Neowin.net

Hoping to get the last dollar possible for their once-dominant ISP, Excite@Home owners are putting most of the company's tangible assets up for sale during a two-day online auction next week.

Wednesday and Thursday are your last chances to buy everything from an Excite@Home coffee mug to the cafeteria where they found the coffee cup, the sad final chapter for a company that did a lot to bring broadband Internet awareness to the mainstream.

AT&T Broadband tried for a bargain of its own with a $307 million bid for the cable ISP portion of Excite@Home. Creditors immediately rebuffed the sale, saying Ma Bell executives (who served on Excite@Home's board of directors) set the company up for a fall in the first place to sweeten the pot for the sale of its own broadband division to Comcast.

Which brings us to next week's online auction, where thousands of people will get their own chance to bring in a bargain from the demise of Excite@Home. Thousands of items are up for bid through auctioneer DoveBid, from Sun Microsystems Enterprise 4500 servers to a 1994 BMW 540i to foos ball tables.

News source: Internet.com News
View: The entire article - Internet.com News
View: Excite@Home auction details - DoveBid

Ditching Applications

Longtime Microsoft critics may welcome one feature new to Windows XP, meant to comply with the November 2001 antitrust settlement agreement between Microsoft and the Justice Department. Buried in the Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs module, the new "Set Program Access and Defaults" settings allow both end users and system vendors to specify which programs handle key tasks, including Web browsing, e-mail, instant messaging, media playback, and Java interpreting.

In addition to selecting the default application, the new feature can also hide installed programs--including Microsoft programs--from users. For the first time since Windows 95 (which shipped with only a rudimentary media player), PC vendors armed with the updated version of XP will be free to ship systems that use browsers, media players, and other tools from Microsoft competitors like Netscape and Opera instead of Microsoft's own utilities.

IDC's Kusnetzky says he doubts many system vendors will go to that extreme, because it might confuse customers accustomed to using Microsoft tools. Still, he finds the settings a plus.

"If the features are used to embellish an otherwise standard environment to make it work more easily and be easier to support, the changes will be seen as both beneficial and a competitive differentiator," Kusnetzky says. It's important to note that removing access to the Microsoft tools is not the same as removing the tools entirely, Kusnetzky adds. The browser and media player will still be there. The icons, menu references, and Registry entries are removed, but not the software they point to.

Ready for Tablet PC

Although Microsoft says SP1's official release will be in the second half of 2002, it's likely to ship sooner than that so new PC designs supported by the service pack can reach stores in time for holiday shopping.

Supported are the Freestyle PC, geared to home entertainment and viewed through the television screen; the Mira PC with its detachable, wireless tablet display; and Tablet PCs, which offer handwriting recognition. According to Microsoft, all three PC designs will be in the market by fall, and will require SP1's enhancements.

Other SP1 enhancements include support for USB 2.0 devices (already available from Microsoft's Web site), and key changes to the Windows Product Activation antipiracy mechanism. Microsoft has added a three-day grace period to WPA that it says will prevent unexpected hardware changes from locking you out of your PC while you're on an airplane and away from a phone.

Microsoft is developing an update to Windows Media Player, code-named Corona, but it won't be ready in time for SP1, say company sources. And although Netscape is forging on with new versions of its browser, Microsoft says it has no imminent plans for an update to Internet Explorer.

As with previous service packs, Microsoft will make Windows XP SP1 available as a free download from WindowsUpdate.com, probably about the same size of previous service packs, which range from 25MB to 30MB. You can also order a CD for a nominal shipping and handling charge. Dutiful XP updaters needn't worry that installing SP1 will require downloading megabytes of duplicate patches--Windows Update will send only those features that you haven't already installed.