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Tech News for Wednesday February 7th 2001

Sprint Maps High-Speed Internet Network.
Posted: 02/07/2001     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

Sprint is building a high speed global network to help alleviate some of the heavy traffic between the US and the rest of the world. The new high speed network will open the gateway for more VOP (voice over IP) communication systems to become more popular.

Sprint Corp. Tuesday said it will connect European and Asian cities such as Frankfurt, Hong Kong, and Sydney with a new high-speed Internet-based network in a move to strengthen its international presence.

The expansion plans come about one year after the No. 3 U.S. long-distance phone company sold its stake in Global One, which began as joint venture between Sprint, France Telecom, and Deutsche Telekom AG. France Telecom (stock: FTE) bought out its partners last year.

Industry analysts said the company would spend about $100 million on building the network, but additional details were not immediately available. Sprint declined to comment on its spending plans.

Sony Shows Off LCD's Successor.
Posted: 02/07/2001     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

Sony has developed a new display that is not much thicker than a credit card which we should hopefully see in mass production by 2003. Also by then the average price of existing flat-screen LCD's should have dropped significantly although I'm surprised that we haven't seen lower prices already.

Thin is in for TV and computer screens, and Sony has an organic electroluminescent (OEL) display a little thicker than a credit card that it hopes will beat rival technologies in retiring the bulky TV tube.

The consumer electronics powerhouse on Wednesday showed off a prototype of a 13-inch active-matrix OEL screen it wants to be mass producing by 2003, with costs and dimensions to match the increasingly ubiquitous LCD panels—but thinner, lighter, and with a better picture.

"This display is extremely well-suited for broadband applications," said Suehiro Nakamura, a corporate senior executive vice president at Sony, Japan.

AMD Athlon 1.2GHz (266MHz FSB) in a box.
Posted: 02/07/2001     Source: Digit Life  Added by: Kim Heise

Digit-Life has posted a picture of the new Athlon 1.2GHz CPU with 266MHz front-side bus speeds. I'm not sure why they still call the new chip the Athlon since the sucessor is now called the "Thunderbird".

If you couple AMD with one of VIA's latest motherboard chipsets the end result will be a very powerful system which will take on and exceed anything Intel has to offer.

Sony adds CD-RW/DVD to New VAIO FX Notebook Line.
Posted: 02/07/2001     Source: Electic Tech  Added by: Kim Heise

We have been hearing that several notebook vendors will be adding CD recordables to their product line. So far all we heard is talk but Sony is stepping up to the plate by also offering DVD support.

``While others are talking about it, we're making it happen,'' said Mark Hanson, Sony Electronics' vice president and general manager for VAIO PC products. ``The introduction of CD-RW/DVD-ROM capabilities in a single, versatile drive gives multimedia oriented executives and digital video enthusiasts alike the opportunity to create and rewrite CDs, watch DVD movies and utilize their PCs to their ultimate capacity.''

Sony's new combination drive is featured on four FX models. The PCG-FX190 and the PCG-FX170 feature a Windows Me operating system, while the PCG-FX190K and the PCG-FX170K offer the Windows 2000 operating system.

Bill Gates Files to Sell 3 Million Microsoft Shares.
Posted: 02/07/2001     Source: Yahoo  Added by: Kim Heise

It makes me curious to know why Bill Gates is selling off 3 million shares when he stated that we have nothing to fear about the US economy slowing down. It may be simply that he is going to start another foundation or he plans to make a personal purchase in art collectables.

Microsoft Corp. (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) Chairman and co-founder Bill Gates (news - web sites) has made a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites) to sell 3 million common shares of the world's largest software company.

The shares had a market value of $193 million when he made the filing on Jan. 29, the document showed.

Gates sold a total of 13 million shares valued at more than $881 million between Oct. 30, 2000 and Jan. 26, 2001.

ATi unveils Radeon Mobility.
Posted: 02/07/2001     Source: ATI  Added by: Kim Heise

Upcoming laptops are going to be powered either by nVIDIA or ATi for graphics processors. Both companies have a very strong product to offer and it will simply boil down to price and marketing.

ATI unveils MOBILITY™ RADEON™: worlds highest performance, most feature-rich graphics processor for the notebook PC

 • Extends critically-acclaimed RADEON™ technology to mobile PC market

MARKHAM, Ontario - ATI Technologies Inc. (TSE: ATY, NASDAQ: ATYT), the world leader in mobile 3D graphics, video and multimedia solutions (1), today unveiled MOBILITY™ RADEON™, the highest performance, most feature-rich mobile graphics processor in the world.

MOBILITY RADEON introduces ATIs leading edge, critically-acclaimed RADEON™ 3D graphics processor technology to the portable computing marketplace, achieving industry-leading performance in that space. It affords customers new levels of low power consumption - meaning longer battery life, and also offers them a number of feature - rich solutions, including user-friendly dual display capability, the smallest footprint through the highest level of integration, and multimedia benefits drawn from ATIs ALL-IN-WONDER™ family of products.

The MOBILITY RADEON family allows ATI to lead with the best performance for high-end notebooks and scale to the lowest power and most integrated 8 MB solution for long battery life in ultra-portables, said Lou Leung, vice president & general manager, Mobile Business Unit, ATI Technologies Inc. But, ATIs strength in mobile graphics goes well beyond any one product family.

High-tech copper seen at heart of new microchips.
Posted: 02/07/2001     Source: IDG  Added by: Kim Heise

The idea of using copper on processors cores is nothing new but the problem lies in production cost and production yield. As production methods improve you can be rest assured we will begin to see copper being used more frequently due to the unique characteristics of the metal.

For decades, the world's top microchip makers sought to harness copper's superior electrical conductivity to build microprocessors that were faster, smaller and more efficient than problem-ridden aluminum chips.

Finally, in December, International Business Machines Corp. leapt into production with new technology boasting the smallest copper circuits ever developed and improved materials, allowing for more layers of memory and more processing power.

The ground-breaking development is crucial to driving energy-hungry applications like speech recognition and wireless video in the next generation of electronic devices from computers to cell phones.

<snip>

IBM's new technology, named CMOS 9S, uses new high-speed transistors -- the on/off switches that act as a chip's brains -- bridged to miles of microscopic copper wiring with circuits as small as 0.13 microns, or nearly 800 times thinner than a human hair.

 This allows copper microchips to operate at least 25 to 30 times faster than other chips in production, at speeds in the multi-gigahertz range, chip analyst Fred Zeiber of Pathfinder Research in San Jose, California, told Reuters.

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32MB Floppy disk.
Posted: 02/07/2001     Source: IDG  Added by: Kim Heise

I cannot see this product becoming part of the mainstream consumer market with ZIP disks and other removable mediums in production today. Especially when you can purchase a CD/RW drive for under $150 which stores 650MB on a $0.50 disk.

We did see the 2.88MB floppy drive for a short time span but it was never fully embraced by the consumer market because the doubling in size compared to a standard 1.44MB floppy was not enough to justify the price.

The floppy disk could be about to make a come back. Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics Industries Ltd., better known by its Panasonic brand name, has announced the development of a new technology that can increase their capacity more than 20-fold.

The company will begin selling later this month a new disk drive that, it says, is capable of storing 32M bytes of data on a standard 2HD floppy disk -- some 22.2 times that of its usual 1.44M byte capacity. To increase the data capacity of a standard floppy, Matsushita's FD32MB system employs zone bit recording -- a system used to encode data onto hard disks and optical disc systems that more efficiently uses the space to record data.

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Transmeta readies 0.13-micron processor.
Posted: 02/07/2001     Source: Silicon Strategies  Added by: Kim Heise

Don't count Transmeta out of the CPU race just yet. The company may have some surprising tricks which will only help the consumer in lower prices and better performance due to competition.

Transmeta Corp. here today announced that it is readying a new line of x86-based microprocessors, including a low-power, 0.13-micron MPU that is geared to break the 1-GHz barrier.

The Santa Clara, Calif.-based company will soon roll out the TM5800, an x86-based part that will initially run at speeds of at least 700-MHz or faster, said David Ditzel, president and chief executive officer of Transmeta.

The TM5800 "will be one of the world's first processors based on a 0.13-micron process," he told the Banc of America Securities technology conference here today.

Tech News for Monday February 5th 2001

Intel Server Roadmap.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: The Register  Added by: Kim Heise

The Register has posted some unofficial news updates on Intel's server roadmap.

Table Source: The VR-Zone.

New Intel i815G/EG Chipsets.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: XBit  Added by: Kim Heise

Nothing overly exciting about Intel's new chipset and especially the new 133mhz RAM support which is old hat in the VIA chipset area.

Intel is going to introduce a couple of new sets of core logic: i815G and i815EG destined to replace i810.
New chipsets from i8150G/EG family will be based on B-step of i815 chipset, which doesn’t support the external AGP port. So, unlike i810, i815G/EG chipsets will support new Tualatin based processors and PC133 SDRAM, which increases the performance of the graphics subsystem using UMA architecture. I815G will feature an ICH for the South Bridge and hence will support only ATA/66, while i815EG will be equipped with ICH2 supporting ATA/100.

Of course, the launching of i815G/EG, which shouldn’t be more expensive than i810E2 will automatically result into discontinuing of the i810 chipset. So, the entire Intel chipset family will be completely unified. Intel will target all sorts of i815 chipset versions (including those without the integrated graphics – i815EP, and those without the support for external AGP – i815EG) for almost all the market sectors except servers and workstations.

VIA Southbridge Roadmap.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: XBit  Added by: Kim Heise

VIA is going to overtake Intel completely over the next year or so as the number one motherboard chipset producer/developer. With all the innovations VIA is putting forth on their new motherboard chipsets it's not too difficult to see how they will sweep the market.

• VT8233Link bus (this is a bus between the chipset North and South bridges, which provides 266MB/sec bandwidth), AC’97 codec, 6 USB 1.1 ports, HomePNA, 10/100 Base-T, 2 ATA/100 channels, IO APIC. Mass production has already started.
• VT8233CThis one is similar to the previously described VT8233 South Bridge. However, it will also feature 3Com communicational part.Engineering samples of the chipsets will be available in this quarter. Mass production is planned for the end of Q2 2001.
• VT8235. 8/16bit V-Link, 6 USB 2.0 ports, integrated DSL or Wireless. Engineering samples are due in Q3 2001.
• VT8237. LDT-PCI bridge (LDT, Lighting Data Transport, is a high speed bus developed by AMD), 6 USB 2.0 ports, integrated DSL or Wireless. All the other specs are similar to those of VT8233 (AC’97 codec, HomePNA, 10/100 Base-T, 2 ATA/100 channels, IO APIC). The first engineering samples should come out in Q4 2001.

Plextor announces 16/10/40A CD-RW.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: Plextor  Added by: Kim Heise

With all the news posts out there I cannot remember if it has already been posted here that Plextor has announced a new 16x record, 10x rewrite able and 40x read drive. For more details click the "More" link below.

Official NVIDIA 6.50 Detonators Mirrored.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: 3D Chipset  Added by: Kim Heise

NVIDIA announced new official Detonator reference drivers for all NVIDIA based video cards such as the GeForce series and the TNT2 ultra. The new drivers are almost impossible to download from the official site so 3D Chipset was kind enough to mirror the drivers.

Received alot of emails regarding the official release of the Detonator 6.50 drivers over at Nvidia. Are you having problems with downloading the official 6.50 Detonators from Nvidia? Well we managed to get them and uploaded them here. If you previously have downloaded the 6.50 detonators awhile ago, then I would not bother with these. Here are the Links:

  - Official Detonator 6.50 (Win9x/WinME)
  - Official Detonator 6.50 (Win2k)
  - Official Detonator 6.50 (WinNT)

Microsoft Announces Windows XP and Office XP.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: ActiveWin  Added by: Kim Heise

When Microsoft "Whistler" finally ships it will be known as Windows XP.

Microsoft Corp. announced product names today for the upcoming new Microsoft® Windows® desktop operating system and Microsoft Office desktop applications suite. Windows (formerly code-named "Whistler") will become Windows XP, and Office (formerly code-named "Office 10") will become Office XP. The XP name is short for "experience," symbolizing the rich and extended user experiences Windows and Office can offer by embracing Web services that span a broad range of devices.

These breakthrough versions of Windows and Office will give people the most powerful end-to-end computing experiences ever available," said Bill Gates, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft. "The coming generation of Windows XP and Office XP will enable customers to communicate and collaborate more effectively, be more creative and productive, and have more fun with technology."

Trademark dispute may delay Xbox debut.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: ActiveWin  Added by: Kim Heise

Don't you just love the lawyers. I doubt Microsoft will be stopped by any small company on releasing the much hyped X-Box.

Microsoft may be forced to delay the introduction of its Xbox game console because of a trademark dispute over the Xbox brand with a small Florida company, according to published reports. Xbox Technologies, a holding company of software businesses, may take Microsoft to court because it said it had the first claim on the Xbox brand, the Financial Times reported on its FT.com Web site. Xbox Technologies, based in Coconut Grove, Fla., filed the first of 47 current applications for the Xbox brand with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in March 1999, FT.com said.

Cathay Pacific unveils online check-in service.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

Finally an airline with some new innovative ideas. It's a pity that the new online check-in service will not be available with any of the American carries but times could change.

One of the most popular airlines for business travelers in Asia introduced an online check-in service Monday for frequent flier customers.

Dallas-based travel giant Sabre Holdings will help power the service for Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways. "SmartSourcing" technology developed by Sabre and Cathay Pacific is expected to expedite the boarding process and reduce lines at the terminal by allowing passengers to check in prior to leaving for the airport.

In part to reduce the record number of cancelled flights and relieve passengers' mounting frustrations at increasingly congested airports, most major airlines are expected to introduce similar services in the next year or two. Airlines are also keen on the concept because it automates a function that is now the domain of hourly customer service workers at airport terminals, and it can be programmed to work in numerous Asian and Western languages.

AT&T to offer Net, long-distance plan for $7 fee.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: CNET  Added by: Kim Heise

Internet service and long distance phone service for $7.00 a month. Very aggressive marketing tactics.......

AT&T, the giant U.S. long-distance telephone and cable-TV provider, said it will begin offering residential customers combined Internet access and phone service for a $7 monthly fee.

The service, called AT&T 7/7, will give consumers unlimited access to the Web and a round-the-clock rate of 7 cents a minute on state-to-state long-distance calls made from home, AT&T spokeswoman Janet Wyles said. Internet access will be through AT&T's WorldNet service, the company said in a statement.

AT&T and other phone companies were slow to embrace the Internet and have struggled to sign up customers for their online services. AT&T said last week that WorldNet ended 2000 with more than 1.4 million residential customers, a drop of 3.8 percent from the 1999 fourth quarter. AOL Time Warner's America Online service had 26.7 million customers at the end of 2000.

Technical hurdles slow DDR SDRAM's debut.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: EBNews  Added by: Kim Heise

It is still difficult to purchase DDRAM memory but give it a couple of weeks and it should become readily available. I suspect that some OEM's are nervous about selling products that compete with Intel because of long term repercussions.

Interoperability issues are slowing the introduction of double-data-rate (DDR) SDRAM, and will likely confine the new memory interface to use in servers and high-performance desktops through the remainder of the year.

The biggest speed bump centers around the highest-speed PC2100 modules, which use PC266 DDR SDRAM.

To date, only Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and Infineon Technologies AG have had their PC2100 modules validated by DDR testing labs. Most module makers report that their slower-speed PC1600 modules, which use PC200 DDR, have been validated.

Jim Sogas, vice president of sales and marketing at Elpida Memory (USA) Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., said many module makers are concentrating first on bringing PC1600 to market for use in servers, which are looking to the slower devices because of their ability to match 100-MHz processor bus speeds.

A spokeswoman for Micron Technology Inc., Boise, Idaho, said the company's PC1600 modules have been validated by multiple sources, adding that PC2100 units are currently undergoing validation tests. “We expect to be approved imminently,” she said.

Qualcomm, MP3.com To Stream Tunes To Phones.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: TechWeb  Added by: Kim Heise

Can you imagine all those SUV drivers traveling down the local freeway chatting on their cell phones and listening to MP3 audio? Enough said...

Coming sooner than you may have thought: music streamed to cell phones.

Under an agreement forged between MP3.com Inc. (stock: MPPP) and Qualcomm Inc. (stock: QCOM), an application for accessing MP3.com content will be among those offered as part of Qualcomm's new Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (Brew).

Brew will let wireless service providers offer a catalog of apps that subscribers can download to their Brew-enabled handsets, much as they might with their computers.

MP3.com will provide the lone music application in the initial version of Brew.

The software, to be introduced in Asia this summer and in the United States by the end of the year, will increase wireless transmission bandwidth just enough for users to stream music from MP3.com, San Diego, Calif.

E-mail 'wiretap' could expose your messages to prying eyes.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: ZDNET  Added by: Kim Heise

If someone were to forward jokes using this Javascript, the original sender would receive plenty of "reply" mail depending on how many times the joke is forwarded.

A newly-discovered e-mail security loophole could allow for widespread snooping of other people's online messages, adding to concerns over Internet privacy.

The loophole lets an unscrupulous individual essentially "bug" an e-mail sent to any e-mail client that can accept HTML messages with JavaScript, a simple programming language. Such clients include recent versions of Netscape Messenger, Microsoft Outlook and Qualcomm's Eudora.

The method, uncovered by the Privacy Foundation, requires only a few lines of JavaScript to be inserted into an e-mail message. If the message is received by a JavaScript-enabled client, any reply containing the original message will be forwarded back to the original sender.

That means, for example, that someone could send a message to a colleague, and if the message is forwarded to others, each forwarded message or reply would be copied and sent to the original sender, according to the Privacy Foundation.

Wireless networks vulnerable.
Posted: 02/05/2001     Source: MSNBC  Added by: Kim Heise

This just in hot off the press from MSNBC regarding a security flaw in wireless network protocols.

A team of researchers reported security flaws in the corporate standard for wireless computer networks that would allow haTHE RESEARCHERS SAID they had discovered ways to eavesdrop on or even disrupt the networks, known as Wi-Fi or 802.11, by overpowering a security algorithm called Wired Equivalent Privacy. The findings were published on the Web last week at http://www.isaac.cs.berkeley.edu.

While information transmitted over these networks is encrypted to prevent unauthorized access, hackers can use modified Wi-Fi equipment to intercept and decrypt the data, the group said.

The researchers, two from the University of California at Berkeley and one from the private security firm Zero-Knowledge Systems, also said hackers could modify others’ Wi-Fi equipment and transmit potentially harmful data onto the networks.