« Computer News from 2003 »

Merry Christmas

Over a month behind times yet again, but it's all time going into Ackadia so not to worry.


I continue to be amazing by how disgusted I am at the prices in rip-off Britain...
After nearly a year the Nikon D100 camera - with a few dealers at least - has dropped to the US prices of yesteryear.
You can now snap one up for a mere £1,200 if you are lucky (£1,400 is more common). I really want one of these, but on general principal I won't buy one until they drop to under £1,000, or we return to Canada and I get one there!
Stateside, the normal selling price is $1,499.0 - just £846 at present rates!
You can find a number of places selling it for a mere $1,020 (£575), but these are invariably scams - grey imports (in Chinese) and/or with bits missing. The feedback invariably has comments to the effect "they aren't in stock, but we have" and/or "you'll be needing this, cost you another $400 mind.."


50MB/s VDSL anyone ?
BT have had it on the books for years, a few years down the line I expect it will still be sat in their labs, the suits and powers that be sitting on it in case it's something that consumers want!

Meanwhile South Korean Hanaro Telecom, Inc are already offering it to customers.


Longhorn or long tale, part II
Whether I look consultants and guru's are second guessing the release date for the Windows XP replacement, Longhorn. Estimates are now in the 2008 to 2010 range. They obviously know something I don't. What intrigues me slightly is Microsoft aren't saying a thing either way. That smacks of being coy to me, the "2008 eh, let's see who has egg on face" smug type of coy.

  Microsofts official stance is that it's "in the early stage of development" That said, pirated alpha copies of it are lurking round the Internet, which says it's a darn site closer than "guru's" are claiming. Most of these so called specialista, to my mind, are playing a mind game... They appear to be making no distinction between Longhorn (client), Longhorn (server) and Longhorn (server as a mass market product).

Microsoft Longhorn Development Center

LonghornBlogs.com is a community initiative to help spread the word with factual information about the next version of Windows, straight from the people that are building it. (Down 1st Jan 2004)

(DISCLAIMER: This is NOT a Microsoft site. It is a community-based initiative to spread the word about the next version of Windows, sponsored by Interscape Technologies.)

Longhorn or long tale ?
I can't move but someone else gives a revision for the release date for the Windows XP replacement. Phah! I'll get my copy get I get it - I'm fed up chasing shadows!

Current reports from VNU following a Comdex IT exhibition in Las Vegas give the shipping dates as late 2006 for the desktop and late 2007 for the server. Perhaps, we shall see.


Blue laser DVD's
I suppose I should create a page for DVD's but to be honest I can't be bothered; there are plenty of sites wholly dedicated to it and the childish squabbling between global corporations gets up my nose. Instead of fighting over who's format is accepted (for license royalties generally), why can't they just look back at the mess the videotape debacle caused and the huge retail (trade and consumer) confusion and angst the current +/- battle is causing and say sod it, lets work together on this one...
*Sheeesh*
ANYWAY...
According to this article in The Register "the DVD Forum, the industry body responsible for defining and maintaining the DVD standard, has approved Toshiba and NEC's suggestion for a version of the format that will support HDTV." This is vs the Sony, Philips, Matsushita and Samsung led group who back an incompatible 'Blu-Ray format'

The new discs have capacity of 15-20GB per side, uses the same disc structure as today's DVDs and are thus backward compatible with our existing DVD-ROMS.

However... r/w is another matter and the daft sods are going to fight it out anyway. Do these people ever talk to the REAL person in the street? The Sony Blu-Ray version is said to be available now, but at $3,300 a pop I think not...


Intel samples 65nm chips
IT Week had a report on Intels newest toys - 65nm 4Mb SRAM chips, with true manufacture starting early in 2005. Apparently that's about 10 million transistors on a pinhead. Success in this process is said to indicate that Intel processors will reach 7GHz during 2005.

The article follows on that Intel is working on a 45nm process for 2007. Beyond this, the firm will have to move to extreme ultra-violet (EUV) mask technology for a possible 32nm process technology. After that, they are really going to have to get their thinking hats on as quantum physics doesn't so much rear it's ugly head as boot the door in, screaming "C'mon and have a go if you think yer 'ard enough"
I think after Tanglewood the Intel designers will celebrate by piping Hawkwinds "Quark, Strangeness and Charm" though the fab


25th Nov update
Earlier this month I commented that I felt the dates for the Longhorn release were off. Well, earlier today I was chatting with some folk at Microsoft, renewing various licences and subscriptions when we got round to what else they could do for me. Needless to say I tried to get on the Longhorn test team. Now, it's not possible at the moment, but I'm informed a major beta should be available early summer and maybe then. Following this conversation to it's conclusion I was given a release date as soon as December 2004 for the release version!

Bear in mind this is more a few techies bantering rather than anything remotely official, but I never prompted the dates implying, perhaps, that Longhorn will release in my projected timescale. We shall see. Just remember y'all heard it hear first


Intel to cut P4 chipset prices on December 28
For vendors and volume distributers, Digitimes have an article on Intels upcoming price changes. The condensed version is 3% to 6% off motherboard chipsets. Whether the processors will follow suit is another matter. I expect not.

More of interest in the rollout for the Tejas chipset, which is set at 2005 now. Personally I've always had it at 2004, next year, but I could be wrong. The Grantsdale is similarly being repositioned as a second rate chipset - tomorrows Springdale; the Alderwood chipset will now be the i875 Canterwood equivalent. That means the chip for all 2004 is the Uber hot, voltage sucking Prescott. I'll have to look into this further but a number of reports are echoing the same thoughts. I'll put the timeline on my chipsets page, but personally I think this will change. I can't say why, but I see Tejas (P5/6) as a 2004 processor.

Putting it another way, if this is delayed, so are my planned upgrades, because I don't see the Prescott as a next gen chip. To may evaluation, despite changes under the hood, it is just go faster stripes. The Tejas however is more akin to the jump from a Pentium II to high end Pentium 4.   We shall see...


AMD Roadmap
When I get a minute *cough* I'll completely redo the chipset and cpu sections. In the meantime, here's a link to AMD's plans. Prefer Intel myself as they run cooler, but colleagues swear by AMD. Better margins for box shifters and resellers, it seems. I should comment of the Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition, but it's a waste of money, in my opinion. Get a standard, high end P4 (or Althon/Opteron) and save the piggy bank for next summers offering...


Longhorn
There's lots of news and screenshots and allsorts of dedicated sites which I glance at, but I liked an article by ZDnet's David Coursey, entitled: "Why no news about Longhorn can be trusted."

My personal thought was that the release date of 2005 (now 2006) was off and that it would charge out next year, if only for the upcoming PCI Express boards and such. After a while I figured "nah." There will be a major driver orientated update next before summer and Longhorn will roll when it's ready. Or, more cynically, when the hardware is fast enough to run it. What can I say, I can still remember Microsoft's claim that Window 3.0 would run on an minimum spec XT (yep, in the same way Del Boy's Robin Reliant would run in the LeMan's...) and years later, a senior MS guy looking me straight in the eye and claiming there where no bugs in Windows 98 (release A). Hah!

Despite appearances, I rather like Microsoft as a company. Unlike so many others, they still heavily support the consultants and the reseller base, for which they get my respect. Doesn't mean I have to agree with them all the time mind

I reckon I should have a separate page for OS's, but anyway, stealing a few lines from the above article...
"Quoting from Microsoft itself, those (features) include:"

• Avalon: Graphics presentation technologies in Longhorn that provide a unified architecture for presenting user interface, documents, and media in the system.
• ClickOnce: Technology in Longhorn designed to speed and simplify deployment of applications.
• Indigo: .Net communications technologies in Longhorn designed to build and run connected systems.
• SuperFetch: Technology in Longhorn designed to help applications launch more quickly.
• Whidbey: The next generation of the Microsoft Visual Studio system of software-development tools.
  (Longhorn is apparently ground up with developers and next gen games and apps firmly in mind. Paul)
• WinFX: A programming model for Longhorn, used by software developers to build applications for the Windows platform.
• Yukon: The next generation of Microsoft SQL Server database software.
  SQL Server is actually not a part of Longhorn, so far as I know, but pieces of the technology are likely to show up under the covers of the new OS.

1Petaflops should run Doom 3, right ?
CBR Online had an article on a new IBM Supercomputer.
The wee beasty seems like a dream come true for those that need and can afford this upcoming 65,000+ processor super-computer. The custom 700Mhz 'Blue Gene/L' chips are based on the 32-bit PowerPC 440 embedded processor cores, have two FPU's, and L1, L2 and L3 caches, the latter with 4Mb memory. Even has three NIC's on the chip. Impressively, Amazingly, these special chips, each of which 5.6 gigaflops of floating point performance only eats 1.5 watts per core, with the whole system-on-a-chip dissipating a mere 12 watts. Though hardly comparing like with like, the upcoming Intel Prescott is about 100 watts...

According to the article, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory gets this beauty in the first quarter of 2005. Read the full article for a better picture, but here's a few figures I though of interest...

• IBM's petaflop 'Gene/L' will occupy 64 racks, (2,500sq') and needs 1.5 megawatts of power.
• NEC's 40 teraflop 'Earth Simulator' (the current Goliath) is 34,000sq' and needs 5 megawatts of power
• Gene/L costs out at a mere 28¢ per gigaflop and 240,000 flops/watt.
• Earth Sim costs out at $8.75 per gigaflop and 8,000 flops/watt.

Novell buys SuSE
I could put scores of links of links but they all say essentially the same thing. Novells has bought up SuSe and everything and his brother reckons it's a good marriage and bodes well for Linux. SCO might not agree mind, but who gives a fig what they think
Here's what ZDNet had to say
IBM's $50million investment in Novell had to help too, while adding another nail in SCO's coffin.

VNU had a report that New anti-piracy technology to be built into PCs and TVs made in the US by 2005
To my cynical mind, all boils down to movie moguls courting and slipping bribes to senators to pass laws in their favour. It'll all end in tears, mark my words. The gist is that the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has ordered US computer and TV manufacturers to incorporate digital rights management (DRM) technology into their products. Apparently the networks are terrified people will 'tape' or record and share free-to-air digital programmes and movies over peer-to-peer networks. Apparently, the off-shoot of this is you - the consumers - will also have to buy new DVD players to watch TV programmes. Presumably this will cascade to replacing all your media systems...

Ruddy crackers if you ask my opinion. It'll just wind everyone up and not make a ha'pence of difference to file sharers who can and will always find workarounds to these protections.

Intel preps 1MB cache 130nm Pentium 4s
The good news is Intel's announcement of the upcoming Pentium 4 Extreme Edition. 3.2GHz and a stomping 2MB of on-die L3 cache, a snip at about $935 (in 1,000's).*cough*

The bad news is that by the time it's affordable to Joe Public the 90nm Prescott are likely to be shipping.

The really bad news, in my opinion, is I wouldn't touch either with a barge pole. The first is a glorified thingy waver, and overpriced to boot. And, I am quietly 99.99% positive, anyone buying a cutting edge Prescott (especially on the words of a high street chains sales jockey (99.9999% positive here!)) is going to be REALLY upset when the Prescott is grossly overshadowed and stomped into the dust by it's own Tejas/Grantsdale PCI Express based replacement a few months later.

Shhh!
That said, despite how much I want to get my hands on the new hardware we'll be seeing next year I'll be damned if I'm give Intel and partners several grand of my hard saved budget if the whole shebang isn't a darned sight quieter. I have Zalman and Akasha kit coming out my gills and cut it how you like, 24dB (minimum) is just too ruddy noisy for a grumpy old hack like me! The only thing in my creaking body that works fully is my hearing; if I can hear it, it's too loud. If I can hear it nearly 20' away, and it's the quietest system we have...

I am not having it that, given a combined global R&D edging towards a trillion dollars a year the industry can't affordably shut the things up. Zalman make great flower fans. Sapphiretech have a Radeon R9800, again with a silent Zalman heatpipe. Throw in an Antec or Enermax psu and Seagate Barracuda V and it's almost tolerable. But rank it up again and you get back to square one. I had a go at a few folk last year, next year if I don't see and (not) hear results I'll be rolling up the sleeves I think..

Want another prediction - 90% probability or greater? As I've said earlier this year (I think it was this year), consumers and subsequently businesses alike (led, I expect by Sony) will abandon "PC's" wholescale. I can hardly remember not having a computer but I'll be at the front of the rush. Quite often, really really often, you'll hear techies and trade journalists comment that their partner has forbidden the PC to intrude the living room / lounge area. "Verbotem" as Chris Bidmead quoted in a recent copy of Microscope. No and not (just) because PC's are anti-social, nor because the tele's got a bigger screen (it doesn't in our house!), it's because the things are too damned noisy.

Altogether now: The Sun has got his hat on...
In a partially related trade story, Sun have declared war on Microsoft and, come the revolution, they will presumably grind Wintel into the dust.The new products are the Sun Ray terminal and the network-based Java Desktop System. The Sun Ray is basically a keyboard, screen and a small smartcard accessed terminal box. Darn that sounds clever and new. Needless to say it connects to a Sun Servers. Noooo, never heard of this model before. *cough*
The Microscope article continues with McNealy vision of a PC Sun Ray network in every home.
*cough splutter cough* Sorry. Flu still playing up
The argument for a complete corporate wide topology change is that the $100 a year deployment is cheaper than Microsofts $719 for Windows, Office and .Net. Continuing on, Sun are working with BT and McNealy believed:

"Sun Ray could be the terminal for movies, games, home office applications - virtually anything that British Telecom could want to provide"

One or two gaping flaws, I think. Cost. SCO's idiocy aside, a lot of governments and corporates are seriously looking at the Linux model. SME ? Most of those are firmly of the mould, "we paid for Windows Wx/NT and Office95 still does for us" As far as I can tell, most home users are of a similar opinion, the only difference being they got the software from the car boot sale* or a mate at work...

Rollout. Corporates changing the mainframes, down to the Fred in the spare widgets basement ? Moving on...
Ummm...

Moving swiftly on. A global victory based on a few home users and soho businesses trusting a (relatively) unheard of vendor and an incumbent 'local' telephone company...

The Sun has got his hat on and it's clouding his vision with a rosy future I just can't see...

Coming full circle
My back gives me jip all the time, my necks fragged and I'm getting/got RSI in my left arm, and none of that annoys me as much as the sodding hum of the systems. Something has to give and I really hope it ain't my neck! So, half-jesting aside, what's going to happen? A variation on the Sun-BT model run by commodity vendors. At some point soon in the product cycle we will see the futuristic home where the large flat screen on the wall is a voice activated, channel hopping TV cum wireless/Internet gaming cum productivity and email unit. It will effectively prove to be a large, high quality LCD HDTV with high speed (10Mbs up) Internet feed and a local file server. Optionally, unless the models merge, it will allow PlayStation 3's and XBox 2's and/or PC games to plug in and run. Surround sound as standard, naturally. As with the Sun-BT model, remote hosting and such will be a (chargeable) option. There's a number of reasons, but the biggest are falling costs, market consolidation and, the biggest, Joe Public is sick of how hard and unreliable computers are.

To be perfectly honest, with every month that passes I am amazed I can't report such a device in commercial development... Soon, like I say! And it won't be noisy, or if it is the noise element will be boxed off and remote networked out of sound and sight. The obstacles are initial hardware cost, but TV is going digital and when that truly happens...
Hmmm £1,499 HDTV or £1,999 HDTV (plug-in expandable) multi-media gaming unit...


* Pirate's park up!
The local paper shocked us all with the headline that pirate software and DVD's worth almost a million pound were impounded by a trading standards raid. GASP!
Shocked at the value ? Nah!
Shocked that films not even released over here where on sale ? Phah!
Nope, and nope again. No. NO! Although I did raise an eyebrow when it made front page, perhaps. What shocked me (OK, it never really, I have too low an opinion of human nature) is what they missed out. This has been going on for years, literally years and it goes on all over the country, even weekend. Even the £1,000,000 isn't enough to make me blink. Last time I went the car boot one couple had carload of XP, XP Office, 2003 Server (etc) (Say 10,000 by £500 in this one car!) and there was another dozen cars and vans similarly loaded with more mature films (ahem), PS games, Hulk and T3 DVD's. Up to 100,000 or more fakes a week, every week in just one town.

And my point is ?

Read this how you will, but the computer dealers around here don't bother selling most software. What's the point when they can get it for buttons at the hugely popular council run and policed car boot.

OK. Next article. What? Oh that, nothing, nothing really. OK, OK, fights off the RIAA and MS legal brigade. Sheeesh. Personally, I am way beyond caring anymore and if folk are willing to risk jail to make up to a thousand pound an hour, maybe more, selling copies why should I care. I mean hey, the local government run council appears to take the stance that well, yes it's naughty, but everyone does it, so that makes it OK. Besides, it's legal. They have paid the standing pitch fee to the council employees supervising the event.
Regardless of the true realities and legalities, a cut (£10,000 a year ?) is going into the Labour government coffers.

I'm currently retired, makes no difference to me, but the likes of publishers, Cinemas, Woolworths, HMV, Dixons, Game and local dealers all over are losing sales hand over fist. And the "punters" too as they have no comeback for blank discs, unplayable games and shaky, unwatchable movies they illegally bought...


Grumpy Old Men
Not IT related, but it needs saying!
I missed most of it - damned flu - but there was a TV program on last Friday about grumpy old beggars like me and why we are as jaded and angry at life as we are. I only caught a few comments but I was nodding to every one of them. It's a four part series with interviews with folk like Sir Bob Geldoff. Apparently the languages get 'choice'.
"This Fridays "Grumpy Old Men reflect on the technology that is supposed to make our lives easier. What is it with multi-skilling, built-in obsolescence, people who talk too loudly on their mobile phones, and texting?. Rory McGrath, Arthur Smith, John Peel, Will Self, Ken Stott and Richard Madeley are among this week's 'grumpies'."
PARENTS and politicians note: One to watch.
Why?
Well, one of those I missed - but which was picked up in the Sunday papers - was children's television. Call me a Grumpy Old Man if you like (my wife does) - but while I'll let my young children watch The Simpsons I ban then from most Saturday "Children's Television"!
I remember as a teenager, almost a grown man, watching "Jasper Carrot" while staying at my Nanna's. " 'Oh p*** off', said Dylan "   The TV was off and I was sent straight to bed in disgrace. Even my mum was in the doghouse for weeks for recommending that program as something my grandmother would like!

Now, children's programs regularly show and even - I kid you not - glorify bullying, including teachers abusing pupils, gratuitous violence for ratings, sexual innuendos and even blatant sexual actions and comments. From their it deteriorates. Here's two examples.

A new children's series (started Sunday gone) - Morris 2274 - has two bullies chase a small boy, drag him into the toilets and left him tied up to the cistern. The teacher finding him was shocked? Not a chance. She smiled, then got the rest of the class to come and laugh at him while she combed her hair, re-touched her lipstick and left him tied up and degraded to discuss Guy Fawks and his torture. The kids watching this, soaking this in, are tomorrows teachers...

In another Saturday program the aim of a phone-in game was, from what I saw, to tell the most disgusting tale they could to make one of the "entertainers" repeatedly vomit into a bucket, complete with sound effects and matter pouring out his mouth. The other presenter was awarding prizes based on how violently the first was sick.

But that's OK, the kids love it and it's pushing up the ratings. If responsible parents watched half the stuff their kids do...

Am I a grumpy old man?
I've heard a six year old use language I've never heard grown men use (outside of violent 18 rated movies and even then, rarely) and I've worked with some rough folk. Locally, teenage girls chain smoke, can't form a sentence without a string of f's and to them sex is just a game, or a way of getting a drink. As far as I can tell a huge number in the 20-30 range are illiterate and those under 20 have absolutely no respect for their elders, themselves and certainly not property.
Grumpy? I'm flaming pinging. Next cheeky brat as tells me to go forth and multiply...
The TV studio's - promoting and glorifying this attitude and behaviour is creating a generation of fouled mouthed, amoral brats just to push ratings and advertising revenue - have a great, great deal to answer too...


SCO: irrevocable doesn't mean forever
The above 'The Register' link contained a letter apparently from SCO's PR Director to them. I posted my own sarcastic rejoiner to them and thought I'd share!

A few thoughts on the letter, and SCO in general. Bear with me, I'm naturally sarcastic
I'm only vaguely following this whole debacle from the sidelines, but here goes my tuppence worth....

The letter is from a PR director, seemingly. PR being public relations / relations promotion...

"I have read over SGI’s licenses and I’ve found no place where it says it is irrevocable."
Ah. So the PR director is actually the legal contracts expert ?

"Congratulations sir, I know ... "
This place that taught him diplomacy, finish the intro course did he, or did he transfer to aforementioned law degrees ? Heavy sarcasm is my field matey, not the province of someone promoting the image of a global corporation.

" You can’t take code based on a license you signed, change it a little and then give it away for free... "
Again, not a lawyer, not watching the paint dry, but from everything I've read the multitudes of code in question are still under a very heavy NDA but everything that has leaked out so far has been shown to be either stock code, code released over a decade ago and/or code the open source brigade ripped out previously as being kak.

Now to throw in words like "apparently" and "claim" and not forgetting "FUD". To my uncultured reading the claims are just that, claims, and are both wholly unsubstantiated and rejected by defendants.

Stepping onto stickier ground, I'd like to rehash that sentence and see what I think SCO just trod in...

" You can’t take code based on a license you agreed to, change it a little and then use threats of lawsuits to sell it... "
I've seen a number of reports, saying SCO (and UNIX in general I think) has taken great hunks of Open Source code and embedded in the SCO code base.
Perhaps that's why they want to ridicule GNU and the open source license and model, then keep ALL the code. Turning it on it's head, seeing as SCO is playing possum as the injured party, protecting it's (bought not earnt IMHO) IP does this mean, as the good guys fighting off evil pirates and code thieves (*cough*) that they will in turn do the honourable thing and remove all the public domain code they appear to have taken and called their own ?

"this very language comes from SGI’s license"
Strange wording, no? "This very language", or "these very words" ? Semantically and legally there's a whole world of difference. Is he quoting, misquoting, paraphrasing, what ?
...

"rememdies"
Ah, I see, the original contract*, drafted and double checked by teams of brilliantly clever and deviously minded legal bods failed to notice the glaring typo?
Either that or we have PR man who is too lazy / rushed / unprofessional / irresponsible / full of himself (adjective of your choice) to check his own work. My site is full of typo's, but it's "my" site. No-one is ever going to get laid off, maybe even lose their house because someone read what I'd written and said, "we're not doing business with them if that's how they act"

*(Which hasn't been proven in court to have been breached, therefore can't, I believe be, terminated on unsubstantiated evidence, and for SCO to terminate would in fact be a breach of contract by them, leaving SGI and IBM to claim substantial damages...)

"Irrevocable? Hmmmmmmmmmmmm."
? Quit with the heavy sarcasm already!

If this Blake Stowell is truly the public relations director at SCO, and this rank amateur flame was how he and thus SCO are promoting themselves as a reputable and professional organisation to global corporates... Nuff said eh.


Flu epidemic
Oh aye, vague apologies for the lack of updates the past few weeks. I'm not sure if the current bug has yet reach "epidemic" proportions but the weekend paper reported the figure at over 3 million of us in the UK with the damned thing and every likelihood the number will grow considerably. If your friends or that red nosed bloke at the bus stop even look like sneezing near you run off, 'cos this one's a beggar! The lucky ones get it mild, a few days of fever, maybe with vomiting. Me, I avoided the latter but I couldn't move for 3 or 4 truly horrible days... Smokers will have a lovely time of it, I expect*
*Filthy habit! Serves 'em right, you ask me. Self inflicted

Sept
Well, finally got Ackadia revised. Kudos to CSE HTML Validator. Thoroughly recommended. No way could I have done it properly without it, No way at all!


AMD unwraps 2GHz 64-bit Athlons In this report by the Reporter we have news of AMD's Ahlon 64 family today, with the 2GHz Athlon 64 3200+ for consumers and similarly clocked Athlon 64 FX-51 for gamers etc seeking that little bit extra.
I assume the FX-51 is in answer to Intels (Xeon MP-rebadged) Pentium 4 Extreme Edition with it's 2Mb cache.

"The difference between the two chips: the FX has a built-in dual-channel 128-bit DDR controller, while the 3200+ connects to a single-channel 64-bit memory bus. The latter works with unbuffered memory, the former with registered DIMMs."

Around Q1 2004 we can expect a 64-bit for Windows XP, and, I strongly believe, an interim or XP or massive SP2 that will include drivers and support for the technologies of 2004, like PCI Express.

The volume oem prices are set at $417 for the 3200+ and *cough* $733 for the FX-51 $733. Needless to say they will be on allocation for some time...


IDF Fall 2003:
There's a number of news items relating to PCI Express which I've placed on it's own news pages.
When it launches next year it will knock your socks off! Kiss goodbye to your AGP card!

Intel unveils its next Centrino The new processor, under the name of 'Dothan', will be built using 90nm technology, have a 2Mb level two cache and include more efficient power management. The new 'Sonoma' platform for it will include 'Alviso' - a chip apparently dedicated to prolonging battery life. The setup will work with DDR-2 also, as will most of the upcoming Intel platforms. In addition to support for 802.11a/b/g it is to have 802.11i advanced encryption.

According to a VNU article Intel has plans to build location awareness into the Centrino platform, which will allow a computer to receive location information from GPS and other sources to get an accurate fix on the user's position. All clever stuff. The article goes on to list the other power saving enhancement.
I am here. Well I never!

Another good article on the next gen Centrino's can be found here at Computer Shopper in an interview with Don MacDonald, Intel's Director of Marketing, Mobile Platforms Group.


Seagate launches world first 100GB platter
Given I'm a Seagate partner I'm a tad irked that I read about this via PC Pro, but no matter.
Anyway, Seagate has announced the world's first 100GB platter which means its latest two-platter Barracuda drive will offer 200GB of storage.
For corporates, they have also announced a Fibre Channel solution - a collaboration with QLogic and Condre for small and mid-sized enterprises that offers data throughput of 2Gb/sec across storage systems with capacities up to 2.3 Terabytes. Cost is said to be in parity with SCSI equivalents


BT OK's commercial SDSL roll-out
According to a report by "The Register" BT Wholesale has given the green light for the commercial roll-out of its SDSL broadband product. Locally Warrington and Liverpool have both been enabled a while *mutter* but apparently a further 50 exchanges are promised by January 2004. Let's hope they join the dots and we are one the lucky ones.
And we are, but at over £400 a month for a 2Mb line, I can wait. My wife would kill me! Tempting though...

I also found this August report by PC Pro giving the wholesale (ex vat) prices on BT's SDSL "IPStream Symmetric service".

• 256kbit/sec at £1,440
• 512kbit/sec at £1,680
• 1Mbit/sec at £2,520
• 2Mbit/sec at £3,000
• The connection charge will be £450

SDSL is more for businesses, folk with homerun webserver and terminally obsessed online games. If you do want SDSL at home, you will need an additional copper phone line installed, you can't split it line ADSL.


Nanotechnology
I follow this everytime something catches my eye so I thought I'd share this interesting article by PC Pro. Seven pages of snippits into the pro's and con's of the technology. Fastinating stuff.

IBM's Uber computer
Actually this is old news, coming as it does from July, but I liked it. According to a newsbyte in PC Pro, the 1,058 IBM eServer 325 systems that make up the supercomputer use 2,116 Opterons and crunch through 11Tflops/sec.

So.Big revisited
I really hope they nail this idiot. I had over 500 of the .F variant sent to be last month!
AOL saw up to 11.5 million a day and the cost to business was put at an estimated $30 billion.

Storage Expo
15-16 October 2003, Olympia National Hall, London

Really I should dedicate a page to all the computer shows and events. I've been saying this for years but I think I'll get round to it after I catch up with my backlog of email and journals...

Aug
Updates set-back while I completely revise the site.

So.Big.F
No, I won't say it, it's a family site.
Just give us five minutes in a cell with a bat and the pathetic wannabe responsible for this virus. Do, I didn't get infected, I'm far to paranoid to let stuff get though, but it is beggering up my days. I stopped counting after 50 yesterday. Today it's only 10am and I've already stopped 39 copies on it. The real pain is between the filters on the mail server, the anti-spam filtering and the anti-virus going berserk, it took me nearly an hour to get my email down first thing this morning. I've stopped several more since then.

I REALLY hope they find the idiot responsible and give him a jail sentence that screams:
"Deterrent! This is what happens to scum like you"
I'd look at it like this, globally it has cost millions of man hours, tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars damage and lost productivity. That's you going to jail for at least 10 years. And that's before we even find out what payload this nasty has planned!

It you aren't patched and using the latest antivirus, when, probably too late for you. Next time maybe you'll take more care...
*Sigh*

Oh no! I have the virus too!!!
Eh, who the hecks Millenium Bank ?
As if I don't have enough trouble with this Arletta / Arlethe moron spoofing my domain for spam sending now I have people spoofing my own email address for virus's. God's but I despise these pathetic cyber vandals.

July
Updates set-back while I completely revise the site.

23rd June
Intel releases the 3.2Ghz P4 this morning. Giving the price premium I'd go with a 3.0Ghz and wait for the Prescott in November or an Uber fast system next year. On a similar vein, ATI are exprected to announce their RS300 chipsets today.
See what The Register has to say


SCO pulls the rug from under IBM
IBM however had nailed the AIX rug to the floor and in the politest legal terms told SCO to get stuffed. Everyone is in the same frame on mind, SCO is winding everyone up in the hope someone will buy them or pay them to go away. There's no way on earth they can fight a legal battle and even if they could it would run like this:
(SCO) Mi'lord, we contest they sold Linux products with our Unix code.
(Judge) Would that be the same Linux build you sold, thereby legally transferring the code to public domain? Case dismissed. Costs awarded to IBM...

Here's a PC Pro story on it


Intel IDF Fall 2003:
Mark Your Calendars for the Next U.S. IDF:   September 15 - 18 in San Jose, California

Japan launches tooth regeneration project
I've nicked this for posterity from here at the Inquirer. If it takes off I'm in the queue!

Intel prices for October
Hmmm. Order a 3Ghz P4 and get the revised prices later in the day. Depressing eh. That said, if you keep waiting for the next cut, well, tomorrow never comes...

Just to be unbiased, here's a link to AMD's price cuts from May

SCO extortionists?
I couldn't resist adding this link to The Inquirer on SCO's debacle.
Apparently, one of the people they sent a cease and desist threat to over Linux was Novell, who they bought Unix off. Important note this, they bought the product, but not the patent, nor the copyright!
So, SCO have issued a vague order to Novell to stop infringement of copyright they themselves (Novell) own. The Inquirer has printed a copy of Novell's tart response which basically calls SCO extortionists and tells them to put up or shut up.
SCO, unsurprisingly, declined to answer.

There's a similar nonsense going on with memory too at the minute. Some wannabe issued writs against all memory vendors for royalties on this or that patent and a surprising number (all the smaller one's) paid up, perhaps because they used a hotshop lawyer. The big three however appear to said said "Ye, right, sod off..." and that was that.

Hmmm. I had this funny dream about computers when I was a child, I've got the drawing somewhere. That's copyright that is. Y'all owe royalties backdated thirty something years for infringement on the grounds of (let me look at the patents you own and I'll re-phrase my argument...)
If the shoe fits...
If it doesn't fit there's always a bent lawyer who can find a reason to sue the - Cobblers!

It must be noted that I hold most lawyers in contempt secondly only to Spammers and it's a given some of the Spammer's are lawyers. If there's justice in life there's a special hell for the latter breed, eh!

Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Or benchmarks even!
I caught this on The Inquirer and it's link to a damning statement by Futuremark.
Basically, Nvidia cooked the drivers to make there's card seem up to 25% faster than they really are, depending on the test being run. Apparently the newest Detonator drivers watched for 3DMark03 running and tried to pull a fast one.

The audit report is fairly detailed but I'll sum it up from a buyers perspective. Nvidia made a conscious decision to lie about how good their new GeForce FX cards are in a (fraudulent?) attempt to boost sales. I thought the industry was past all that non-sense, I guess not.

I dare say lawyers would argue with comments like "benchmarks are a guide" but I'm less forgiving. If the sign says first left for the best bar in town you're going to be a tad miffed when you find they have watered the beer, hmmm...

On an unrelated note, ATI appears to have a new card lined up in the form of a R360. Pretty much is the Radeon 9800, but running at or over 400Mhz with support for 256Mb or DDR/DDRII. A faster card is likely for Christmas looking at .13 micron. Once year end looms though, forget buying any new hardware, really. There's massive changes afoot for next spring. So big in fact that I'm still uncharacteristically dithering about upgrading this year because I know it's wasted money, whatever I build will be relegated to the kids (again).


Internet : 30 years young
VNU recently had a chat with Robert Metcalfe, Ethernet's inventor. Mr Metcalfe subsequently went on to found 3Com.

Accordng to the report:
Ethernet's birthday is attributed to May 22, 1973, when Robert Metcalfe, a member of the research staff for Xerox at its Palo Alto Research Center, wrote a memo to his bosses stating the possibilities offered by linking together via cables the computers in a building.

Patent #4,063,220 "describes Ethernet as a multipoint data communications system with collision detection"

The article draws on that the reason it stuffed IBM's superior (at the time) Token Ring was that it was backed by the rest of the market. In a similar way, IBM messed up with MCI slots. And, glancing down, we see SCO taking the proprietory stance...


SCO takes on IBM over Linux
I was going to provides load of links and such but to be honest, I can't be bothered. Glancing between the lines, it's a sabre rattling exercise to try and scare up money. I'm guessing SCO's turnover is down and they are looking for ways to appease shareholders. Some bright spark had the idea that (maybe) some of the code IBM used/released to Linux might have been under SCO's patent's and they want a billion dollars for infringement or they will revoke IBM's AIX licence and, (maybe) come gunning for the Linux vendors like RedHat, Mandrake, and so forth.

Without a doubt all the Linux sites will be / are up in arms about it, but if you want my opinion, SCO has made a huge and possibly unrecoverable FOBAR in the PR department. Patents are atimes kinda like those daft mosaic pictures. You know the one's, all red and blue squiggles and swirls....
Hold it just so, tilt your head a tad more, squirt, cross your eyes. Now, make a face like your trying to hold back wind in a crowded elivator. There, see the picture that might be the one I drew twenty years ago...
You know, I've yet to see that ruddy picture!

As one VNU report says:
"SCO's $1bn lawsuit against IBM over its use of the SCO-licensed Unix code could be an attempt by SCO to get IBM to buy it out, according to analyst Ovum."

There's far more in the same vein which sums up my thought at a glance. SCO's are financially embarrased despite claims of improvements in recent quarters and have bet their shirt on the race. Unix is a mess of code from AT&T, Novell, SCO, with more from IBM, open source etc etc. SCO have taken the stance, we (now) own Unix, so it's our ball now and if you don't pay me huge amounts of money I'm going to burst the ball so you can't play anymore. Only problem with that scenarios is no-one in the neighbourhood will ever talk to you again and there's always the chance some ugly bruiser will kick your door down on account that actually, this is your ball. THAT ball you just tried to burst is our Timmy's, what y'gonna do about it?

The industry is littered with the tattered remains of companies that got too big for their britches and I'll bet SCO have just signed there death warrant!


Bill makes more Billions?
I keep hearing more and more snippits about Microsoft's new big version of Windows and I've come to two conclusions. One, I really, really want it and two, unless I start saving (like last year) I won't be able to afford the hardware to run it!

Apparently, as this Inquirer article relates, Microsoft "have instructed" Sharp to produce an ultra high resolution LCD for Longhorn. One capable of displaying one billion hues, and, no doubt vastly better refresh rates than current offerings. Fits in with what I heard that Windows 2005 / Longhorn will need a minimum of 128Mb on the video card to run.

Looking for E3 news ?
Take a wander over to Expo's own site, or the official Insider site

Digital Trippers
Professional and serious amateur digital photographers will like this link. Never though about it before but portable storage is getting to be big business. Enter the Tripper. At prsent it allows up to 60Gb to be copied on the fly via USB 2 and a CompactFlash card reader which is compatible with type I and type II, including IBM Microdrives. The latter, incidentally, are soon to be released at 4Gb sticks. If I remember I'll get their home page and add it to my manufacturer's section.

Doomed, we're all Doomed!
Doom III'd even. When the shareware release of iD's original Doom was released in 1995 the Internet measurably slowed down, not massively, but noticeably, yes. I even seem to recall a story about the US's Stock Exchange being affected. Having seen just a few scary screenshots at PC Zone I think I'd (or even iD'd) expect the Internet to fall over as we clammered to get the demo. If the game is even half as good and half as intense as these few shots promise, which, given the comments about hardware requirements is likely, then this is...
*D'Oh, I've drooled down by chin*

Go, take a look at the pictures, they are near cinematic quality! Imagine them with next years hardware to back it up. Ewww! Yah!

As an update, there's even a preview video available on a ATI promo. If I keep the blistering 1.3kb/s I might get the 20Mb file down today. *Grins* I bet that's eating up some bandwidth, eh. Another report says Warner Brothers have picked up the tab to produce a film tie-in of the game, likely to hit the cinema's next Christmas, around when the game is released

Will they, won't? part II
Last month I commented on whether or not PC's would replace TV's and I said well, yes. Turns out Hi-Grade Computers had something with over half the features already on the market with theirXperian Range. Go figure. It even had a favourable review by PC Adviser, available as a pdf.

Cutting to the crunch, it's full blown PC with a 17" LCD screen, but it will start up (ie no booting to Windows) in Instant Play mode where you can access the TV, DVD, CD, MP3 or FM functions without having to boot Windows. Looks tasty, eh. Imagine them five years down the line...

MSN blocks 2.4bn spam emails a day
Hmmm. the "figure is 80 per cent of all messages to MSN servers" Well I never would have believed that! I bet it's even higher for Yahoo! Fortunately, according to this Computer Buyer article MSN, Yahoo and AOL have banded together to "make a four-pronged attack on spam." Basically it involves stopping accounts being auto-created for spam shots, educational guides for its users and new image filters*

*Apparently single pixel images can be embedded in spam mail that, when loaded, confirm to the sender that the recipient's email address is indeed an active one."

Oh, I said four. Far as I can tell, the forth and main one appears to be that they are in alliance with AOL and Yahoo. As far as I am concerned, well, it's a start! My filters delete AOL, MSN etc on sight after spam just from this lazy trio's systems passed 400 a day... Just think, alone, just me, I was looking at up to 200,000 spam messages a year!!!

The biggest problem is Outlook Express to be honest. And yes, there are software filters, server filter and other email packages like Eudora, but what do most folk use? The spam filters Express employs are a waste of space. (I've a tutorial here if you want to try). I'm pretty positive that if Microsoft made the filters more intuitive and up front global spam would fall overnight. Think I'll send them (another) note to get on with it....


IDE to DIE. Bring out yer' dead!
Bit melondramatic for sure but if this schematic by Intel is anything to go by parallel IDE (ATA100 etc) have already been consigned to history. That said, serial mice and PS2 keyboards were downclassed to "legacy" items a few years back so i guess the ugly thick cables with be with us a few years longer yet, if only for DVD's and such.

Nvidia specs revealed
I'll put the nitty gritty details on my videocards page but basically the following sites have let the cat out the bag on benchmarks and specs:
NV40 specs!!! Yeah!!!
3D News.Net had GeForce FX 5900 Ultra Benchmarks, but the links dead

Personally I reckon the NV60 will be out long before I catch up with all my typing so I'll leave you gamers to drool over the nect gen cards

2Mb/s ADSL for £70 anyone?
If you accept a 50:1 contention rate you can actually get it for £54.99 or less as part of BT's wholesaler deal to ISP's. I phoned BT to ask more about it and got passed to my account manager (I have a dedicated manager, wow!) who's understandably a bit miffed.
And why is he miffed?
Apparently they spun off part of the business to deal with ADSL, then promptly stopped the free connection deal, drying up enquiries, although (probably because of this) they have introduced a new promotion of just £50 to sign up. Then, adding insult to injury, BT's own customers won't get a sniff of the massive discounts.

Hmmm. BT want £159.99 a month, yet if I go with one of BT's wholesale customers, like PlusNet I get the same deal, plus decent web hosting including 500Mb and a CGI bin - all for £69.99 a month.
Even before moving ISP's for hosting, I'll be saving a whacking £1,269 a year!
The daft thing is they (the suits) will be surprised when folk start leaving BT Openworld in droves. D'Oh!

Putting it into even more perspective, one of my friends is trialling 2Mb/s cable with Telewest's Blueyonder locally and believes they will roll it out at under £45 a month - including vat.It may not be a like for like comparison but to joe public and small businesses they will look at the bottom line first, second and last and will see only three details

• BT, the incumbent at £187.99 a month
• Telewest, the underdog at £45.00 a month (give or take?)
• The real work saving of over £140 a month, or a over whacking £1,700 a year

Here's a twelve bore BT, feel free to shoot yourself it the leg again!
The daft thing is I'm really happy with the Openworld service and in fact eager for SDSL to reach this town.
Happy yes, eager yes, but stupid? Nah!   Daft beggers!

Here's a selection of other ISP's making a mockery of BT's prices - unlike my current host who are also more interested in short term gains, I feel. Will I be renewing, they ask? To use the colloquial: "In your dreams soft lad!"

PlusNet   -   Internet Central   -   [I'll add the rest in a day or so]


Corel Drawn?
I don't know if it's true but according to a report in IT Wee, CorelDraw is selling itself! That's new to me for sure. I felt like I'd been hit in the guts when I read that. I've used CorelDraw nearly forever. Certainly there's no obvious mention of it on Corel's site and I don't remember it in the newsletters I get from them. Guess I'll have to have a dig. Martin Veitch mentions it in the same breath as "Nice weather for the time of year" then goes off on a tangent about Microsoft.
*Mutter*
Just have to see who's buying. Me, cynical as it sounds, I'll like to see Microsoft buy it. Despite being a partner I don't always agree with Microsoft but I'll give them this, if this, if I trust anyone not to ruin CorelDraw it's these. Selflishly perhaps, I don't care about the rest of Corel's range.

Canadians caught speeding
Given my own dual nationality I had to include this newsbyte. When you can drop England in a corner of the Northwest Territories and not find it again it's saying something seeing as most Canadians have access to 8Mb/s ADSL. The grass really is greener, eh!

Anyway, here's the figures:

A Computer Buyer just asked Will the PC replace TV?
Yes or no doesn't quite cut it, hmmm!

It will take about 8 to 10 years, but yes, the old 'tele' is facing obsolescence and will take your stereo and VCR with it!

Sooner or later the RIAA and associated moguls will realise in the long term it's better to go with the flow than fight it tooth and nail with lawyers, lobbyist's and 'contributions' to politicians then, unfettered, the pace will increase further.

You probably won't believe this but for trade it's actually easy to build a new multi-media PC - with a 17" monitor for under £150 ex vat. Add one of Hauppauges TV cards and you have a TV, a DVD player, a stereo and a digital video recorder all in one - complete with FreeView digital viewing.

The last one is interesting too as it has the potential to answer half the concerns over bandwidth for streamed video. The rest of the concerns will disappear as new technologies like variable definition XVD roll out.

All it takes is willpower, that and shareholders insatiable desire for year on year growth and returns...

So, wild claims aside, time to put my money where my mouth is. Parents with young children will know this form, he says, ticking off his fingers:

"How, When, Why, Where and Who?"

How? :

All the techology is there or emerging and transistors will soon drop to under 65nm, just needs repackaging and new software. If you are thinking purely in terms of downloading, don't. Think satellite and analogue to digital. Internet wise, Digital Rights Management and piracy issues will hold us back a far longer than the technology

If I am right, this is how it will work. PC's will be dual start. In the (default) dumb mode it will boot to be a media station rather like a combi TV-DVD but with on screen display. In boot mode it will start up rather like a normal PC.
It's likely some will have the O/S disabled in hardware for technophobes and to reduce costs and support.
Here's the clever part. It will also be modular, using an extension to the upcoming PCI Express and/or a cartridge based hub.

How will this work? Consoles, Satellite decoders etc will be redesigned to take advantage of this. Basically, future PC's will be so insanely fast it beggers belief and these plug-in devices will piggyback all this circuitry. The CD/DVD will change slightly too is as much as it will detect - in hardware - what's put in and load it accordingly. I believe it will include voice activation options for the blind and disabled (and for terminally lazy couch potatoes).

When? :

It's already here! To market you are realistically looking at early models in 2005 with a global off the shelf 'white goods' market by 2010

Why? :

It's cheaper and more profitable in the long term.

Where? :

Like all new toys, it will begin in Tokyo, bounce Stateside and spread.

Who? :

Ewww, there's a question. There's a lot I can see happening and even more conjecture, but if I know how to pull it off, then the big players will too. Forget standards, it's first to market and rely on existing rules for compatibility.
OK, OK, don't rush me!
We are talking massive cross licensing deals especially with embedded chips and there's always some rogue git who will try to claim tenuous royalities on the back of an obscure patent...
*Mutter*
OK. I believe it will be led by Sony and maybe Philips, either acting in tandem or as a joint venture.Samsung seem innovative enough to be an early adopter
Thereafter the Dell's, and Hitachi's of this world while all jump on the wagon.

Hmmm? No, not Wintel, AOL or any of the other top names in IT. Designwise it's simple evolution, what it needs and will get is revolution. Don't get me wrong, Intel, SiS, Via, Texas Instruments, Microsoft and all the rest will be / are involved, but this is the next big step....

Footnote
Ain't gonna happen? Hand's up IT veterans. Remember the size and weight of the first PC's, any colour display you want, as long as you wanted green text. No sound, no network card, no modem, not even a hard drive.

Now look at the latest laptops, replete with it's DVD writers...

Now think of ahead a few years (and I do mean a few) where 100Ghz 128 bit processors are a reality and Intels latest offering has upwards of 10Ghz manufactured at under 65nm and ... and ... and ...

Now think of all the money the multi-nationals can save - and make - when they merge the production and marketing costs of DVD players, satellite decoders, stereos, PC's and the television....


Will XVD oust DVD?
"B.H.A Corporation announced a revolutionary new video compression technology, the XVD Media Platform. BHA also announced an investment in creator of XVD, California-based DigitalStream-USA, Inc., together with an agreement covering joint development and marketing of the technology worldwide." Feature list:

• Store 2.5 hours of full-screen, DVD-quality video on a single standard cd-rom that can be played back automatically on any PC
• Encode in real-time high resolution digital video on a PC using I/O Data’s XVD PCI solution
• Stream video over existing cell phone infrastructure at 24 frames per second
• Store over 2 hours of HDTV video on an a single DVD

TCPA / Palladium Frequently Asked Questions
Found this article on some of the dirty tricks Microsoft, Intel, Disney et al have in mind for us with reguard the digital rights. The basic premise is that media moguls get carte blanche, vendors utterly and punitively tie you to their products and your privacy rights cease to exist, in the name of national security and corporate greed!

Yep, I'm cynical and jaded in my dotage. Hmmm, I wonder why...

D'oh!!!
Yes, three exclamations. The neanderthols trying to enforce digital rights laws appear to have a new plan. Make the underpinning of the Internet illegal, no Internet, no problem. Are these people even sane?

The basic idea is they want to make it illegal to stop them infringing your basic rights to privacy. Disney, the RIAA and the medfia moguls want carte blanche to interigate your systems. As firewalls and encryption prevent this, the ambiguous wording of the laws they are trying to pass in various US states effectively make internet security a crime.

Read the article by Edward W. Felten on his (already dead!) [ www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000336.html ] Freedom to Tinker site, and the related article at The Inquirer.

War
Can't be a news page without rhetoric on the current US-UK led war in Iraq, so here's my pennies worth. Whilst my sympathies go out to all concerned, I don't do religion and I don't do politics, but I have a bad feeling about the future. Nuff said!

4Gb Dimms sound bright to me
Moving back to more appropriate news, The Inquirer has a report on Microns ability to deliver 4GB registered PC2100 DDR DIMM. Samsung claimed to be the first to release a 4GB DDR DIMM, but this is a semantics thing which basically says the Micron part is good to go in high end servers.

This one made be sit up!
Long March promises 100GHz performance
"Researchers at Shanghai Jiatong University could consign current microprocessors from Intel and AMD to the scrapheap. Using 128-bit technology, the architecture, codenamed 'Long March', could deliver performance of up to 100GHz in as little as 18 months, say researchers. Built on a new 90 nm (nanometer) process, the Long March chips feature 1Gb level 2 cache and prototypes have been demonstrated running at 5GHz with no special cooling.

Pin compatible with the Pentium 4, the chips will pose a significant threat to Intel's dominance, say US analysts.

The only fly in the ointment, says sources close to the University, is that offshore fabs - based in Taiwan - are currently the only plants capable of manufacturing the processors that use Gallium Arsenide (GaAs) instead of silicon substrates.

University spokespersons today refused to confirm or deny the plans, saying it was not their policy to comment on future products and they would not be drawn on the political implications of relying on Taiwanese manufacturers to build the parts."


*Cough*

Had a lot on lately and I simply haven't got round to update the news pages. Overall it's been awfully quiet short of the usual round of who's bankrupt and what new toys are coming out in the fall...

Meanwhile, for those like be waiting for the latest go faster toys:

I suppose the hottest news item over the past few months is the continuing intransigence of Fujitsu over the millions of faulty drives they sold, but it's not their fault and anyway they can't afford to do the right thing. Bah!
Hint. I will NEVER EVER sell or recommend any Fujitsu product as long as I live. As far as I am concerned, they have no honour and I cannot trust their products nor there warranties...
I'll put in links here and on the Hard Drives page later.

Go faster wise we have Intels Granite board, WooHoo, I want! - - - That's getting replaced in a few months with a 800Mhz FSB mobo... OK, I can wait!

AMD meanwhile are moving to 64bit processors. All things remaining on course, Duron and Athlon will be largely obsolete by September.

Finally we have the Nvidia GeForce FX. *Reads the specs and starts drooling*
*Reads the underlaying figure and drops the donuts*
OK, this is going off pre-release cards and ignore all the bumf on 125 million transisters etc and get to the nitty gritty:

• Due to the sheer size of the fans it needs two slots. Err, OK.
• It requires a 12v cable for the fan and draws a storming 75watts off the PSU! *Coughs out donut*
• Oh, and the fan is so noisy it will drown out the average hoover / vacuum cleaner!

When the Ti4600 come out I was out there queuing up for one. I love the card, but still often regret buying it because I find the noise intrusive, and the new card is several orders of magnitude louder ? As my youngest would say in her thick northern accent "I don't think so!"


IBM monitors beggered too!
Along with Fujitsu IBM's recent track record for Hard drives is less than savoury. The latest addition is that IBM is recalling 117,000 of its computer monitors to fix a circuit board that can overheat and smoke, causing a fire hazard.

February 28, 2003: Exclusive Intel Roadmap Details
ExtremeTech's crack reporter, Mark Hachman, got his hands on some killer information - Intel's entire roadmap for the next few years. Apparently it was way too much for one story, so they split it up into seven different stories detailing different parts of Intel's plans, from mobile to desktop, chipsets and servers.
This article make for avid reading. Enjoy!

Intel's latest cuts prices
A lot later than I expected, but there you go!
The changes affect Pentium 4 and Xeon processors as follows:

• The 3.06GHz P4 falls 8% to $589
• The 2.80GHz P4 falls 6% to $375
• The 2.66GHz, 2.60GHz, 2.53GHz and 2.50GHz P4's have all fallen 21%
• The rest have fallen 16% with the 2.20GHz P4 at low end for $163.
  
  
• For the Xeons, (2.66GHz to 2.20GHz) this rounds cuts are up to 16% per cent
• The 3.06GHz to 2.80GHz however are unchanged.

As ever, the prices are based on 1,000 unit quantities.


2Mb ADSL for £40 anyone ?
Computer Shopper recently reported on Internet Centrals offer of low cost high bandwidth ADSL. Migration is possible for existing BT users too. Sounds OK.

Phoenix rewrites the BIOS rules
Apparently Phoenix have come up trumps with an advanced BIOS. Expect it in new motherboard shortly!   Read the Computer Shopper review here.

Erm!