Novell announces Q1 results

Microsoft's half a billion dollar payout swelled Novell's coffers in its Q1 results. During the quarter, Novell received a $448mn cheque from Microsoft, settling its complaints around NetWare, which were part of the EU investigation. Revenues for the quarter were at $290mn, compared with $267mn for the corresponding quarter last year. ...more

Ofcom extends mis-selling rules to LLU services

Ofcom has announced that its rules protecting consumers from the mis-selling of fixed-line voice call services will now also cover providers that offer voice and broadband services using full local loop unbundling (LLU) technology. These rules cover sales and marketing activities deemed inappropriate by the industry regulator, including 'slamming', where customers can be switched from one company to another without their express knowledge and consent. Since May 2005 a new General Condition of Entitlement has required providers of fixed-line voice call services to establish then comply with a code of practice for sales and marketing in accordance with Ofcom's guidelines. ...more

Egg ditches current account plans

Internet bank Egg said yesterday that it would suspend plans for a current account until the market is more favourable. The company, founded and majority-owned by the Prudential, is famous for its Internet credit card, but is running shy of introducing a current account after reporting losses of ?155m in 2000. According to reports in The Guardian, Egg believes the market is too conservative for an Internet-based current account. ...more

Surge in notebook demand puts pressure on manufacturers

A number of China-based notebook PC plants belonging to Taiwan makers are currently operating 24 hours per day, in order to cope with a surge of orders from leading vendors, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Acer, according to sources at the makers. An additional factor in meeting demand is a national holiday in China, which this year will see many factories closed between 1-7 October. However, Taiwan notebook makers are paying workers triple-time wages to continue working, the sources said. ...more

Gartner warns against over-hyped IT fears

Analysts at Gartner have identified five IT risks they believe are being wildly overblown in the industry, and urge companies not to hold back IT expansion plans. Most of the points centre around burgeoning new industries. Internet telephony is picked out as being tainted with the notion that it is simply unsafe. ...more