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February 6, 1999
News
- Well, it looks like we’ll all be working with Windows 98
a lot longer than anyone, including Microsoft, expected. According to a variety of reports
this week, the company claimed that the next major iteration of their consumer operating
system, which is supposed to be based on a Windows NT/Windows 2000 core, will probably not
appear for another two years later than originally thought. So, instead of seeing it in
around 2001, it may be until 2003 before there’s a major new version. In the mean
time, the company plans to upgrade the operating system with Service Packs and other
enhancements as it has done with Windows 95. In fact, the first Windows 98 Service Pack,
which fixes a bunch of bugs, as well as adding support for new types of hardware, is due
within the next month or two. See my "Plugged In" column this week for more.
- E-trade, the popular online brokerage firm, suffered through
several glitches this week that prevented some of their customers from making trades on
Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The hiccups were apparently due to some software upgrades
the company had made on Tuesday night. In each case they were resolved within an hour or
two, but it just goes to show you that the Internet and web sites are still a long way
from being a rock solid, completely dependable solution.
- It was quite an interesting week at the Microsoft/Department
of Justice trial this week, with Microsoft getting caught essentially red-handed with a
purported video demonstration that turned out to be what they later termed an
"illustration." The company was trying to prove that removing Internet Explorer
from Windows 98 would severely hamper the operating machine, keeping applications from
working and slowing the system down. It turns out the "demonstration" was
actually filmed on different machines, instead of a single machine, as it was originally
claimed to be. The judge came down hard on the company and suffered what many commentators
felt was a very serious blow to their credibility. Of course, this isn’t terribly
surprising, especially given what a ridiculous claim they’re trying to make. The
truth is Internet Explorer is a nice capability to have built into the OS, but it is
absolutely not essential and can be easily replaced by another browser, such as Netscape
Navigator/Communicator.
- IBM made news this week with a new Web browser designed for
the blind called Home Page Reader. What the $149 Windows product does is uses
screen-reading and speech synthesis technology to read the content of web pages that you
visit.
- Lots of interesting toys are being debuted at the annual
International Toy Fair, which is going on now in New York City. Not surprisingly, many of
the hot new toys on display are technology-related, including two new products that mark
Intel’s entry, along with partner Mattel, into the toy market. The most interesting
of the two is a new microscope called the Intel Play X3 that you can hook up to a PC and
view objects at up to 300x magnification on your computer screen. The other one, the Intel
Play Me2Cam, is a low-cost video camera that also plugs into a PC. Look for both products
this fall at prices around $99 each.
- Lots of price cuts and good bargains available this week.
First of all, HP chopped the prices of many of their notebooks, in some cases up to 25%.
The HP Omnibook 7100, for example, was cut from around $4,500 to $3,199. The 7100 include
a 266 MHz Pentium II, 8.1 GB drive, 14.1" active matrix screen and a combination
CD/floppy drive bay. More importantly, however, the company also announced the launch of a
new low cost line of notebooks called the Omnibook XE, starting at $1,499. That price gets
you a new 266 MHz mobile Celeron processor, 4.1 GB hard drive, 32 MB of RAM, built-in 24x
CD-ROM, floppy, and 56K modem, plus a 12.1" HPA passive matrix screen. Higher-priced
systems with better configurations are also available.
- Prices were also cut on 3Com’s popular Palm Pilot
electronic organizer. The Palm III was cut from $369 to $299 this week, in expectation of
some new versions of the Pilot that are due later this month. The Palm IIIx, is expected
to offer more memory a better screen and an upgrade slot for $369 and the thinner Palm V
is expected to debut around $449.
- If you’ve been lusting after an iMac and you’re
willing to live with the original Bondi Blue color, the Apple Store is blowing out
refurbished iMac systems, complete with MacOS 8.5 for $799, which is $500 less than what
they were selling for just about 7 or 8 weeks ago. The systems look to be the rev. A
machines, because they only include 2 MG of SGRAM, but it’s still a great deal if
you’re looking for a new Mac.
- Finally, the first of what I’m sure will prove to be
many bits of good news, or rather no news, on Y2K. The travel industry went through their
primary Y2K deadline last week when their reservation systems starting accepting
reservations for dates in January of 2000. Airlines typically reserve up to 330 days in
advance, which meant that the reservation systems had to be Y2K-ready by the first week in
February of this year. According to all reports, everything worked as expected, with
absolutely no glitches whatsoever.
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