At 333 MHz, Celeron chip gives low-end Compaq PC some gusto
Pros and cons: + Solid, basic PC performance + Compact chassis – No monitor or CD-ROM drive at this price Intel Corp.'s Celeron processor, a stripped-down Pentium II, never made it to the GCN Lab in its original 266- and 300-MHz versions because most computer makers had already found its performance inferior.
Crash Defender program does no harm and protects system without much annoyance
Box Score B Quarterdeck Corp. released Crash Defender Deluxe just before its acquisition by Symantec Corp. of Cupertino, Calif. Symantec is building the underlying technology into its Norton Utilities package. But you can still buy Crash Defender Deluxe from Quarterdeck. In my experience, most such programs have wound up doing a lot more harm than good.
Boeing drops its protest of Seat Management
Boeing Information Services Inc. is giving up its effort to win a General Services Administration Seat Management contract and dropping its protest. Boeing passed up the option of taking its protest of GSA Federal Technology Service's Seat Management Program contracts to the General Accounting Office. The deadline for filing a protest with GAO passed late last month. Boeing of Vienna, Va., filed an agency-level protest of GSA's Seat Management contracts in July.
PCs that go into battle will be tougher, lighter, Army says
BEDFORD, Mass.—The Army plans to field a leaner, more cost-effective computer for the digitized battlefield of the 21st century. The Army will save a lot of money by equipping the service's first digital division with PCs running Microsoft Windows NT instead of expensive, high-end workstations running Unix, Brig. Gen. Steven Boutelle, the Army's program executive officer for command, control and communications systems, said at the Militray Communications '98 conference late last month.
Reseller CS&T adds services to IT Schedule deal
Reseller Corporate Software & Technology Inc. has added software services to its General Services Administration Information Technology Schedule contract. The Norwood, Mass., company will provide custom application development, installation, electronic commerce, technology migration and other services on its contract. The 300-employee company has sold software to agencies through GSA schedule contracts since 1995, under the names Corporate Software Inc. and Stream International Inc. It has a Web site at http://www.corpsoft.com.
Treasury sets up BPAs for companies competing with Dell
The Treasury Department last month signed three blanket purchasing agreements for file servers, laser printers, PCs, routers and software, in deals that set up competition for its heavyweight supplier, Dell Computer Corp. Under the Treasury Department Acquisition BPAs, Presidio Corp. of Lanham, Md., will provide IBM Corp. portables, PCs and servers, and Government Technology Services Inc. of Chantilly, Va., will sell the same types of products from Compaq Computer Corp., IRS contracting officer Greg Roseman said.
The war over rewritable DVD standards heats up
Digital video disk technology has made few inroads into the drive market, and vendors are already hawking rewritable versions: DVD-RAM drives. It sounds great—big storage and rewritable. But a split among makers could leave buyers with incompatible rewritable DVD formats. As with any new medium, standards among the major manufacturers must be established. For the most part, standards for the DVD-ROM are set, but such is not the case for rewritable DVD. The biggest bone of contention
Apple's iMac rates high on cool scale but has built-in limitations
Pros and cons: + Good 3-D rendering + Very easy setup – No floppy drive – No upgrade path The iMac is the coolest-looking computer I've ever seen. As soon as I set up Apple Computer Inc.'s latest model in the GCN Lab, visitors started dropping by with lame excuses and asking casually if they could play with the iMac.
IG: Defense buying systems from vendors not certified 2000-ready
Military services are buying major weapons systems from vendors not required to deliver year 2000-ready products, the Defense Department inspector general reported last month. The IG reviewed 16 DOD weapons systems and found that nine programs had contracts or solicitations that did not include language about year 2000 readiness. The Federal Acquisition Regulation requires agencies buying hardware and software to ensure that contracts and solicitations demand that products be year 2000-ready.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
David J. Shea Chief, Procurement Policy Division Agriculture Department Washington I'd like to thank Bob Gellman for his @info.policy column on long-term access to government information [GCN, Oct. 12, Page 22]. But I also want to respond to a question he raised about the involvement of the Government Printing Office in the partnership agreement between the State Department and the University of Illinois Chicago.
Don't close the book on encryption technology
Most technology and policy books are, to put it kindly, indigestible. But occasionally a book will come along that's both readable and erudite. Whitfield Diffie, Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Distinguished Engineer and the inventor of public-key encryption, and Susan Landau, a research associate professor in the computer science department at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, have written just such a volume. It's Privacy On The Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, published by MIT Press.
Latest version of NT blends the best of two OSes
Is Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 still the champ? Workstation 4.0 arrived as the most streamlined and reliable graphical operating system that Microsoft Corp. had ever turned out. After the GCN Lab's second examination of a beta version of NT Workstation 5.0, I've concluded that NT 4.0 may still be the most streamlined, though 5.0 does have greater stability.
Microsoft pushes latest version of SQL as capable of ousting Oracle in govt. market
Microsoft Corp.'s SQL Server 7.0, set for a Nov. 16 launch, will "hammer away at database support and administration costs" with the goal of replacing Oracle Corp. database software in the government market, said Chris Guziak, an account executive for Microsoft federal systems in Washington. The Oracle8i universal file system and database management system is due out next month. Just as Oracle throws more operating system functions into its DBMS, Microsoft plans to fight back with
USDA's Anne Thomson Reed focuses on human resources in accepting award
For Anne Thomson Reed, managing people in an increasingly technological age is a tougher challenge than the technology itself. "We need to start thinking about developing the next generation of information technology employees," said the Agriculture Department chief information officer. And the techno-savvy people increasingly in demand need to be seen not as nerds, but as the change agents they are, she told some 1,000 government IT and vendor officials who gathered last
Build yourself an Ethernet or Fast Ethernet LAN
Figuring out what hardware components and their functions comprise an Ethernet and Fast Ethernet network is easy. A white paper from Lantronix Corp. of Irvine, Calif., details the gear you need to build an Ethernet LAN: Their built-in intelligence lets the networks be split into separate collision domains, allowing for coverage of greater distances and more efficient use of network repeaters.
Agencies find ways for citizens to dial in to Web sites by phone
If a government Web site could talk to you over the phone, what would it say? With an unusual combination of telephone and Internet technologies, it's possible to surf the Web by telephone. No, not by modem—by phone touchpad or by voice recognition in some cases. It sounds like a primitive way to tackle something complicated—playing Mozart on a child's xylophone, perhaps. But a few government sites have found that there are indeed folks who want to
Fast NICs
Build yourself an Ethernet or Fast Ethernet LAN Most network managers are familiar with the early warning signs of network glut: Graphics applications bring LANs to a crawl. Ad hoc database searches take eons to complete. Print jobs stay queued up for hours. Data output from server farms is sluggish and congested.
DNS snafu delays user access to space Web site
Sen. John Glenn's participation in the recent shuttle flight prompted NASA to upgrade its Web service. A NASA error in listing the Domain Name System for a Web site hosting information about the John Glenn space shuttle mission temporarily barred access to the site. "As we were trying to upload content, we noticed something was not working right," said Kelly Humphries, assistant for operations in the public affairs office at the Johnson Space Center
INS uses app to reduce fraud
Immigration and Naturalization Service investigators said they have cut down on fraud with a custom imaging application that can access 13.5 million sets of biometric data. The Biometric Image Management Program has made immigrants' fingerprint, photograph and signature images available over a WAN in standard file formats, said Fernanda Young, assistant commissioner of the Data Systems Division in INS' IRM Office.
Novell, Microsoft execs speak at show; no date given for Win2000
Novell chairman Eric Schmidt, left, and Microsoft president Steve Ballmer predict network improvements. ATLANTA—At the NetWorld+Interop trade show last month, Microsoft Corp. president Steve Ballmer announced a delivery date for the long-awaited Microsoft Windows NT 4.0 successor: "The day it's ready." That will probably be next year, Ballmer said, although "we still have a ways to go."
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