Monday, November 19, 2001		Newsscape

Chips for laptops

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. announced two new microprocessors designed for laptop personal computers, as the chipmaker continues toward its goal of gaining 50 per cent of the US retail laptop market by the end of the year. AMD, based in Sunnyvale, California, introduced the 1.2 gigahertz mobile Athlon 4 processor and a 950 megahertz Duron processor, aimed at lower-priced laptops. Both chips are compatible with Microsoft Corp.’s recently released XP operating system, the company said. Compaq Computer Corp. was expected to sell its Compaq Presario 700 notebooks, using the mobile processors later this quarter and can be ordered from Compaq, starting November 21. The 1.2 gigahertz mobile Athlon 4 processor costs $525 and the 950 megahertz mobile Duron chip costs $160, in lots of 1,000, the company said.

IBM’s research

International Business Machines Corp. said the National Centre for Atmospheric Research will use an IBM supercomputer that will be seven times faster than its current computer to study weather. The supercomputer, code-named, "Blue Sky," will enable the Boulder, Colorado-based research centre’s to process information about climate changes at seven teraflops, or seven trillion calculations per second. The National Science Foundation, the research centre’s primary sponsor, purchased the $-24-million computer. The research centre will use the computer to forecast climate changes that impact agricultural output, heating oil prices and global warming, IBM said. The supercomputer will be supplied in two stages with the first part delivered this fall and doubling the computer’s speed to two teraflops, or two trillion calculations per second. In the fall of 2002, the centre will add other computer parts to increase the speed to seven teraflops.

PCs for needy

If you have a personal computer you’re not using, donate it and help a needy household, The Straits Times reports. The Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) hopes to refurbish another 10,000 PCs in the next 1 and a half years and give them to needy families. Old Pentium PCs can be donated towards this good cause instead of being thrown away, Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said last night when he launched Marine Parade’s e-Club @ Marine Parade, an information-technology and Internet club at the void deck of Block 35, Marine Crescent. PC ownership among lower-income families is still low, he said, although six out of 10 households in Singapore own personal computers.Half of these households have the Internet access that puts Singapore ahead of such developed economies as Australia, Taiwan, United States and Hong Kong. Among families with a household income of less than $ 2,000 a month, he said, only three out of 10 own a computer, according to an Infocomm Household

Survey last year.

Baazee.com, one of India’s leading e-commerce site, has acquired the Indian operations of Bidorbuy.com Inc., in an all-stock transaction. Through this transaction, Baazee.com acquires all assets of the Indian operations of Bidorbuy.com without significant dilution of equity for existing investors. To manage the growth in business Baazee will absorb key Bidorbuyindia personnel, including CEO John Clegg. Commenting on the acquisition, Mr. Avnish Bajaj, co-founder baazee.com said: "Online auctions model has proven to be the most scalable and profitable business model globally. We are now seeing this in India. By merging the top two players in India, we are convinced that the unified entity will harness significant operational synergies and accelerate business progress."