Author Archive

Gina M. Roos

Digital Government

PCs with 3DNow technology go to extremes

With the battle cry of "more bang for your buck," Unicent Technologies of Aurora, Ohio, has introduced its Extreme series of PCs. The beating heart of the systems is American Micro Device's K6 chip with MMX technology and K6-2 chip with 3DNow technology. With CPU speeds ranging from 266 MHz to 350 MHz, the computers are well armed for cruising the Internet, using multimedia capability and doing tasks required by business applications.

  • By Gina M. Roos, GCN
Digital Government

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

  • By Gina M. Roos, GCN
Digital Government

Ubiquitous effort helps handle job

BOSTON—We live in a world filled with increasingly complex technology that we take for granted. That is, until we're faced with an unresponsive PC, printer or modem. Then, finding someone who understands the problem can be the hardest part of the repair process. But for folks at the General Services Administration's Boston office know just the man to call.

  • By Gina M. Roos, GCN
Digital Government

JCALS turns to VPNs as way to serve remote users

Challenged with providing secure transmission among more than 240 Joint Continuous Acquisition and Lifecycle Support WAN sites, JCALS prime contractor Computer Sciences Corp. investigated the types of virtual private networks available. JCALS was established jointly by the Defense Department and the Defense Logistics Agency in 1991 to link disparate automated systems at military sites across the United States through a combination of LAN and WAN connections. The connections are designed to let users access, move and

  • By Gina M. Roos, GCN
Digital Government

Graphics monitors put on masks for crisper color

Setting their sights on producing brighter and clearer images, a few manufacturers have introduced unique mask technologies that combine characteristics of conventional CRT technologies, such as Invar shadow mask and flat square, with aperture grille technologies. To get the richest, most saturated color for use in high-end computer-aided design, manufacturing and engineering, graphics and desktop publishing applications, monitor makers recommend aperture grille technologies such as Sony's Trinitron and Mitsubishi's DiamondTron tubes.

  • By Gina M. Roos, GCN