Sun sets on $1billion loss

Sun Microsystems has announced that it is to take a $1 billion hit on its fourth quarter 2003 earnings. This is due to a $1,051 million tax charge that, the company estimates, will plunge the system builder deep into the red this quarter. According to US law a company can defer taxes whilst it is making losses to some time in the future when (hopefully) it is back in the black. ...more

GeForce3: first tests

We get our hands on nVIDIA's next-generation card, the GeForce3. Over the past few years nVIDIA has been a key player in the graphics card market, and with the success of its GeForce chipsets, it's taken the market by the throat. So with the release of its next-generation card, the GeForce3, there’s a huge burden on nVIDIA to produce something special. ...more

Windows support for all major DVD formats

Microsoft has announced that the next version of Windows - codenamed Longhorn - will include support for 'all major writeable DVD formats'. Understanding the formats used for data storage DVDs (as opposed to movie DVDs which don't have this problem) involves negotiating a minefield of plusses and minuses, Rs and Ws: DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-R, DVD-RAM and so on. However when it comes down to working out which drives can read and write to which disks the key is in the plus and minus signs. ...more

Samsung named world's fastest growing brand

Samsung has been named the 'Fastest Growing Global Brand' by Interbrand, a global brand consultancy. For a second year in a row the South Korean electronics giant has taken this particular marketing garland. Interbrand calculates that Samsung's brand value has more than doubled from $5. ...more

Thunderbird is go

The Mozilla organisation has released the first beta version of its standalone email client Thunderbird. Thunderbird is a cross-platform redesign of the Mozilla (and Netscape) mail component. The jack-of-all-trades approach of Mozilla and Netscape, which combines Web browsing, email and instant messaging into a single, large and at times confusing application has often been criticised, and the development of Thunderbird, and its browser equivalent Firebird, is designed to address these criticisms. ...more