In Brief

Product Pipeline

Twice as Nice: Gunning for still more of Intel's lunch, AMD announced in June its first CPU and chip set for multiprocessor servers and workstations, the Athlon MP and 760 MP CPU chip set. Competing with Intel's Xeon CPUs, the AMD chip comes in 1- and 1.2-GHz flavors. Systems are available now from smaller vendors, but no top-tier sellers yet.

Netscape Tries Again: Pledging a more stable (read: crash-free) experience with better support for popular plug-ins, Netscape has posted its 6.1 beta-version browser. It adds offline access to Netscape WebMail, URL autocompletion, synchronization of Netscape 6.1's address book with those of AOL and Netscape WebMail, and a History tab for recently visited sites. You can find Netscape 6.1 at our Downloads library.

NVidia's NForce: Graphics king NVidia now offers the NForce, its first PC motherboard chip set. Initially paired with AMD Athlon and Duron chips and due in PCs this fall, the NForce will have the integrated graphics of NVidia's popular GeForce2 chip. NVidia says the NForce will improve PC performance, thanks to a double-wide DDR memory interface, fast system bus, and speculative-processing technology. Also included: built-in networking, and support for a 4X AGP slot.

Tidbytes

Good-Bye Kaypro: Premio, which purchased the defunct Kaypro name in 1999 and revived it as a line of desktop PCs, has decided to end Kaypro's brief afterlife. Premio promises to honor all of its Kaypro service and warranty agreements. The original Kaypros from the early 1980s were a popular line of portable PCs weighing less than 30 pounds.

CyberRebate Files Ch. 11: You may have to wait a long time for a rebate from Net retailer CyberRebate.com--the company has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection from creditors. A statement on its site says all retail operations have ceased while it tries to reorganize, and asks customers not to return items until the bankruptcy court has approved a policy covering buys made in the 30 days prior to the filing. The popular site sold various products, often at two to ten times their retail value, but offered rebates up to 100 percent of the purchase cost.

Your Slice of the Tax-Cut Pie: Want to know your share of the $1.35 trillion tax cut? See Intuit's calculator. Have your tax and finance info handy: You'll need to answer 24 questions to get your estimate.

Sega and Sony Play Together: Owners of Sega Dreamcast and Sony PlayStation devices could soon be playing each other over the Net using their game consoles. In August, Sega will release new versions of its Dreamcast games, followed by the same titles for PS2 and PCs. Deals with Nintendo and Microsoft may be forthcoming. Sega America has yet to make a similar announcement. Sega recently exited the game console hardware market.

One Pentium 4, Hold the Rambus: Buying a Pentium 4 PC once meant spending extra for the dubious advantage of Rambus (RDRAM) memory, the only option. Not anymore: In the second half of 2001, Intel will announce the 845 chip set, which supports less-expensive SDRAM and DDR memory. P4 PCs with SDRAM should appear about the time of the announcement; the DDR version won't ship until 2002. For the impatient, Via's P4X266 chip set, with a P4/DDR combo, is due to ship any day.

Bigger, Denser Disks: IBM has developed a new magnetic coating technology that increases possible hard disk capacity to more than four times that of today's largest drives. The new technology (called antiferromagnetically-coupled media) lets you pack as much as 100 gigabits of data per square inch, up from the current max of 20 to 40 gigabits per square inch. The technology appears in IBM's Travelstar notebook drives today, but it won't reach its full potential until about 2003, when a wave of 400GB desktop drives and 200GB notebook drives could hit store shelves.

Site to See: Orbitz

Check out the new kid on the e-travel block--it's Orbitz, a joint venture of American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, and United airlines. Orbitz relies on state-of-the-art technology to find the widest flight and fare options to your destination, and it displays the results in a nice table showing the cheapest fares for direct, single-stop, and multiple-stop routes.

You also get the car rental, hotel, vacation package, and specials listings you seek from a major travel portal. A Care Alert feature will contact you--and up to four others--about flight delays, arrival gate, and other key information via phone, e-mail, pager, or fax. Have a good trip!