Broadband still too expensive

Price cuts over better content - that's the key to broadband ubiquity. With an overwhelming 94 per cent, voters on our recent poll plumped for price cuts as the factor that would make them sign up for ADSL en masse. The poll asked whether better content or cheaper prices were the key contributing elements to signing up to broadband. ...more

US indie cinemas go digital

Microsoft and Landmark Cinemas, a nationwide chain of cinemas in the US, are rolling out the largest digital cinema chain in the country. Dedicated to independent cinema, 177 screens in all 53 of Landmark's cinemas will be taking the digital plunge with systems geared to the Microsoft flavour of digital media: Windows Media Series 9. While digital cinemas are extremely expensive to install, they also represent a huge reduction in the costs of distributing films as this can be done with lightweight and inexpensive DVDs or across a network. ...more

AMD slashes prices, introduces XP-M 3000+

AMD has matched Intel's price cutting with a round of its own. Leading the way, in percentage terms, are the 64-bit Opteron servers. The 8-way 800 models have been cut by as much as 40 per cent (the 844), with the 200 and 100 models also seeing cuts of up to a third. ...more

The low-down on... programming languages

In the wake of the new Web programming language Curl, here's something to help you sort your C# from your C++, not to mention Java and C and JavaScript. Here's a brief low-down on the various languages out there in the wide world of software development. A language to aid communication with machines Programming languages are the particular sequences of text used to control computers. ...more

Amstrad phones back after three years

The consumer-conscious electronics firm is to re-enter the mobile phone market. Sir Alan Sugar's company is set to being manufacturing low-cost mobile phones for use with a single pay-as-you-go phone network. It had previously abandoned the market after selling its mobile business to Bosch and undertaking not to compete for three years. ...more