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Dux Computer Newsletter
http://duxcw.com/newsltr/index.html
May 15, 2001; Vol. 1, No. 3
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IN THIS NEWSLETTER
Recent News and Commentary
Tech Tip
Around the Internet
Recent News and Commentary. The computer price wars continue this month
among the big players with HP and Compaq following Dell's price cuts. So
far, Dell has established itself as the latest price leader (if not, certainly
the largest) and Dell intends to keep it that way. Earlier this month Dell's
Chief Financial Officer Tom Meredith said, "We
will be ruthless in how we address our cost structure going forward." When asked if these measures include layoffs he answered, "Absolutely." Dell
followed-up a couple of days later with an announcement that they would cut
up to 4,000 jobs, or 10% of their job force, in addition to 1,700 positions
they cut three months ago.
Well, history shows that PC price leaders (e.g., Packard-Bell) have had to
cut things somewhere and those things in the past have been quality and support. Low
prices typically led to a surge in sales and market share followed by the demise
of the price leader as end users and potential buyers become disillusioned
by poor quality and support.
E-machines "was" another one of those price leaders with el cheapo computers
(I don't say that lightly; I have looked under the hoods of a few of them)
and, according to the owners of those PC's I had in my shop, not much in the
way of support. I say "was" because
on the same day that Dell announced the latest round of price cuts, E-Machines
announced that they may try to find a buyer (ok, nearly "was").
There is no doubt that times are tough in the PC industry. Today,
Merrill Lynch reduced its forecasts of PC growth for the current year from
7 to 3 percent. And purveyors
of quality computers and customer support are fading as attested to by the
recent news that Micron actually
agreed to pay $70 million to the Gores Technology Group to take its PC division off
it's hands.
Things should start to look up for the PC industry next year as new technologies
kick-in and the large number of computers that were purchased 1999 during the
Y2K fiasco start to show their age. Perhaps
Dell et al have a new twist that will allow deep price cuts while maintaining
a resemblance of quality and support until the market improves. I
am skeptical.
AMD just introduced its latest entry in the CPU wars, the mobile Athlon
4 and Duron processors with the long-awaited Palomino (now Athlon 4)
core. These processors have
AMD's PowerNow! technology which optimizes
battery life and reduces heat by dynamically
changing the CPU voltage and operating frequency in response to the system's
demand for processing power without noticeable impact on the user's perception
of speed. In this automatic
mode, the mobile AMD Athlon processor "consumes as little as an average of
2 Watts running typical office applications." For
a comparison, the non-mobile, 1 GHz Athlon toaster eats up power roughly
equivalent to that of a half an incandescent light bulb. Currently,
the mobile Athlon 4 comes in 1GHz, 950MHz, 900MHz and 850MHz versions and
the mobile Duron is available in 850MHz and 800MHz flavors. Both
have 200 MHz front side buses instead of the 266 Mhz FSBs found in the new
non-mobile DDR Athlons. AMD
press release. Mobile
Athlon 4 section of AMD's web site. At
the same time Compaq announced the availability of a 1 GHz AMD Athlon 4 processor
in its Compaq
Presario 1200Z notebook. Look
for AMD to roll-out it's dual CPU server platform with the AMD 760MP chipset
and using Athlons with Palomino cores at COMPUTEX in Taipei, Taiwan, on June
4th.
Solid Nitrogen. Researchers
at the Carnegie Institution have found that applying extreme pressure to Nitrogen
gas converts it into solid semi-conductor. This
solid maintains its solid state if the pressure is gradually reduced and the
temperature is kept below 100° K. Nitrogen
makes up 75% of the Earth's atmosphere and must be as common as the sand that
is used to make the silicon semi-conductors in most of today's electronics. Click here to
read a little more.
More news.
Tech Tip. What is the
uplink port on an Ethernet Hub or Switch? There is no big mystery about the difference between
an uplink and a regular port. Each
Ethernet interface has two transmit pins (+ and -) and two receive pins (click here for
a diagram)). The transmit pins
at one end of a cable have to be connected to the receive pins at the other
and vice versa. An uplink port
does not crossover the transmit and receive pins and a regular port does. If
two hubs/switches (What
is the difference between a hub and switch?) are connected together with
a straight-thru cable then one end must crossover (regular port) and one
end must not (uplink port). If
a crossover
cable is used to connect them, then the ports at both ends must be the
same kind of port. If a straight-thru
cable is used to connect them, then the ports must be different. A PC can be connected to an uplink port with a crossover cable
and to a regular port with a straight-thru
cable. Also, be aware that
many hubs/switches share the uplink port with one of the regular ports, usually
port 1. Both ports will not
work if they are both connected at the same time. Finally,
many hubs and switches have a switch associated with the uplink port that
can switch the port between uplink and regular port configurations.
Around the Internet. Microsoft
just launched its Tools on the Web. This
web site includes more than 120,000
images, over 1,000 sample documents, help for office products, and other free
goodies.
Larry
Copyright,
Disclaimer, and Trademark Information Copyright © 1997-2001 Larry F. Byard. All rights reserved. Except
as stated below, this material or parts thereof may not be published,
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