BayStar steps back from SCO in new stock deal

BayStar Capital has relinquished its hold on SCO, retiring its Series A-1 Convertible Preferred stock to the Unix company for $13mn cash and 2.1mn shares of common stock. BayStar Capital led a $50mn investment in SCO last year in return for Series A convertible stock, which was later converted to Series A-1 stock with a current face value of $40mn. ...more

Microsoft returns once more to the iPod battle

Microsoft has launched a venture in Japan with Toshiba, JVC and local telecoms provider DoCoMo in another attempt to end the iPod and Apple's dominance of the digital music market. The three companies will be joined by five others to develop portable players for the Japanese market, with Microsoft providing the software, Bloomberg reports. While Toshiba and JVC will concentrate on building new MP3 players, DoCoMo plans to introduce a mobile phone handset that will be compatible with the Microsoft software. ...more

AMD's Opteron invasion fails to impress Wall Street

AMD has reported its second quarter figures, and the results are good but not quite good enough for Wall Street. Profits have risen but sales revenue has been hit by pricing competition with Intel. Despite increasing sales 53 per cent year-on-year up to $1. ...more

BT doubles business broadband speeds

BT is to double the broadband speeds for its 512Kbps and 1Mbps business customers at no extra cost, while 2Mbps users will get a ?30 reduction in their monthly line rental. From 1 November all its Business Broadband Network 500 and 1000 customers will have their connection speed doubled. Only those few customers who are based too far from an exchange (beyond about 6km) to get services faster than 512Kbps will not be upgraded. ...more

Novell boxes iPod-friendly SUSE 9.3

Novell has finally boxed up SUSE 9.3 ready for use. It describes the latest version as the 'richest' ever release. ...more