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• Intuit: Adding Burdens on QuickBooks Clients

  As the software company that perfected such marketing tactics as nagware and forced product registration, Intuit is a company we need to watch closely. And sure enough, Intuit Inc. once again appears to be pioneering new ways to squeeze a few more dollars out of its customer base.

  Written by Ed Foster • 20 March 00 12:01

• PIII-866 Systems Pour It On

  The 1-GHz CPU has grabbed the spotlight in the chip speed races, as both Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. hit that mark this month. But when Intel jumped from 800 MHz to 1 GHz, it skipped a few spots, which it fills Monday. Making their debut are 850- and 866-MHz Pentium III CPUs, which will power systems that may prove more practical than the speed demon.

  Written by David Essex • 20 March 00 12:01

• Security Watch: Inside-Out Security Pays Attention

  Most network administrators discuss their firewalls in terms of what kinds of inbound traffic they block from the wild and wooly Internet. Not many consider how threatening outbound traffic can be to a site's security.

  Written by Stuart McClure and Joel Scambray • 20 March 00 12:01

• AS/400 to Support B-to-B Apps

  IBM Corp. has expanded the range of Internet applications available on its midrange AS/400 server.

  Written by Jaikumar Vijayan • 20 March 00 12:01

• Lotus Moves Replication Beyond Notes

  Lotus next month will release the first two of four components that will finally expose Notes replication to non-Notes clients and let those clients use Domino-based applications offline.

  Written by John Fontana • 20 March 00 12:01

• Move Over Spielberg

  With the right hardware and software, anyone can turn a PC into a digital movie studio.

  Written by Stan Miastkowski • 20 March 00 12:01

• Extensity Offers Net Links to Content

  Extensity plans to offer new content links for its Internet-based travel-planning and expense reporting applications via Extensity Connect, and analysts predict that others in its niche are certain to follow.

  Written by Eugene Grygo • 20 March 00 12:01

• SingTel Consortium Wins Taiwan Network License

  A consortium led by Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. (SingTel) and Taiwan's Far Eastern Group (FEG) has won a license to operate a fixed-line telecommunications network in Taiwan, the company announced today.

  Written by David Legard • 20 March 00 12:01

• Carrier Briefs

  State telecom regulators have decided they don't like a lobbying effort under way to allow Bell companies to carry data and Internet traffic across local boundaries before they get general long-distance approval. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, which represents telecom and energy regulators in the 50 states, passed a resolution opposing congressional bills to free up Bells to create long-haul data backbones even before they submit state-by-state, long-distance applications to the government. Some of the Bells have funded a lobbying group headed by former White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry to push for the idea, arguing they could provide a needed boost in Internet backbone capacity. Critics say the Bells could do a lot more for the Internet by concentrating on speeding up the local loop.

  Written by Network World staff • 20 March 00 12:01

• Step On It

  The muscle systems on this month's charts, from notebooks aided by Intel Corp.'s SpeedStep technology to desktop chart-makers hitting 800 MHz, pack a sizable herd of ponies under their hoods and stampede over more than their fair share of benchmarks. This month also sees the first Top 30 machine to use the Windows 2000 operating system: The Dell OptiPlex GX300 captures the number five spot on our power chart. Though the Dell proved to be quite fast, we'll need to see more Windows 2000 systems before we can judge how the OS affects performance.

  Written by Katharine Dvorak and Alan Stafford • 20 March 00 12:01

• Telstra service improving: Telstra

  The Federal Government has responded to requests for an inquiry into the standard of Telstra's service by announcing reductions to telephone and internet fulfilment time of almost two-thirds.

  Written by Byron Kaye • 20 March 00 12:01

• Dell Opens E-Marketplace for Customers

  A new alliance between Ariba Inc. and Dell Computer Corp. will open up business-to-business e-commerce opportunities for small and medium-size businesses, analysts said.

  Written by DeWayne Lehman • 20 March 00 12:01

• Amazon.com Takes Kozmo.com Stake

  Amazon.com Inc. wants instant gratification for its customers.

  Written by Kenneth Li • 20 March 00 12:01

• Linksys Connects, Protects Branch Users

  Perhaps the biggest challenge in supporting a branch office is finding a manageable way to offer it the same networking services that your headquarters enjoy. To set up a LAN with full Internet access and a firewall requires a complicated mix of hardware and software. The cost of installing and managing these systems is unreasonable for a remote office of 10 or fewer people. Link-sys, a brand synonymous with affordable networking, steps up to this challenge with its EtherFast Cable/DSL Router, a tool that provides remote connectivity at a knockout price.

  Written by Steve Jefferson • 20 March 00 12:01

• Corel Posts Q1 Net Loss

  Corel Corp. today announced a net loss for its first quarter of fiscal 2000 of US$12.4 million, or 19 cents per diluted share, compared to a net loss of $14.6 million, or 24 cents per share, for the year-ago quarter.

  Written by Jack McCarthy • 20 March 00 12:01

• Nortel's Layer 3 switch still a moving target

  Users hoping to see Nortel Networks' next-generation Layer 3 backbone switch this month will have to wait a little longer because the company has delayed delivery again. . . . This time until the second quarter.

  Written by Jim Duffy • 20 March 00 12:01

• Ubiquitous? Pervasive? Sorry, They Don't Compute

  I just found out that ubiquitous computing and pervasive computing aren't the same thing. "What?!?" you're saying. "I'm shocked." Yes, brace yourselves. This time it appears to be the scientists, not the marketers, who adopted everyday terms to describe their once-futuristic technology, making things very confusing now that other folks are using those ordinary words - sometimes interchangeably - without their particular nuances in mind.

  Written by Anne McCrory • 20 March 00 12:01

• Opera Releases 4.0 Beta of Windows Browser

  Opera Software AS today announced the release of a beta version of its Opera 4.0 Elektra for Windows Internet browser software.

  Written by Terho Uimonen • 20 March 00 12:01

• Telco Mergers May Pain Users

  Someday telecom mergers may achieve the long-elusive goal of one-stop shopping, but all they seem to be doing now is forcing users to deal with more carriers, not less.

  Written by David Rohde • 20 March 00 12:01

• It's March Madness, Baby!

  Last week was awful. Just awful.

  Written by Robert X. Cringely • 20 March 00 12:01