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February 27, 1999
News
- I’ve got some nice prizes to give away today courtesy of
Microsoft, including a Diamond HomeFree wireless home networking system and some Microsoft
gear.
- Well, the Pentium III made its official debut yesterday, and
systems with the new chip are now available. All the major system vendors, including Dell,
Compaq, Gateway and so on have new systems at a variety of different price points.
Interestingly, I saw that some companies are offering PCs with the 450 MHz version of the
chip for not much more than they were selling 450 MHz Pentium IIs. In fact, online
retailer IDOT.com is offering 100 of their 450P3BX systems with a 450 MHz Pentium III, 32
MB of RAM, 4.3 GB drive and 40X CD-ROM for $999. In addition, IBM is offering a PIII 450
system for just under $1,500 and many companies are offering complete systems with monitor
for under $2,000. At the other end of the price spectrum, you can also find fully-stocked
500 MHz PIII systems for as much as $3,500. To be honest, though, now is probably a much
better time to buy a fast PII because as I suspected, the benchmark results for the PIII
are showing that for existing applications it doesn’t offer any performance benefit
over an existing Pentium II. Sure, the 500 MHz version of the chip is faster just because
of its raw speed, but a 450 MHz PIII vs. a 450 MHz PII is essentially a dead heat in a
similarly configured system. In fact, with a faster hard drive and video card, you can
easily make a PII system outrun a PIII system. Once again, it’s worth pointing out
that the speed or type of the processor doesn’t necessarily determine the speed of
the system. A fast hard drive, such as an Ultra 2 SCSI drive, in particular, can prove to
be much more important.
- In other Pentium III news, it turns out the serial number in
hardware may not be as robust a mechanism for ensuring privacy as was originally touted. A
German computer magazine was able to easily turn on the ID feature without the user
knowing, which shows that the system can be easily hacked. And that, unfortunately,
defeats the whole purpose of having a serial number. Intel is providing software that lets
you turn this controversial feature on and off, but the company is also now encouraging
companies to let users turn it on and off at the BIOS level, which is more secure
(although still not completely invulnerable.
- AMD’s K6-III and systems based around it also made their
debut this week and while they’re definitely faster than the K6-2-based systems, they
still can’t match the performance for most type of applications as equivalent Intel
processors. AMD’s 400 MHz K6-3, for example, which includes 256 Kbytes of onboard L2
cache that runs at the speed of the processor, could not match the performance of a 400
MHz Pentium II in some of the benchmark results I saw. However, AMD is still positioning
the K6-III as a lower-cost alternative to Intel chips and in that regard, it’s still
an excellent choice. In fact, lots of consumers must feel that way because systems based
around AMD chips actually outsold systems with Intel chips at computer retails stores in
January of this year, primarily because of sales of low-cost systems. This is the first
time Intel has not been number one.
- The FCC made a controversial ruling this week regarding the
status of phone calls made for Internet access to local Internet Service Providers. The
FCC ruled that such calls, which were previously treated as local calls, will now be
considered long-distance. Because of that change in designation, there are expected to be
changes in the way fees paid between local telephone companies and the regional Bells will
be handled. The bottom line is that some people fear that Internet access rates will go up
because ISPs may be forced to pay higher fees to the Baby Bells. The FCC specifically said
they do not want to see per-minute charges for Internet access—as there are for
long-distance calls—but some fear that that could still happen.
- Want to freshen up the look of your browser? You might want
to check out Neoplanet, which works with the Windows versions of either Netscape Navigator
or Internet Explorer and adds a new user interface to the existing browser. In fact, you
can choose from several different look and feels. Neoplanet doesn’t add or change any
features to the browser, it just changes the way it looks and where certain functions are
located. In so doing, however, it can give the respective products an entirely new
perspective, such as in the manner you can find your favorite links, perform searches and
what have you. In addition, the program offers a built-in Modem Speed Booster, which
simply lets you set your system either for a modem-based dial-up connection or an
always-on network connection. The only downside to Neoplanet, which also includes its own
e-mail client, is that if you use its Channels feature to get quick access to a list of
useful sites, you’ll have to put up with a small ad window in the lower-right corner.
Thankfully, if you don’t have the Channels on, it goes away. You can download the
nearly 2 MB application from www.neoplanet.com.
- So, the FreePC concept I discussed a few weeks back is
apparently such a hit that the company hopes to ship one million machines in the first
year. The first 10,000 machines aren’t expected until May or June.
- At Intel’s developer conference, the company revealed
some interesting new technologies, including forthcoming notebook processors that will be
able to run much faster when they’re plugged in than when they’re running off a
battery. Separately, the company also confirmed that Rambus memory technology, which will
be supported in a new chipset for Pentium III-based PCs later this year, has been delayed
from the summer until next fall. So, systems which incorporate all the platform
enhancements that this new 820 chipset will bring will be delayed as well.
- Finally, put March 18 down in your calendar. That’s the
day when Microsoft says they will be shipping version 5.0 of Internet Explorer for all
platforms except the Macintosh. The Mac version of IE 5.0 is expected this summer. At the
surface level, IE 5.0 is very similar to 4.0, although it rearranges a few menu items to
make them easier to find. Under the hood, however, IE 5.0 adds more robust support for XML
and other advanced technologies, so look for lots of people to move it fairly quickly.
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