Notebook computers using Intel Corp’s new 120MHz Pentium aimed specifically at laptops, were launched by a string of firms including Hewlett-Packard Co, Dell Computer Corp, AST Research Inc, Texas Instruments Inc and Toshiba Corp.
The Hughes Olivetti Telecom SpA Milan joint venture between Ing C Olivetti Co SpA and Hughes Network Systems Inc, has won a contract to supply a European satellite telecommunications network for car manufacturers Opel and Vauxhall worth $50m to $70m over several years, industry sources say: the company will set up the network over the next three years and provide maintenance for at least seven years.
German car maker Bayerische Motoren Werke AG has signed a contract worth several million dollars with SAP AG to install its R/3 client-server based business application software throughout the BMW enterprise for some 3,000 employees to access: BMW’s contract expands on SAP accounting software already installed in its main offices in Munich and in its Spartanburg, South Carolina plant; the new installation will include R/3 modules for finances and controlling, enterprise logistics, production planning and organisation of material resources; the Softlab GmbH BMW software services subsidiary, will assist in installation and support of R/3 at BMW and will also provide services in the R/3 environment.
Newbridge Networks Corp, Toronto, has an order to supply its MainStreet network management systems to Telecomunicacoes de Sao Paulo SA as part of a $44.2m contract to Newbridge’s Brazilian distributor, DFV Telecomunicacoes e Informatica SA: the network will link 149 locations in the city and the state of Sao Paulo, the Canadian said.
Motorola Inc and L M Ericsson Telefon AB, archrivals in China’s vast telecommunications market, agreed to link their cellular telephone systems, creating what they say will be one of the world’s widest cellular networks, the Wall Street Journal reports: the agreement, signed last week with China’s Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications, will enable subscribers to use their phones in all 26 Chinese provinces; subscribers will pay long-distance fees and a surcharge for air time, but won’t need to register their phones with each cellular system as they travel; neither firm would give the value of the deal, but said it was relatively small.
The Sony Corp PlayStation is going to account for by far the largest installed base of MIPS Technologies Inc R-series RISCs: in the US, the company says that it won’t be able to fulfill all orders for the machine, built around an LSI Logic Corp chip that combines a 32-bit MIPS core with Sony’s media engine, by Christmas – we’re what you’d call supply-challenged, executive vice-president of Sony Corp of America Jeff Sagansky told Dow Jones & Co.
We’d have thought that an 80386-based laptop and a sticker saying My other computer’s a Pentium Pro would have been quite good enough for most people, but no, in the US market, there are plenty of relatively low-cost 80486-based laptops out there, but everyone apparently insists on cooking his lap with a Pentium, and the manufacturers are finding the design shift to Pentium so difficult to accomplish that there is an acute shortage that is not expected to clear until March, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Don’t panic! cries SGS-Thomson Microelectronics NV: the company says it expects minimal disruption from the fire in its assembly plant in Muar, Malaysia, which caused no injuries to any plant personnel.
Spectrum Information Technologies Inc, Purchase, New York has completed the sale of its Spectrum Global Services unit to Lori Corp and Comforce Corp for about $6m: the sale of the technical staffing service business, which needed bankruptcy court approval, will enable Spectrum to focus our energies and resources towards strengthening its proprietary direct-connect technology business, Spectrum said; Spectrum Global Services reported $9m in revenues and earned operating profits of $920,000 for the fiscal year ended March 1995.
Hitachi Ltd’s Hitachi Computer Products (Asia) Corp has opened a $43m plant to assemble small form factor disk drives and magnetic heads in Manila: all the output from the plant is to be exported.
Computer Associates International Inc has signed an agreement with Shanghai First Food Co Ltd to supply system management software worth $20m, the Shanghai company said: Shanghai First Food operates the biggest food shop chain in Shanghai and said it will use the equipment and software to computerise much of its retail operation.
It will still lose your baggage of course, whenever they forget to flush the thing of the previous passenger’s details, but at least it will be lost in in a trendy high-tech manner: Deutsche Lufthansa AG starts testing a new baggage-handling system next month in which a Smart Card programmed with the owner’s name, flight number, destination and baggage number will be attached to each piece of luggage.
Canadian defence technology and electronics manufacturer CAE Inc has bought South Australian government owned defence technology firm MRAD Pty Ltd, part of the government’s technology company Sagric International, which the government says has successfully commercialised advanced military training and testing technology: financial details were not released but CAE will move its Australian headquarters to Adelaide from Sydney, and the government said the sale releases it from performance guarantees to made to MRAD of up to $18m.
NEC Corp said semiconductor sales for the first half of the current fiscal to the end of September totalled $5,462m, up 25% from the same period last year; it expects sales for the full year to March 31 to be up 26% at $11,700m: it will increase semiconductor investment by 68% for the current year to $2,085m and will build a new production line at its semiconductor plant in Yamagata Prefecture, northern Japan at a cost of $447m which will start operations in April 1997, processing 10,000 8 wafers per month for production of microcomputers and application specific-integrated circuits; NEC said it had increased overseas investment in plants in Malaysia and Singapore to introduce new chip assembly and testing equipment.
Kansas City-based Block Financial Corp, subsidiary of H&R Block Inc said it has formed an alliance and acquired a minority stake in NetBroker Inc, a private firm that develops on-line products for the financial services industry, to provide for future technology transfers between the two: the companies said they will continue to operate independently; terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
The Cable & Wireless Europe Ltd joint venture of Cable & Wireless Plc and Veba AG is pressing its interest, which first surfaced in August (CI No 2,726) in joining the alliance between IBM Corp and Stet SpA and involves the IBM Global Network, the Financial Times said.
Pain, isn’t it, when you have to wait impatiently drumming you fingers after you’ve switched your computer on and the thing laboriously counts its marbles and goes through all the other housekeeping tasks before it’s finally ready to do your bidding – but help is at hand: IBM Corp’s OS/2 Warp and Microsoft Corp’s Windows95 now both support quick restart facilities, where the machine boots straight up to the point where you switched it off – but they depend on a rather crucial piece of co-operation from the power supply – it has to provide 20 seconds of absolutely clean and smooth power after the machine has been switched off to enable the computer to save its state accurately, without which you find everything all over the place in a horrible electronic cat’s cradle of text, data and instructions – and one of Scotland’s growing new clutch of high-tech white hopes, Magnum Power Plc claims that it has developed a back-up system that provides precisely what is needed.
The Wordperfect Corp franchise seems to be a rapidly wasting asset under Novell Inc’s tutelage, so much so that observers told Reuters the company should sell the business and take a write-off, or spin it off to shareholders, or run it as a cash cow, ceasing to develop new products and phase it out – Microsoft Corp is estimated to have 89.9% of office suite market, leaving just 5.5% for Novell’s PerfectOffice and 4.6% for Lotus Development Corp; WordPerfect’s contributions to overall Novell turnover in the fourth quarter could decline to below 13% of total sales, way down from 28% in the year-ago period.
Cray Research Inc, Eagan, Minnesota says Akzo Nobel NV has ordered its second Cray J90, following its third quarter order for a Cray J90 for installation in 1995: Akzo Nobel’s chemists will use the system with Cray Research’s UniChem client-server computational chemistry package for molecular modelling applications for new Akzo Nobel products; separately, Cray said privately held Bhringer Ingelheim unit Bhringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc of Richfield, Connecticut, has ordered a Cray J916 low-cost supercomputer to be installed by year-end; no financial details.
Finnish telecommunications group Nokia Oy said it will deliver a Groupe Speciale Mobile digital cellular network to the Posts-Telecommunications Administration in Jianxi province, China: no terms given.
