The desktop processor battle continues

In the wake of a new Athlon XP, Intel wades in with a 2.8 GHz Pentium 4 processor. In terms of architecture, the platform for the Pentium 4 remains the same (a 533 MHz system bus and 850E chipset) as for the previous fastest version, the 2. ...more

Symantec SystemWorks for the Mac

Symantec has announced a major new utilities bundle for the Mac, in the shape of Norton SystemWorks. The bundle includes both its major Mac products, Norton Utilities 6.0 and Symantec Anti-Virus 7. ...more

Comment: ADSL price fixing

BT claims to have sorted ADSL costs, but the move is likely to hamper competition at the root of the UK's broadband infrastructure. Two years ago, the unbundling of the local loop was touted as the final hurdle in de-monopolising BT and providing the UK with a competitive Internet market in which network providers could compete to provide for the ISP community. As cheaper broadband is now with us, end users can't help but hope we're finally on track to meet Tony Blair's vision of Broadband Britain. ...more

Napster creator goes legit with music royalty collection service

In the manner of a poacher-turned-gamekeeper, Shawn Fanning - the man behind Napster and for several years a hate figure for the music business - is back with a plan to enable copyright owners to track music downloads and collect royalties. Fanning's new company Snocap sets out to build a database of every piece of music - including live performances, remixes and unreleased material on the internet. It will then use a technique of 'audio fingerprinting' licensed from Philips to mark each copy. ...more

IBM guns for automated trouble-shooting

IBM has announced further developments in its autonomic computing initiative: new services, software and a partner program. The eventual aim of 'autonomic computing' is for large systems to become more self-managing so they can automatically anticipate, diagnose and correct problems and optimise the processing of varying workloads. The bottom line, of course, is to reduce the need for manual intervention and reduce IT maintenance costs. ...more