17-02-2001 Essential news of the week

Brought neatly together and presented on a plate, here is a roundup of some of the week's main news stories from the world of IT. Oftel decides on FRIACO part 2 Government backs down on ?1bn broadband investment Emoti-photy-cons Windows XP unveiled Orange shares slide as they sell Microsoft salutes the new President Rivals cheer over Napster ruling Handspring announces new modules Dreamcast set-top box unveiled IBM helped Hitler organise holocaust says book Lastminute makes more money, but still makes a loss Don't forget, we welcome your comments. Just click on a story and go for the 'Comments' link on the right-hand side of the screen. ...more

PC Pro launches Switch IT Off campaign

Let us know what you are doing to cut down energy consumption from IT equipment, whether at home or at work. Email us at campaign@pcpro.co. ...more

Fujitsu drives in a spin

Fujitsu has introduced its MAM series of hard drives for high-end workstations and servers, spinning at 15,000rpm. With current drive speeds at the 7,200rpm mark, this more than doubling of speed allows a much greater data transfer rate, as much as 88.9Mbytes/sec. ...more

SCO gets approval for resizing its legal wrangle with IBM

SCO has been granted its $5bn update to its legal wranglings with IBM. The company recently dropped charges of misappropriation of trade secrets in its $3bn claim against IBM, but filed that it wanted to add a further $2bn to cover damages from IBM's continued shipping of its AIX Unix product for which SCO had withdrawn IBM's Unix licence. This additional copyright claim has now been added to SCO's complaints, as IBM has not opposed the amendment of the case. ...more

No change at HP post-Fiorina

Following the departure of Fiorina, HP will not be making any great change in direction anytime soon. That was the message sent out by Patricia Dunn, the new non-executive chairman and Robert Wayman the interim CEO. They emphasised that the company would continue the wide portfolio strategy identified with Fiorina and that spinning off or selling parts of the company was not on the table Wayman emphasised that the 'strategy is based around a portfolio of businesses which is unique' and 'is better together than apart' contrary to the speculation that had been swirling around the company for the past few months. ...more