NEWS&ANALYSIS
the
buzz
DESKTOPS
New PCs kicked
up a notch
MPC COMPUTERS IS ROLLING OUT
a commercial desktop that
sports the latest Intel chips,
improved graphics and networking capabilities, and a new chassis designed to improve internal
cooling.
The ClientPro 365 is powered
by Intel’s latest-generation Pentium 4 processors with HyperThreading and by the 915G
Express chip set, which features
an 800MHz front-side bus.
Other features in the desktop,
which will replace the ClientPro
345, include an integrated
Gigabit Ethernet controller for
greater network bandwidth
capabilities. Users also have the
choice of Intel’s Graphics Media
Accelerator 900 or an x16 PCI
Express graphics card that can
fit into a PCI Express slot.
The ClientPro 365 also offers
up to 256MB of memory, a 40GB
Serial ATA hard drive, an integrat-
MPC’s ClientPro 365 desktop
sports four Pentium 4s.
ed Serial ATA controller and eight
USB 2.0 ports. The PC is available
now, starting at $919.
—Jeffrey Burt
STORAGE
Gimme back
my hard drive!
TIRED OF HAVING TO PART WITH
your old hard drive simply
because you upgraded to a
higher-capacity one?
Well, Gateway is doing something about it. In the name of
improving customers’ data security, the company last week
kicked off a program that lets
buyers keep their old hard drives
when upgrading.
Normally, customers return the
old hard drive or buy it from the
computer maker. The problem
for those returning old hard
drives, however, is that oftensensitive data—from medical records to credit card numbers—is
still stored on the drive when it’s
returned, Gateway officials said.
Under the company’s Keep
Your Hard Drive service plan,
announced last week, customers
can keep the hard drive if a new
one is installed under warranty.
For $30 per drive for three years,
users of Gateway’s notebooks
and E-Series business desktops
retain control of the hard
drive. —Jeffrey Burt
PERIPHERALS
Kyocera expands
MFP stable
KYOCERA MITA AMERICA LAST
week rolled out the latest in a
long line of multifunction printers
for business workgroups. The KM1650 lets users print, copy and
scan up to 16 ppm (pages per
minute) and route scanned documents to a user’s e-mail address
or file. The $2,995 machine
comes standard with 64MB of
print and copy memory and will
compete against such MFPs as
Xerox’s WorkCentre Pro 416.
The $3,699 WorkCentre Pro
Improving the
digital memo
ROYAL PHILIPS ELECTRONICS IS AIM-
ing to make dictation easier with
new voice recognition capabilities
in its Digital Pocket Memo 9450
handheld recorder.
The device’s voice-command
feature can recognize strings of
numbers or letters and up to 20
keywords spoken by a user and
display that data
as text.
Such a device
could go a long
way toward
reducing rekeying errors during
transcription,
said company
officials.
Pocket Memo
users must first
train the device The Digital
to recognize their Pocket Memo.
unique pronunciation and inflection, a process that officials said
takes 10 to 15 minutes. Philips,
which is initially targeting the
device at the health care market,
will unveil it Oct. 11 for $550.
A snap-on bar-code reader
for the device is available for an
additional $430.
—Shelley Solheim
BY THE NUMBERS
Accessing the Internet from home
Dial-up
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
416 also prints at 16 ppm but
offers standard features such as
two-sided printing and copying.
—Shelley Solheim
Cable modem
DSL
Other (wireless, satellite)
40
Households in millions
30
Besides the obvious items [that Windows
XP Service Pack 2] breaks, which even
Microsoft acknowledges, we have discovered
that it messes with our security to a point
of making it problematic.
Chuck Kramer, CTO at Social & Scientific Systems
24 e W E E K n A U G U S T 2 3 , 2 0 0 4
20
10
0
2003
2004*
2005*
2006*
Sources: Veronis Suhler Stevenson, PQ Media, Federal Communications Commission, National
Cable & Telecommunications Association, DSL Forum, Telecommunications Industry Association
*Projected
and Kagan World Media
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