Alcatel, Intel team in WiMAX push

French telecoms kit manufacturer Alcatel and US chip giant Intel have announced an alliance to push WiMAX, a broadband standard designed to compete with current GSM and future UMTS mobile protocols.

The accord covers "the definition, standardisation, development, integration and marketing of WiMAX end-to-end solutions", and the groups plan to have solutions available by the second half of 2005, reports Australian IT.

Intel has announced plans to rename its processors, reports ITVibe. The new naming convention will "give a more accurate indication of a chip`s performance". Currently, people tend to buy on clock speed alone (P4/3GHz, for example). But other features, such as bus speed and cache size, vitally affect how a processor can perform.

The new naming convention will consist of a three-digit code, beginning with 3, 5 or 7. The remaining digits would indicate the performance of the chip`s other features. The higher the number, the more powerful the processor.

Microsoft will today release a beta version of an update to Windows CE for handheld devices, set-top boxes and other limited-function computing devices, reports ZDNet.

The Technology Preview Kit for Windows CE 5.0, formerly code-named Macallan, will be given to developers attending the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco. Microsoft plans to make it available for download later in the week through its Microsoft Developer Network site for embedded developers.

Italy`s TIM says it will launch Edge on its Italian network later next month, reports Cellular News. UMTS will become operative for corporate users in June, while the launch for the general public will coincide with Christmas 2004. By Christmas, there will be sufficient UMTS handsets to offer 3G services, reports the site.

Two-thirds of Internet users are now online shoppers, according to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a research house in Washington.

New York Times quotes a spokesperson as saying: "What`s striking about this is that the percentage of Internet users who do shopping has been growing, even as the Internet population continues to grow."

Distributor Drive Control Corporation has announced the availability of Media Centre, Western Digital`s latest storage peripheral. It combines a 250GB WD Caviar SE hard drive, an eight-in-one memory card reader, USB 2.0 hub and the company`s dual-option backup feature in one external storage device.