Spring IDF 2006: Intel's Conroe on test

Intel is famously reticent when it comes to its competitors, but at IDF it allowed members of the press to see Conroe, its next generation desktop CPU, running head-to-head against an Athlon 64 FX-60. In his keynote speech, Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner made some bold claims about Conroe's performance, claiming it would be 40 per cent faster than a Pentium D 950 while consuming 40 per cent less power. However, this was measured using the Specint_rate_base 2000 benchmark, so we were keen to see if we could see Conroe running some real applications. ...more

BT Cellnet says WAP is on the up

Despite reports that the tide is turning against WAP, BT Cellnet has reported that its WAP-enabled phone sales have increased 40 per cent on the last quarter, boasting some 245,000 new connections. The company claims to be the largest in the UK mobile Internet market with 420,000 WAP customers, excluding sales made by banks with which BT Cellnet has distribution deals. BT Cellnet also revealed that WAP customers spend almost ?100 a year more than voice-only customers with 20 per cent of calls being made to surf the Net or email. ...more

AOL makes 1Mbit broadband push

AOL is the latest ISP to announce a 1Mbit/sec service, following a two-month trial. AOL's offering will cost ?34.99 and the company will cover BT's charge for existing customers who want to upgrade from a 512K connection. ...more

Intel goes smaller and faster

Leading microchip manufacturer Intel has announced that it has developed the world's fastest and smallest transistor, which could totally revolutionise the development of computers. The new transistor is 30 nanometers across in some places and is only three atomic layers thick. The general rule is that the smaller the transistor, the faster it is and this new 30nm transistor could herald an age of sci-fi computing. ...more

Iomega Cliks on MP3

Iomega is attempting to revive its Clik disk format with a combined digital music player and Clik drive. The HipZip takes 40MB Clik disks, or PocketZip as the format's now called, and connects to a PC much like the Clik drives of old. The player comes with synchronisation software for transferring files, plus ripping software for creating MP3s or Windows Media Audio (WMA) files. ...more