11/7/1999: Microsoft GUILTY of monopoly, does not give up

At the last hour of Friday, the 5th of November, the judge Thomas Penfield Jackson announced his "decision on proven facts" in the case against Microsoft for monopolistic practices. The historical document, of 207 pages, constitutes a durísima condemns Microsoft, since it endorses clearly the practical totality of the theses of his accusers.
In this preliminary decision, one affirms categorically that Microsoft constitutes a monopoly and that has used his predominant position on the market to harm any company that tries to compete with his products. Likewise, there is criticized the integration of the navigator Internet Explorer inside Windows, something that would have been done by intention of damaging Netscape and of obtaining the control of the Internet market. On the other hand, the position of Microsoft on the operating systems market would be so strong that Microsoft might be charging for great Windows more than it would be normal on a competitive market, and the users would have turned out to be harmed, on having lacked a commercially viable alternative.
Before so clear defeat, Microsoft has expressed for mouth of his president, worldwide famous Bill Gates, his "respectful disagreement" with the conclusions of the judge, as well as his disposal to keep on fighting so that his theses end up by going out winning. While, the Departamente of Justice of the USA was not hesitating to celebrate the decision, with the district attorney general Janet Reno like big winner.
A suspense period is opened now with regard to the future development of the events. If this battle was deciding to continue Microsoft even the end for definitely legal means, the final decision might take a long time until the year 2002, although it seems very difficult that it him was favorable. On the other hand, it would not be strange that was trying to come to an extrajudicial agreement with the Departamente of Justice, a possibility aimed from the beginning of the judgment but in that now Microsoft should yield much more than in the beginning nobody was waited.
The solutions, forced or not, happen for a lot of possibilities, like dismembering Microsoft in several companies or turning Windows into a free standard that could develop other companies, in the style of Linux. In any case, they do not wait for importance movements at least up to the definitive decision of the judge Jackson, at the beginning of next year.

11/7/1999: Compaq, HP and others prepared for the PC "free of inherited technology"

Diverse computers manufacturers have made public his intention of presenting during the next Comdex of Las Vegas (in one week) new products that will revolutionize the concept of the PC, after ISA lacked technologies inherited like buses, PS/2, ports series and parallel or enclosed the disk drive.
This idea, for a long time waited and undoubtedly cheered up for the appearance of the famous person iMac of Apple (that has no disk drive and bases his connections on the bus USB, more versatile and of handling simpler than the previous ones), should do the PCs simpler to use for inexpert users, to facilitate the installation of peripheral and to make more rapid and trustworthy operating systems possible.
On the other hand, new PCs would present with a completely renewed aspect, very different from the classic block color to themselves it cremates that we are used. All the manufacturers coincide in announcing models of limited size (even not major than a thick book), in attractive colors and in many cases combined with screens of liquid crystal.

11/4/1999: They finish the debts of the chipset i820

As announced yesterday Craig Barrett, CEO (president) of Intel, the very awaited one and several times delayed chipset i820 will be presented by it officially in the next two weeks.
This chipset incorporates the new architecture AHA (in hub) of Intel and it is destined for the following generation of mikes Pentium III, called Coppermine, to which it will allow to work with a 133 MHz bus, memoirs RDRAM and AGP 4x. The combination of these technologies will facilitate to the above mentioned mikes to compete worthily with the AMD K7 Athlon, which they overcome fully current Pentium III in all the fields.
One hopes that the first basic badges based on the chipset i820 should be presented during the fair Comdex of Las Vegas, from November 15. Nevertheless, there persist the doubts about the availability of the memory RDRAM, due to his high cost and difficulty of manufacture (precisely the delay of this chipset owed to technical problems in the handling of this memory).

11/4/1999: A console of games of Microsoft?

According to certain rumors, Microsoft might be studying the possibility of extracting to the market a console of video games, named "X-Box", who would compete with current Sony Playstation and Sega Dreamcast.
The above mentioned console would be governed by an operating system Microsoft (logically), probably a modified version of the Windows CE. The basic configuration might include: CPU AMD Athlon or Intel Pentium III, graphic card Nvidia GeForce 256 or similar, 64 MB RAM, CD or DVD-ROM, modem and hard disk, all this at a price of a few 299$.
The market of the games consoles presents itself as an option of more and more important business, since between his current possibilities there is included access to Internet and e-mail, together with a price and a facility of handling that makes them much more accessible and attractive than the classic PCs.