The EU antitrust trial against Microsoft What is it all about? In 1998, Sun Microsystems lodged a formal complaint with the European Commission, the European Union’s competition regulator, alleging that Microsoft was using the near monopoly of its Windows operating system on the desktop-PC market to crowd out competitors in the workgroup-server software market. The Commission examined the evidence and launched a formal investigation in 2000. On its own initiative (that is, without a complaint from rivals) it also extended the investigation to cover the effects of the bundling of WMP (Windows Media Player) with Windows....

Dell dismisses talk of AMD PCs Dell today dismissed a report that it has notified Taiwanese manufacturers to ready production lines to produce PCs using microprocessors made by AMD. A report in the Chinese-languageEconomic Daily News of Taipeisaid Dell has already notified major Taiwanese contract manufacturers such as Hon Hai Precision Industry and Quanta Computer to prepare to begin production of desktop and notebook PCs based on AMD microprocessors. Taiwanese companies normally gain a first glimpse of such product changes because they build a lot of the systems sold by Dell and other PC companies....

CeBit: AMD launches three new Athlons AMD today announced three new processors designed to boost performance in mobile, desktop, workstation and server computers at the CeBit tradeshow in Hanover. The new chips include AMD’s Athlon XP 2100+ for desktop PCs, Mobile Athlon 4 1600+ for notebooks and Athlon MP 2000+ for servers and workstations. The desktop XP 2100+ reaches speeds of 1.73GHz, according to AMD officials. The Mobile Athlon 4 1600+ hits 1....

Palm gets colourful Today Palm announced the introduction of two new PDAs – the m130 and the m515. The m130 (pictured) brings colour to the low end of the Palm range for the first time, while the m515 updates and replaces the m505. At £196 the m130 is the cheapest Palm OS colour device, costing a touch over £100 less than its nearest rival, the Visor Prism. The screen is a 160×160 resolution, 16bit colour model, and benefits from a new built-in contrast control accessed from the Graffiti writing area....

Panasonic plumps for WMA in latest products Matsushita, aka Panasonic, will support Microsoft’s Windows Media technologies in a range of consumer products including a DVD (digital versatile disc) player due out next month. This lends a hand towards Microsoft’s goal of pushing its multimedia format beyond PCs and into a range of consumer devices, the companies announced yesterday. In a speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas yesterday evening, Microsoft boss Bill Gates showed how consumers can now burn a CD using WMA (Windows Media Audio) and play it back on a Panasonic DVD player....