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March 7, 1998
News
- Lots of big news this week, including yet more stories about
hackers breaking into high-profile computer systems. Last week it was the Pentagon’s
computers being pilfered through and this week a number of major universities noted that
their systems were brought down by what are called denial-of-service attacks. Essentially
what happens in a denial-of-service attack is a series of illegal TCP/IP data packets are
sent to a particular computer’s address on the net and the computer can’t cope
with all of them and it crashes. In both of these cases, computers affected were primarily
servers that sit on the Internet, not individual machines, although it is possible to run
into similar types of problems with your own computer. So, should you be worried about
your own machine? Well, yes, but not overly so. The best thing to do is stay up to date
with both your browser and your OS. Get the latest updates and install them. Microsoft has
some security-related updates available and if you’ve got them installed, you can
usually avoid these potential security problems. In fact, fixes for some of the problems
that occurred this week have been available for a while, but in the server administrators
at the various universities had not updated their machines yet. So, the moral is, stay
current.
- Intel formally announced the new name for their upcoming
low-cost chip: it’s going to be called Celeron, which is a pretty strange name if you
ask me. I immediately think of celery—not exactly the image you want for a fast, new
chip. Performance of the Celeron, which is a Pentium II minus the onboard L2 cache, is
apparently not very impressive. In fact, reports I’ve read suggest that a 266 MHz
Celeron may not even match that of a 233 MHz Pentium MMX. As a result, apparently not that
many systems vendors are jumping at the chance to make products based around the
chip—which is scheduled to be available in early April. Systems that do support the
processor are targeted to be at under $1,000.
- If you’re an Apple Powerbook 1400 owner, a better way to
spend that thousand bucks is on the new PowerPC 750, or G3 processor upgrade from Newer
Technologies. The company, which also offers low-cost G3 upgrades for older desktop Power
Macs, is introducing two new processor upgrades for the 1400. The NUpower G3 250/166,
which retails for $999, features a 250 MHz PowerPC 750 and 1 MB of backside cache that
runs at a rate of 166 MHz. The $699 NuPower G3 216/108 features a 216 MHz PowerPC 750 and
512 Kbytes of backside cache that runs at 108 MHz. Even better, the power savings enabled
by the fast new chip should enable existing batteries to run nearly twice as long. Now
that’s what I call an upgrade.
- If you can wait until May, Apple themselves will apparently
be offering a new Powerbook with a 250 MHz G3 for just under $2,000. The unit will
apparently offer 16 MB of RAM, a built-in CD-ROM and a 12.1" dual-scan screen.
- I’m always eager to try out new web-oriented devices and
I’m particularly intrigued by simple consumer-oriented products. One of the coolest
I’ve seen so far is the new Iphone from Cidco. The $479 Iphone, which is currently
only available direct from the company’s web site, is a combination phone/graphics
web terminal that’s built around a 7.4" backlit, 640 x 480, 16-greyscale
touch-sensitive display. The unit also features a little pull-out keyboard and lets you
send and receive e-mail to any POP3-based e-mail account, which is the type of account you
get with a normal ISP—although it doesn’t currently work with AOL accounts, as
well as browse the web, complete with graphics. Conceptually it’s similar to a
WebTV-like device, in that it gives you simple straightforward access to the web in a
relatively low-cost consumer device. I think it’s much more effective, however,
because it allows you to view the information up close, as opposed to trying to sit back
on your couch and read. Right now, at least, most of the content on the Web just
doesn’t work well as couch material—on a high-tech smart phone, it seems very
logical. Internally the system has a paltry 14.4 modem, but as a result of some clever
compression techniques and other software tricks, the performance is actually respectable.
Even better, web content looks good on its screen and the process of using a touch-screen
to browse the web is very intuitive. So, if you’re looking for a second Internet
terminal for your house, or you know someone who doesn’t want to have to muss with
configuring a computer to see what this "Internet thing" is all about,
you’ll want to check this out.
- Looking for an inexpensive notebook? Well, you’d be hard
pressed to find a better deal than the recently price-reduced and about to be discontinued
Compaq Armada 4131T. The unit, which was originally introduced at $3,500 and most recently
sold for $1,699 is now down to $999. The Armada offers a 133 MHz Pentium processor, 16 MB
of RAM, 1.4GB hard drive, and most impressively a 12.1" active matrix display. Yes, I
said active-matrix. The 20x CD-ROM drive, however, is optional. Get ‘em while
they’re hot…. In other price reduction news, Compaq also chopped the price of
their Armada 4150, which features a 150 MHz Pentium, 16 MB of RAM, 1.6 GB drive, and a
12.1" dual-scan display from $2,199 to $1,499. The Armada 1530DM, which features a
133 MHz Pentium MMX, a 10X CD, a 33.6 modem and a 12.1" display was also reduced from
$1,999 to $1,499.
- More interesting developments in Microsoft’s battle
against the government. This past week, of course, saw the testimony of Bill Gates, Jim
Barksdale of Netscape, Scott McNealy of Sun and a few others, including my old InfoWorld
Electric boss Stewart Alsop, in front of the Senate Judiciary committee. Microsoft and its
business tactics fell under harsh criticism during the questioning and despite Gates’
best efforts, the company could be headed for even more hot water with the government.
It’s still not clear what exactly can or will happen, but it’s bound to be
interesting.
- Palm Pilot fans will be happy (or unhappy, depending on
whether or not they just bought or are about to buy a Pilot) to hear that the company
announced some price cuts this week on their existing line of Pilots and memory upgrades.
The Palm Pilot Professional dropped from $369 to $299 and the Palm Pilot Personal fell to
$199 from $249. The company also dropped the price of a 1 MB memory upgrade from $129 to
$79. These moves were all done in anticipation of a new Pilot, apparently dubbed Palm III,
that’s expected to be introduced this coming week. The new unit, expected to retail
for about $399, apparently features an enhanced operating system, better handwriting
recognition and a curvy, new shape. We’ll know more by next week.
- Eager to jump into the new V.90 56K modem market, Diamond
this week introduced their first modem to support the new official standard. The
SupraExpress 56i, which lists for $99, is an internal PC card modem. What’s
interesting about the Supra modems (external PC and Mac versions will apparently be
available shortly for around $130) is that they also come bundled with something
they’re calling Shotgun technology, which is basically software that allows it to
combine two modems into a single, high-speed connection. Of course, it takes two phone
lines and two COM ports, but it apparently has the ability to automatically drop one phone
line when it senses an incoming voice call on the second line.
- By the way, several modem companies have started to make
their V.90 upgrades available to existing modem customers on their web sites. If
you’re interested, you may want to check your modem manufacturer’s web site. One
point to be careful about, however, is that some older modems, particularly early K56Flex
modems, once upgraded, will not work with the older standard. They will only support V.90.
If your ISP hasn’t upgraded their equipment to V.90-compatibility yet that will cause
a big problem for you because your newly upgraded modem will not be able to connect. So,
watch out.
- Thinking about upgrading to a DVD drive? Well, Creative Labs
has announced lower prices on their existing DVD Encore upgrade kit, which includes both a
second-generation 2x DVD drive, as well as a hardware MPEG-2 decoder card and some bundled
software. The price for the kit dropped from $369 to $299. In addition, the company plans
to offer a DVD drive only upgrade for $149. The drive-only package comes only with driver
software and a software-based MPEG-2 decoder.
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