WinInsider

AOL Accused of Overcharging
As if $23.95 a month wasn't already too expensive for a dial-up account, AOL has found itself on the receiving end of a bogus-billing lawsuit, in which customers accuse the company of unlawfully charging them for merchandise they didn't order. AOL, known for spamming nonusers with coaster-like sign-up disks and for spamming members with annoying pop-up ads, says it's done nothing wrong. But a California law firm quickly received more than 200 complaints from users about the practice after it announced a suit and now has thousands of potential complaints. Class action, anyone?

Intel Launches Xeon DP Processors
The company announced several new advances at its developer forum; one cool new product is a server-oriented microprocessor called the Xeon DP. Intel says the new chip will eventually scale to speeds of 10GHz, although current models top out at 2.2GHz. But the chip and its corresponding chipset are important to Intel because they finally bring the server line up to speed with Intel's desktop products, which have received most of the company's focus. A multiprocessor version, the Xeon MP, will ship later this quarter.

Raymond: Cheap PCs to Doom Microsoft; Thurrott: Windows to Doom Raymond Open-source guru Eric "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" Raymond says that Microsoft is doomed because lower PC prices will squeeze out the Windows market. "When the price of a PC falls below $350," Raymond says, "Microsoft will no longer be viable." You mean the way the Xbox got squeezed out, Eric? I have a news flash for open-source central: People have been predicting Microsoft's death since the Lotus 123/WordPerfect for DOS days. Falling PC prices won't cause the company's demise.