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[ Go to March 1997 Table of Contents ]
News
Hot new release Windows CE acquired more steam as Microsoft announced plans to work with Motorola and Advanced RISC Machines (ARM) to port the hand-held operating system to the Motorola PowerPC and ARM microprocessor families. Meanwhile, Navitel announced TouchPhone, the first WinCE-based information appliance. Citing poor sales, IBM halted the development of NT-based PowerPC systems. The move leaves Intel's omnipresent microprocessors, and to a significantly lesser extent Digital's Alpha, as the only volume NT RISC platforms on which you can find NT. America Online's decision to match prices offered by Internet service providers-$19.95 a month for unlimited usage-threatened to bring in more business than it could handle. AOL promises to implement a $250 million upgrade by June. Whatever it does for consumers, MMX technology will likely create a fresh set of headaches for clone makers Cyrix and AMD. Intel says it will actively enforce a trademark it's been granted on the letters "MMX." Worldwide software piracy in 1995 cost the industry $13.1 billion, a 9 percent increase over 1994. Eastern Europe had the highest overall piracy rates -fully 83 percent of the software being used there is illegal. The worst offenders, according to two industry trade groups, were Vietnam (99 percent), El Salvador (97 percent) and China (96 percent). In the U.S., the figure was pegged at 26 percent. Copyright (c) 1997 CMP Media Inc.
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