latency, and the like.

These issues are among the biggest faced by traditional businesses making the leap to e-commerce, said Seth Walker, a spokesman for consortium member Intel Corp.

TOP    MORE

Security Problem Found in New Netscape 6.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: ZDNET  Added by: Kim Heise

It appears that certain secure web sites will not load on Netscape's new 6.0 browser. ZDNET has posted a simple tutorial for Netscape users showing you how to fix this problem. Click the "more" button below for more info.

Find out how to fix Netscape 6's incomplete install that prevents users from accessing certain secure Web sites.

TOP    MORE

The Anoto Digital Pen.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: Tuplay  Added by: Kim Heise

This has got to be one of the most useful and innovative products of this year. Imagine writing with this pen on normal paper and it records your hand writing while you write. Take a look at this little clip from the review over at Tuplay:

Have you ever dreamed of writing something on your computer as easily as you would on paper? Do you feel disconnected from the technological world because you lack an untethered digital stylus? If you answered yes to at least one of the above questions then get ready to hear about the world's most versatile pen! Packed with a custom 100FPS CMOS sensor (its eyes), a 70MHz proprietary ARM-Based processor (its brain), a Bluetooth wireless transceiver (its ears), and a durable TBA battery (fat... or something), the Anoto pen is a digital derangement with attitude. This pen allows you to transmit accurate digital images (taken from near-ordinary paper) to wireless Bluetooth devices, your personal computer, and other supported devices and services. You can draw pictures, write full-length papers, or record your signature.

TOP    MORE

AMD Rolling The Dice In The Server Market.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

We desperately need some competition in the consumer server market. While Sun/IBM/HP run the corporate server market, Intel has most of the entry-level server market. AMD needs to work with Via and other chipset vendors to develop multi-processor motherboard chipsets. Instead of developing it's own multi-processor chipset AMD should focus on developing/producing and marketing the Athlon CPU.

One question mark looms over the Athlon infrastructure. AMD does manufacture chipsets, and its two-way AMD 760 MP chipset was demonstrated at October's Microprocessor Forum in San Jose. But the company has also said it would cede the PC chipset market to partners like Via Technologies Inc. and Acer Laboratories Inc., which have built their businesses entirely on chipset products.

"We intend to get into dual-processing [chipsets] and establish the business there," AMD's Mitton said. "Then we'll see about Hammer."

TOP    MORE

Intel ships 6,000 Itaniums.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise

As predicted next year will be the race to get the first 64bit x86 processor on the market. Both AMD and Intel have plans to release 64 bit processors next year so it will be interesting if Microsoft will ship the "Whistler" operating system on time. If Microsoft does not ship the 64 OS on time Linux and other alternative operating systems can move in to take up the slack.

By the time Intel's Itanic finally launches in March, almost everyone that was in the market for the 64 bit chip will already have one.

Since the beginning of the year, Intel says it's shipped 6,000 Itanics for evaluation and has just started a pilot programme under which selected large corporates including Wells Fargo Bank and CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, get systems to play with.

Around 20 eval systems - almost production models - have already been delivered with 'hundreds' due to go out during Q1 next year.

Itanium will launch at 733MHz and 800MHz, with a choice of two different amounts of integrated cache, 2MB or 4MB.

Virus won’t let victims get help.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: MSNBC  Added by: Kim Heise

This has to be one of the nastiest virus attacks I've seen besides the ones that wipe your system completely. This particular virus infects your machine and then prevents you from seeking any online remedies to remove the bug.

A computer virus that’s smart enough to block its victims from getting help is steadily spreading around the Internet. The bug, called MTX, was discovered in August and initially labeled a low risk. But in recent weeks, infections have been growing and last week it was the most prevalent virus in the world, according to one antivirus firm. The bug has one very sinister feature: once it infects a user, it’s programmed to stop the victim from visiting antivirus Web sites and sending “mayday” e-mails to antivirus companies.

Ready for a storage revolution?
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: ZDNET  Added by: Kim Heise

Everyday I'm stumped to see storage devices increase in size and prices are dropping just as fast. Just this weekend CompUSA was selling 40GB drives for $99.

Constellation 3D's new storage tech will pack 100GB on a DVD-sized optical disk and 10GB on a credit card-sized drive.

Enterprises grappling with rocketing end-user storage requirements could soon benefit from 100GB DVD-sized optical disks and 10GB credit card-sized drives, thanks to pioneering fluorescent multi-layer disk (FMD) technology from Constellation 3D (C3D).

Microsoft launches Office 2000 SP-2
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: Microsoft  Added by: Kim Heise

After the debacle of the previous Office 2000 service pack 1 Microsoft is quietly releasing service pack 2. The service pack weighs in around 30MB and the company will not be releasing a full version of Office 2000 with the updated service pack 2.

As reported previously in WinInfo, Microsoft has launched its second Office 2000 update this week, Office 2000 Service Pack 2 (SP-2). As of this writing, SP-2 is live on the OfficeUpdate and Office Resource Kit Webs site, offering users a consolidated way to upgrade to the latest bug fixes. A CD version of the bug fix collection includes updates for system administrators that need to rollout Office in corporate settings. And unlike Office 2000 SR1-a, SP2 is "patch-only," in that Microsoft will not reissue the full product with these fixes preinstalled, as it did with SR1a.

AMD quietly announces 1.7ghz Athlon.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise

AMD is pushing the envelope on the Athlon by announcing a 1.7ghz clock speed that should be available sometime later next year.

AMD was quietly confident earlier today in London when the company confirmed its plans for a 1.7GHz Athlon sometime in the second half of 2001.

The new part will still be built using the current 180nm process as the first 0.13 micron samples from AMD's Dresden fab won't come on stream until late in the year for production in early 2002.

Understanding GPS systems.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: Digit-Life  Added by: Kim Heise

If I ever had far too much money to spend I would very much like to own a GPS system to carry with me in the car or while trying to navigate through a mountain trail. The prices have dropped significantly over the past 6 months but you can still expect to spend around $500.00 for one that displays maps on a tiny LCD display.

Digit-Life has posted an article describing how GPS systems actually work and it is a very good read for someone just wishing to understand the technology.

As it often happens with high-tech projects, the system GPS (Global Positioning System) was developed by the military. The project of satellite network for determination of position in real time mode in any point of the globe was named Navstar (Navigation system with timing and ranging). GPS abbreviation appeared a little later, when the system was used not only for defense but also with civilian target.

Yahoo delivers encrypted email.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

Governments of all sorts are just going to love this sort of electronic mail transmission method.

Yahoo has quietly introduced a way for people to send scrambled messages through its email service.

As first reported in August, Yahoo is providing its email encryption option through a deal with Zixit, a Dallas-based email encryption firm. Yahoo will rout encrypted email through Zixit's SecureDelivery.com Web site.

TOP    MORE

Browser Emulator?
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: Deja Vu  Added by: Kim Heise

Most of you have probably never used Lynx or Mosaic if you are fairly new to the internet. Deja-Vu has created an online emulator that allows you to use all the classic browsers of yesterday. In some ways we have come a long way and in other ways we have just become more complicated.

Experience the history of the web!

Go to the emulator to re-live an era in the history of the web!

Or go to the timeline to read about the old times!

TOP    MORE

Microsoft announces the next version of FrontPage.
Posted: 11/29/2000     Source: Microsoft  Added by: Kim Heise

Microsoft's popular web editing package is about to get a much needed facelift. Here are some details and click on the "more" link below for more detailed information. The release should hit the store shelves some later in 2001.

REDMOND, Wash. -- Nov. 28, 2000 -- Microsoft Corp. has unveiled the next version of the Microsoft^® FrontPage^® Web site creation and management tool, code-named "FrontPage 10." The new version of the world's most popular Web development tool is designed for Web developers who want the sophisticated features FrontPage offers along with its well-known ease of use. "FrontPage 10" allows users to create and manage all types of Web sites and provides powerful new site-creation capabilities and control and management innovations. It also helps teams work together more easily.

"FrontPage 10" includes new graphic and content tools that make it easy to import and display photos and other information in a professional-looking format, and new usage analysis reports that allow users to control and manage their site with confidence. "FrontPage 10" also provides users with the ability to add, edit and customize SharePoint-based Web sites. SharePoint is a team Web site solution that enables groups to collaborate, share documents and communicate with one another. The beta 2 version of "FrontPage 10" is currently under customer evaluation prior to its anticipated release in mid 2001.

Tech News for Tuesday November 28th 2000

Home wireless war rages over standards.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: Yahoo DailyNews  Added by: Kim Heise

In a ideal world companies would band together to form standards to help the consumer but unfortunately everybody wants to control their little sector. This is simple business 101 since it guarantees (to some extent) a customer base that rely on your technology because you are the only vendor. 

A brewing battle between two competing wireless technologies in the home could soon erupt into a war some analysts and executives believe will be akin to the VCR technology standards fight that pitted VHS against Betamax in the nascent days of videotape machines for the home.

Most technology companies in the nascent home-networking market have chosen sides and support one wireless technology. But a growing number of companies, such as IBM, Proxim and Cayman Systems, are now straddling the fence and backing both--a sign that the battle is far from over.

"I don't think either technology will crush each other," Kurt Scherf, an analyst at Parks Associates, said in reference to Wi-Fi and HomeRF. "It's split evenly. There's no clear winner."

Pocket PC devices making headway against Palm.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

With Microsoft's huge market control and the support by multiple vendors it is inevitable that the company would make major inroads into the Palm PDA market. It's not too difficult to predict that Microsoft Windows CE based PDA's will take the market from Palm Computing eventually. Palm Computing will begin to focus on smaller devices like cell-phones and possibly "in dash" computing devices for cars.

Palm software runs four times as many handheld computers as the competing system from Microsoft. So why do some analysts believe market leader Palm should be worried?

Since the April introduction of Microsoft's third version of software for handheld organizers--after the first two failed to challenge Palm--the company's market share has grown to 18 percent from 10 percent, according to researcher IDC.

With demand surging for devices based on Microsoft's Pocket PC operating system, analysts say, Palm must update its software or face losing corporate clients.

Three times as many of the new Pocket PCs--made with Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard and Casio Computer hardware--have been sold this year, compared with sales of the earlier versions last year, IDC analyst Kevin Burden said.

By 2004, Burden predicts, Microsoft will have almost 40 percent of the market, compared with 51 percent for Palm.

Site News Update.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: N/A  Added by: Kim Heise

Hopefully you will start seeing more updates again from Hitechbits. I've been swamped at work and literarily drop into bed when I get home at night. I'm going to be on vacation from December 15th to January 5th and so work is trying to get me to finish up some last minute issues.

Also, I'm still looking for some extra help to keep this web site updated and especially while I will away from December 15th to January 5th. Please let me know if you wish to help.

Windows 2000 Hints & Tips.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: RojakPot  Added by: Kim Heise

Adrian has posted some very useful information for Windows 2000 users on how to tweak some of those more complicated to find options. Here's a list of what has been added to his Windows 2000 hints and tips guide.

• How to make your mouse more accurate.
• How to change drive letters.
• How to initialize your modem after booting up.
• How to improve CD audio quality.
• How to prevent programs from loading during startup.
• How to change data monitored by Task Manager.

Oracle snags former White House press secretary.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

This is rather tough not to make some "smart" remark about this news clip but I think I will just stick with an excerpt and reserve any comments.

Former White House press secretary Joe Lockhart has joined Oracle's senior management team and will be in charge of communications at the company, the database software giant said Tuesday.

Lockhart, who will report directly to chief executive Larry Ellison, will initially focus on refining and communicating Oracle's business strategy, the company said. The former assistant to President Clinton begins his new position at Oracle on Tuesday.

Linux happened by accident, Torvalds autobiography says.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

Wunderkind Linus Torvalds - the inventor of the very popular Linux operating system has some very interesting facts to post in his upcoming autobiography. Here's a clip to get you started.

In an upcoming book titled "Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary," Linux creator Linus Torvalds states that the popularity of open-source software and the Linux operating system did not derive from a far-reaching strategic plan. Instead, it was just one of those things that sort of happens.

Nokia's Third-Generation Smartphone.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: eFront  Added by: Kim Heise

The year 2001 is going to show some very fancy new gadgets on the market and Nokia is starting the year with a bang. The 4096 color cell phone is not going to be cheap.

The Nokia 9210 smartphone, Nokia's [NASDAQ:NOK] third-generation PDA- style handset, has now been unveiled - but don't hold your breath. The company says the 4096-color multimedia phone, which tips the scales at a fairly chunky 244 grams, won't ship much before the summer. And, even then, it will be "premium priced."

"Shipment is scheduled for some time in the first half of next year," said a spokesperson, who added that pricing is equally vague.

Newsbytes' sources suggest that the GSM/PCS 900/1800 smartphone will ship in small quantities worldwide during the end of the second quarter, 2001, followed by volume shipments in August, 2001.

Dealers in the UK have been told that the 9210 will sell for around $400 with a contract and around $800 without.

TOP    MORE

FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE Available.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: eFront  Added by: Kim Heise

I used to use FreeBSD as a NAT (Network Address Translation) box to share my modem connection over multiple computers. Ever since I have broadband access installed, the Linksys 10/100 router does the trick just fine.

FreeBSD fans should be starting up the wave, as a new version of FreeBSD, 4.2-RELEASE, is now available! There is not a slew of new features in this release but many bugs were fixed, important security issues were dealt with, and a conservative number of new features have been added. See the release notes for more information. You can download ISOs for i386 and Alpha or just visit the FTP server and browse.

Chip Makers Search For Scalable Standard.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

This is going to be a tough standard to create since every company is out to corner the market is some sort of fashion or another. If you are the founder of the standard then it pays significantly but the adopters for the standard usually end up having to pay licensing fees to jump aboard.

MUNICH, Germany -- Chip designers are embracing standardized platforms that let customers deal with complex systems-on-chip, executives of several of the world's top semiconductor makers suggested this week.

Gathered here for the giant Electronica trade show, top guns from STMicroelectronics NV (stock: STM); Philips Semiconductors (stock: PHG); Infineon Technologies; and Motorola Inc. (stock: MOT) pointed to the huge opportunities and accompanying risks involved in system-on-chip (SoC) design.

To cope, what's needed is "a scalable, standard platform on which our customers can flexibly combine features to build systems," said STMicroelectronics' Philippe Geyres.

Plastic Chip Could Make Everyday Items Smart.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

Using plastic to enclose processors will be a very challenging task since plastic acts as a insulator creating major heat build up on the CPU die itself. Low frequency devices could benefit from cheaper plastic housing.

British scientists have secured funding to develop a new ultra-cheap microchip made from plastic which could make even the most humble daily items "intelligent", London's Financial Times said on Monday. The Cambridge University team has persuaded U.S. chemicals giant Dow Chemical Co. to help fund the project and hopes to demonstrate prototypes by next summer. Venture-capital firm Amadeus Capital Partners is also a shareholder in Plastic Logic, the company set up to commercialize the technology. Other companies interested in developing such chips, which could be included in labels for supermarket goods that radioed their prices to scanners, included Lucent Technologies (stock: LU), IBM (stock: IBM) and Xerox (stock: XRX), the report said.

Dot-Com Death March Continues With More Layoffs.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

Let this be a very stern lesson for people who wish to start Internet companies or to throw significant amounts of money at every person who comes up with a supposed smart idea.

A whopping 8,789 people in the dot-com sector lost their jobs this month, a 55 percent increase from the October figure of 5,677, according to new figures from Challenger Gray & Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm.

That brings the grand total to 31,056 Internet-related jobs lost since last December when Challenger started tracking the trend.

And this is not likely to be the end of it.

Serial ATA Draft Specification 1.0.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: Intel  Added by: Kim Heise

Looks like Intel has plans for a new hard drive ATA specification that could dramatically increase bus speeds from the motherboard to your hard drive. The new Ultra SATA/1500 standard can handle 1.5GBS of data which is no small number. Now we just need to develop hard-drives to take advantage of such huge bus speeds.

Computer industry leaders today announced that the Draft Specification 1.0 defining Serial ATA (SATA), the high performance interface for storage devices, is now complete and available to the Serial ATA Working Group Contributors and Adopters.

Serial ATA will supply storage interface headroom for many generations to come, beginning with Ultra SATA/1500 at 1.5Gbps, scalable to 2x and 4x. This interface is used to connect storage devices, such as hard disk, DVD and CD-RW drives, to the PC motherboard. Serial ATA will be the replacement for today's Parallel ATA physical storage interface.

While maintaining compatibility with today's software, Serial ATA will provide a storage interface that meets the needs of tomorrow's computers and links emerging system and storage technologies. Serial ATA will also enable computer manufacturers to design systems with cables that are simpler to route and install and will enable the use of smaller connectors and lower voltages than is possible with the existing Parallel ATA technology.

DDR RAM - What is is really about?
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: HardOCP  Added by: Kim Heise

Next year you will see a whole slew of DDRAM PC's shipping all over the market. DDRAM will replace the current SDRAM in your PC so  it may be good idea to wait before purchasing a new system. On the other hand with 128MB/133mhz SDRAM prices as low as $70 it can be very tempting to buy additional memory.

Don't expect the overall price of PC's to reflect the low cost for SDRAM because vendors need to sell the in stock memory at the original purchase price. By the time the stock dries up DDRAM may be the next factor.

DDRAM significantly reduces the major bottle necks that accompany today's fastest PC's.

With the current DDR technology, it appears that for the moment, the bottleneck of the memory bandwidth has been resolved. The question, though, is, how long will this situation last? To rephrase this question: how fast can CPUs become until we reach the next bottleneck? With CPU speed roughly doubling each year, this is a valid question. Further considerations are that DDR in its present form will be relatively short-lived and will be replaced within the next 18 months by DDR 1.5 and DDR 2.

Next Nvidia Card ?
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: ZDNET UK  Added by: Kim Heise

Now keep in mind that this is all rumor bound until nVidia makes an official press release. Sometimes it's not too difficult to imagine if companies "accidentally" release this sort of information to scare competitors and to pump up the investors. I am by no means referring to this case but more of situation in general.

Confidential documents seen by ZDNet from the graphics chip manufacturer state the new chip will outperform previous processors even in complex 3D environments.

According to the document, the chip's performance will depend on the application it is running on. In environments where there are low detail scenes (large triangles, simple geometry, hardly any depth) the NV20 is only twice as fast as the previous Geforce 2 Ultra. The difference in performance grows however with the complexity of the 3D scene (multitude of small triangles, very complex geometry, a lot of depth).

The anti-aliasing performance of the chip is also said to have increased substantially. Nvidia gives the NV20 a 300 percent increase in performance compared to the NV15. The performance of the chip doubles when handling geometrical data. According to Nvidia the NV20 is able to handle one trillion operations and 100 gigaflops (floating-point operations) per second.

The performance increase is achieved through better design, according to the documents: the storage interface is a completely revised version compared with the Geforce 2. Downloading large quantities of geometrical data should now flow substantially faster, according to the documents.

In addition, the NV20 is said to have a ramdac speed of over 500MHz as well as an faster clock rate.

Intel Pentium 4 1.4GHz Review.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: X-Bit Labs  Added by: Kim Heise

The new Pentium 4 processor is very expensive and when compared to the much cheaper AMD Athlon CPU I cannot see the worth for wanting one of these new processors. Also don't forget that there are currently NO motherboards on the market that support Pentium 4 processors.

Intel Pentium Pro CPU introduced in 1995 was the first processor with P6 architecture. A lot of time has passed since then. New CPU generations replaced the older ones, however, the essence of the CPU architecture remained unchanged. All the processor families, such as Pentium II, Pentium III and Celeron, were based on the same core and differed only by the core size, L2 cache implementation and the presence of SSE instructions, which was characteristic of Pentium III CPU. Of course, this couldn't last for ever, and P6 architecture had to become obsolete one day. Surely, it is not the hardships Intel faced when trying to further increase its CPU clock frequencies and not the competition with AMD that matter here that much. Certainly, we wouldn't deny that Intel had some problems as soon as its Pentium III CPU reached 1GHz border: if you remember Intel had to call back its Pentium 1.13GHz because of its great instability. However, this problem can be easily solved if the manufacturing is transferred to 0.13 micron technology, especially, since it is about to happen in the nearest future anyway.

Motherboards in 2001 Preview.
Posted: 11/28/2000     Source: AnandTech  Added by: Kim Heise

Expect to see Intel's firm grip on the motherboard market slip even further next year as VIA, AMD and ALi release some very impressive new motherboards. If you are planning on building/purchasing a new system for the Y2001 make sure to verify that your motherboard supports DDRAM which is the new memory to replace SDRAM.

Of course, the most exciting thing on the horizon is DDR, which was everywhere at Comdex. Most companies demonstrated, or at least showed, their own DDR solutions for AMD or Intel processors.  All the big chipset manufacturers, with the notable exception of Intel, released chipsets supporting DDR, including the AMD 760, the VIA Apollo Pro266, the VIA KT266, the ALi Aladdin Pro5, and the ALi MAGiK 1.  The AMD 760, VIA KT266, and the ALi MAGiK 1 chipsets support AMD Socket-A processors, while the VIA Pro266 and the ALi Aladdin Pro5 chipsets are designed for Intel Socket-370 processors. Note the lack of DDR support for the Pentium 4, which will probably continue until the 3rd quarter of 2001.

Tech News for Thursday November 23d 2000

Happy Thanksgiving.
Posted: 11/23/2000     Source: N/A  Added by: Kim Heise

I wanted to wish everyone the best wishes for Thanksgiving and to let the folks in uniform here and those who are overseas know we are thinking of you. We thank you for being out there and often being out there in harms way to defend this great country. 

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