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• Celebrating Windows 2000

  To celebrate the release of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 2000, today's theme is products that crash, fail and generally let us down. Of course Windows 2000 is supposed to have none of those flaws. If you can get it installed (set aside a full day), and if you can live with the side effects of it having been designed mainly for big corporate users (for instance, it won't let you dial in to America Online), it goes a long way toward reducing the crashes, failures and general annoyances of Windows 98.

  Written by James Fallows • 03 March 00 12:01

• AlphaBlox Brings BI to Online Trading Platforms

  Taking a novel approach to the problem of providing trading platform operators with easy-to-use business intelligence capabilities, AlphaBlox Corp. this week will launch its Analysis Suite, eBusiness Edition.

  Written by Michael Lattig • 03 March 00 12:01

• Top 10 Modems

  Two new low-cost PCI internal modems make the chart this month, leaving number one Viking as the sole ISA survivor. Trendware's new model performed exceptionally fast, with the shortest 56-kbps downloads here, while Diamond's latest SupraMax did well overall. The PC Card chart adds a Linksys Group Inc. modem to its top three--the EtherFast offers network and modem connectivity in one PC Card plus great V.90 performance.

  Written by PC World Staff • 03 March 00 12:01

• NYSE, Nasdaq in Reported Merger Talks

  The New York Stock Exchange Inc. (NYSE) and the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc. (NASD) have discussed merging to preserve a key role in the likely creation of an electronic centralized marketplace, according to a report in today's Wall Street Journal.

  Written by MARIA TROMBLY • 03 March 00 12:01

• Windows Tips

  The Web viewpane of the Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 2000 Explorer vastly improves your preview of common bit-map image formats (such as GIF, JPEG, and BMP), letting you zoom in and out or launch a larger preview window. To activate this feature for a given folder, right-click an empty area of the folder and choose Customize This Folder. Click Next, check Choose or edit an HTML template for this folder,

  Written by Scott Dunn • 03 March 00 12:01

• Oracle Set to Launch E-Government Initiative

  Oracle Corp. wants to do for governments what the company claims it already does for Ford Motor Co. and Sears, Roebuck & Co. The database and tools vendor wants to help governments overhaul their brick-and-mortar operations by moving their services to the Internet.

  Written by Jack McCarthy • 03 March 00 12:01

• Internet Community to Debate New Domains

  After simmering on the back burner for several years, the debate over new Internet domains - such as .web and .arts - will reach full boil next week at the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) meeting in Cairo.

  Written by Carolyn Duffy Marsan • 03 March 00 12:01

• Agriculture Giants Form Online Marketplace

  Three giants in the brick-and-mortar world of agricultural commerce have agreed to form an online marketplace where farmers can purchase seed, fertilizer and chemicals, and market their crops to distributors.

  Written by Jennifer Couzin • 03 March 00 12:01

• China State-Owned Bank to Fund High-Tech Startups

  China Construction Bank this week established a 500 million renminbi (US$60 million) fund for high-tech startups, taking one of the first forays into high-tech venture financing by a Chinese state-owned bank, according to a report in the official China Daily newspaper.

  Written by Stephen Lawson • 03 March 00 12:01

• Tandberg Completes Breece Hill Deal

  Tandberg Data Inc. yesterday finalized its acquisition of Breece Hill Technologies Inc., a Boulder, Colo.-based company that develops automated tape library systems based on DLT tape products.

  Written by Kathleen Ohlson • 03 March 00 12:01

• AltaVista Expands in Europe

  U.S.-based Web portal AltaVista Co. has launched regional sites in France and the Netherlands, the company announced yesterday.

  Written by Douglas F. Gray • 03 March 00 12:01

• Guest column: Scanning an Internet-Style Deal

  What a deal! I was recently in Staples with my dear wife buying boxes (we're moving again) when I saw an unbelievable deal - a Canon Computer Systems Inc. scanner for $30! That's right, three zero. It works like this: You buy the scanner for $130, and you'll get a $40 rebate from Canon and a $60 rebate from Staples. Amazing.

  Written by Mark Gibbs • 03 March 00 12:01

• Meeting Online Can Save Money, Boost Productivity

  IBM Corp. recently wrapped up e.forum2000, an extraordinary three-week sales conference involving 2,500 employees and business partners from more than 90 countries.

  Written by Don Tapscott • 03 March 00 12:01

• Production Costs Bite Into Bluetooth Viability

  Bluetooth, originally conceived as a cheap, wireless way to link mobile phones to laptops, is finding new applications.

  Written by Peter Sayer • 03 March 00 12:01

• Own Stock? Buy Products!

  If you owned a particular stock, would you be more likely to buy the company's products? A new report says yes.

  Written by Mark A. Mowrey • 03 March 00 12:01

• Study: European ISPs Expect E-Commerce to Pay Big

  As early as next year, western European ISPs (Internet service providers) expect electronic commerce to drive over a quarter of their revenues, according to a report from U.K.-based market research company Datamonitor PLC.

  Written by Laura Rohde • 03 March 00 12:01

• Exodus Ups Caching Ante

  Exodus Communications next week will team with start-up switch maker ArrowPoint to offer new caching services that promise to speed Web site performance, reduce bandwidth costs and simplify site integration issues.

  Written by April Jacobs • 03 March 00 12:01

• Free Support Free-for-All

  When vendor support fails, where do you turn? We try nine support sites to see which ones provide the answers you need, at a price you can't refuse.

  Written by Lincoln Spector • 03 March 00 12:01

• Davenport On... Long Live ERP

  AS I HOPE YOU HAVE RECENTLY READ IN CIO, I have just written a book -- Realizing the Promise of Enterprise Systems (Harvard Business School Press, Feb. 2000) --on how organizations can use and get value from enterprise resource planning, or ERP, systems. In the course of publicizing this tome, I've come across what seems to me a bizarre, if somewhat implicitly articulated, idea: We don't need big enterprise systems anymore, because we've got the internet now.

  Written by Thomas H. Davenport • 03 March 00 12:01

• Frankly Speaking: Why Risk It?

  Japan's defense agency pulled the plug this week on a new network linking army bases, after discovering that the software was written by members of a doomsday cult. Scary, huh? It gets scarier: Five contract software companies run by members of the Aum Shinri Kyo ("supreme truth") cult also wrote code for government agencies overseeing education, construc- tion, the post office and the telephone system - as well as for hundreds of corporate customers.

  Written by Frank Hayes • 03 March 00 12:01