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Dear Windows-Help.NET Subscriber,
Amid sluggish PC sales and high inventories, Intel will slash its chip prices by over 40 percent on some chips.
Since last summer, sales of PC's have slowed, and the holiday season saw a dramatic downturn in sales levels. Now most PC makers have excess inventory, which also means that Intel (and AMD) have excess processors.
Analysts are calling the current AMD vs. Intel price reductions a "price skirmish," but they won't call it a "price war." It's apparent that both companies want to avoid an all-out price war in a period of market weakness.
Intel's Pentium 4 chip will be reduced by more than 20 percent. The 1.5GHz P4 will be reduced by 21 percent, from $819 to $644. The 1.4GHz version will be reduced by 23 percent, from $575 to $440 (all prices in quantities of 1000 units).
Intel will also cut prices on Pentium III and Celeron processors, bringing Intel's chip prices more in line with AMD's prices.
Microsoft & Sun settle Java lawsuit
Microsoft and Sun Microsystems announced an agreement to settle both the October 1997 lawsuit filed by Sun and the Microsoft countersuit in the dispute over the Java technology license agreement between the two companies. Sun sparked the lawsuit in 1997, alleging that Microsoft violated its licensing agreement, and took Microsoft to court for creating a Windows-only version of the programming language.
Under the terms of the settlement, the existing technology license agreement between the two companies is terminated. Microsoft can continue to ship all current products and those in beta containing Sun's technology for a period of seven years and in return agrees to pay Sun $20 million. Microsoft agreed not to use Sun's Java Compatible trademark, which it has not done since 1998.
"Microsoft is very pleased with the successful conclusion of this litigation," said Tom Burt, deputy general counsel for litigation at Microsoft. "This settlement will not impact our customers or current products in any way and will allow us to focus our time and resources on what we do best: developing great software."
The license agreement and the settlement agreement confirm Microsoft's freedom to independently develop technology that competes with Sun's technology.
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27 Jan. 2001, Vol 4 No. 4
