Intel has produced its first prototypes of the upcoming "Banias" processor, the company's first chip purely designed for use in mobile PCs, the company announced at WinHEC on Thursday. Intel Labs produced the first test version of the chip during the past week, Intel President Paul Otellini said in a speech at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference. Banias systems, including Intel's Odem chipset, will come out in early 2003 and feature 802.11b "Wi-Fi" wireless networking, long battery life and uncompromised performance, he said.
"It is the first bottom-up product designed for notebook computers that does not compromise performance," Otellini said. Banias is an "entirely new micro architecture" employing different circuitry, Otellini said in an interview after the speech. The system's 802.11 support initially will come with separate chips, but those will gradually be integrated with the other chipset components, he said.
The U.S government is considering using online ID systems from Microsoft, Entrust, RSA, and VeriSign among others to track the identity of visitors to a dozen new federal Web sites launching later this year, a federal official said Friday. Mark Forman, who oversees the federal government's $45 billion IT budget, said he is talking to the companies about how their online identification technologies might give agencies a standard way to let the general public access private information on the Web. One of the sites, for example, will allow citizens to check social security benefits online. Forman is associate director of information technology at the Office of Management and Budget.
Couched as it was with the news that the company has already sold over 32 million copies of Windows XP, Microsoft's quarterly earnings announcement late last week was met with confusion, even by seasoned financial analysts. One the one hand, the company had posted a strong profit--$2.74 billion, an increase of 12 percent year-over-year--but Microsoft's revenues of $7.25 billion fell short of analyst's expectations of $7.34 billion, the first time the company had ever done so. To add to the problems, Microsoft said that earnings for the next two quarters would fall short of previous estimates.
Asked by U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly for its views, the Justice Department chose to split the baby rather than argue the point. "This action by the non-settling States raises for the very first time the prospect that a small group of States, with no particularized interests to vindicate, might somehow obtain divergent relief with wide-ranging, national economic implications," the government lawyers warned. But, they added, the court need not address the Big Picture issues in order to deny the dissenting states their tougher remedy. All that's needed is the judicious use of "equitable discretion."
I think it is pretty bad, no matter where you stand on Gates and company. For one thing, Microsoft's rivals haven't been shy about suing Microsoft without help from the states. And nobody is proposing to take away the right of private parties to seek damages in antitrust suits. But more important, the more we can discourage the game of what economists call "rent-seeking" -- the redistribution of property through non-market activity, such as lawsuits -- the more likely that success in the relatively unregulated technology industry will continue to be determined by innovation and quality.
After a two-year investigation, local and federal authorities said Friday they had broken up a piracy ring that sold unauthorized computer software, costing Microsoft Corp. and other companies hundreds of millions of dollars in lost sales. FBI Director Robert Mueller said "Operation Cyberstorm" was one of several active federal investigations into software piracy. Software companies claim the problem is so widespread it costs the industry $12 billion a year. Authorities arrested 27 people Thursday, mainly in San Jose and neighboring cities, on copyright infringement, counterfeiting and money laundering charges. Those charges carry between five and 20 years in prison.
Microsoft Corp. Chairman Bill Gates will appear in federal court on Monday to testify against the antitrust sanctions sought by nine states still pursuing the landmark case against the software giant. The decision to put Gates on the witness stand marks a reversal from Microsoft's original trial, when he did not appear in person but was seen in unflattering portions of a videotaped pre-trial interview played by government lawyers.
Gates "will speak to the potential harm to consumers and the industry posed by the non-settling states' remedy proposals," Microsoft said in a statement on Friday. More specifically, Gates will tell the judge that the stricter sanctions would hobble collaboration in the computer industry, according to a company spokesman.
There's something interesting going on with Windows XP, and I'm not so sure that many people have picked up on this subtle strategy shift, compared to previous Windows versions. With the continued delays for Longhorn, the next major Windows release, Microsoft seems to be digging in with Windows XP as the platform for Windows client releases over the next two years. Witness the sudden importance of Windows XP Service Pack 1 (SP1), which will initiate a new round of OS upgrades, including Windows XP Tablet PC Edition, the Mira remote display technology, and Freestyle, the so-called "ten foot" digital media user interface. We've seen full Windows releases in the past that didn't offer such major updates, but this time around they're being delivered via a service pack.
Microsoft Corp. yesterday brought to life an ecosystem of technology companies that it claims would suffer if antitrust sanctions sought by state prosecutors are imposed. Testifying at Microsoft's request in a federal court hearing, four software company executives explained how their businesses are built around, and dependent on, the ubiquity of Microsoft products and services.
Microsoft wants to show U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly that not every company in the industry is a rival, and that she should not punish it for unlawful conduct under antitrust laws in ways that might damage other companies and their customers.
The executives said their products rely on applications that might be removed from a modular version, such as Internet Explorer. They said their testing and support costs would rise if they had to engineer their software to run with rival applications. Chris Hofstader, said his products rely exclusively on Internet Explorer and thus would not run on versions of Windows distributed without it.
Microsoft Corp. is gearing up for an expensive year to assure its long-term health, company executives said, warning Wall Street to expect weaker financial results than earlier forecast. Though the software maker's profits rose nearly 12 percent for its fiscal third quarter, results reported Thursday missed analysts' expectations by about 2 cents a share. That, combined with the revised guidance for future performance, sent shares in Microsoft tumbling in after-hours trading.
"If I'm doing my math right it looks like a good quarter," said Scott McAdams, president of McAdams Wright Ragen in Seattle. "That's the good news. The bad news is they guided down the fourth quarter a little bit."
Gates--Open doors to the digital home
At his keynote address at WinHEC, Bill Gates demos Bluetooth-enabled Mira and Freestyle technologies, which he says will turn the PC into the network hub for the digital home.
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Gates talks security details
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates describes the new security tools and software that have been developed as part of the company's drive toward 'trustworthy computing.
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