Sony and Toshiba are expanding an alliance with IBM that will give the companies access to Big Blue's chip breakthroughs while making the tech giant more of a player in the burgeoning market for consumer electronics.
Under terms of the alliance, announced late Monday, Sony and Toshiba will be able to incorporate some of IBM's chipmaking advances, such as "silicon on insulator" technology, into future processors for consumer-electronic devices. As a result, IBM's chips and intellectual property could wind up in products such as camcorders and PlayStation gaming consoles.
Toshiba, which manufactures chips on behalf of Sony, will participate by lending assistance in manufacturing and chip design. IBM expects to draw from Toshiba's experience in building system-on-chip processors, single chips that contain all of the necessary elements to run a computing device.
The alliance could help fulfill major strategic objectives for all three companies. For the past few years, IBM has been trying, with a fair amount of success, to get its chips into the consumer market. Nintendo, for instance, adopted IBM's PowerPC for the GameCube console. IBM also has shown off low-power chips for cell phones.
Because Sony is one of the world's largest buyers of processors, the new pact would place Big Blue into the vortex of the consumer-electronics market.
"We're really gunning for MIPS (a processor architecture) and leaning on Motorola," said Ron Tessitore, vice president of PowerPC networking technology at IBM.
Meanwhile, Sony and Toshiba will gain access to intellectual property and chip-manufacturing techniques they would otherwise have to develop independently and at great expense. The two companies previously collaborated on the "emotion engine," the graphics chip inside the PlayStation 2. Though the chip boosted the PlayStation 2's performance, the companies had to spend substantial amounts of money in development and manufacturing.
News source: ZDNet News
View: IBM to share chip intelligence
Under terms of the alliance, announced late Monday, Sony and Toshiba will be able to incorporate some of IBM's chipmaking advances, such as "silicon on insulator" technology, into future processors for consumer-electronic devices. As a result, IBM's chips and intellectual property could wind up in products such as camcorders and PlayStation gaming consoles.
Toshiba, which manufactures chips on behalf of Sony, will participate by lending assistance in manufacturing and chip design. IBM expects to draw from Toshiba's experience in building system-on-chip processors, single chips that contain all of the necessary elements to run a computing device.
The alliance could help fulfill major strategic objectives for all three companies. For the past few years, IBM has been trying, with a fair amount of success, to get its chips into the consumer market. Nintendo, for instance, adopted IBM's PowerPC for the GameCube console. IBM also has shown off low-power chips for cell phones.
Because Sony is one of the world's largest buyers of processors, the new pact would place Big Blue into the vortex of the consumer-electronics market.
"We're really gunning for MIPS (a processor architecture) and leaning on Motorola," said Ron Tessitore, vice president of PowerPC networking technology at IBM.
Meanwhile, Sony and Toshiba will gain access to intellectual property and chip-manufacturing techniques they would otherwise have to develop independently and at great expense. The two companies previously collaborated on the "emotion engine," the graphics chip inside the PlayStation 2. Though the chip boosted the PlayStation 2's performance, the companies had to spend substantial amounts of money in development and manufacturing.
News source: ZDNet News View: IBM to share chip intelligence
It's that last bit, acknowledging the fact that you might not use Messenger, which makes it seem benign. Surely, this fix has more to do with some idiosyncrasy in 'Windows connectivity' than Messenger itself. Right?
And when we consult the related MS 'knowledge base' article, we're told that "to improve connectivity and system performance, even if you do not use Windows Messenger, Microsoft recommends that you install this update."
Man, they desperately want you to install this fix.
And the result? Do you get 'better connectivity and system performance?' Of course not. The only result is that Messenger is now back on your machine, consuming RAM even when you have no use for it, and haranguing you to obtain an MS Passport.
The only thing this Critical Update does is integrate Messenger into Outlook Express. And by default it runs on startup, and runs in the background. So now you have to go to Outlook Express/Tools/Windows Messenger/Options/Preferences, and turn it off.
Assuming, of course, that you already uninstalled it according to the instructions above. Otherwise it will run no matter what you do.
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