TE NET IS HEAR VIA SATELLITE

Gilat To Home is the Dish networks version of By Directional Satellite Internet. No phone line is required. Upload speed is 128K with download speed on par with ADSL. Radio Shack will be carrying this product. Its alignment is a little more difficult that the TV version, but not much since the dish is larger than the standard 18-inch. Current guess price is about $69 a month. Keep in mind that no phone line and ISP are required, so there is $40 out of your normal overhead. For more information, go to www.starband.com. This new technology will ship in November. You can also add Dish Network TV's 500-channel support to this system.

DirecPC new one-way satellite Internet service from DirecPC is "AOL Plus Powered by DirecPC." DirecPC pioneered consumer Internet by satellite, and has offered DirecPC-brand service for four years. The new one-way AOL service will launch in the near future. A two-way DirecPC-brand service should launch later in the fourth quarter while a two-way "AOL Plus Powered by DirecPC" service should launch in early 2001. This two-way system arrival is waiting to see how Gilat To Home does since a European sat system has come and gone this year. Both of these systems are perfect for anyone who can't get access to ADSL because of the 17,500 foot limit from the Bell Central Office.

Direct PC does have a current technology advantage over Gilat in that DirecPC offers a USB box now while the Gilat system currently needs 2 PCI slots with a USB I/O box coming.

Microsoft unveiled Beta Version of Windows Media Player 7 for Mac Oct. 20 at windowsmedia.com. The beta version of Windows Media Player 7 for Mac offers Macintosh users improved functionality, Windows Media 7 audio and video playback, MP3 playback, greater ease of use, and access to audio and video content encoded with the latest versions of the Windows Media Format codecs. With the Windows Media Player 7 for Mac beta, content owners will now be able to encode only once to reach the broadest possible audience. Mac users can now benefit from greater reliability and support for version 7 Windows Media codecs, which provide near-DVD-quality video at 700Kbps, near-VHS-quality video at 300Kbps and CD-quality sound at half the file size of MP3.

Pentium 4 is now slated for a Nov. 20 launch after 850 chipset problems caused a month-long delay. Intel plans to introduce the Pentium 4 at 1.4GHz and 1.5GHz, before rapidly ramping clock speeds. By the first quarter of 2001, Intel intends to be shipping 1.7GHz or faster Pentium 4 chips, and, by the second quarter, Pentium 4s approaching 2GHz. If Intel stays on track with its current plans, Pentium 4 will exceed 2GHz by the second half of next year. Processor speed with such a dramatic change in the internals of the processor does not represent the same degree of performance increase, but the clock speed will still make your friends envious. In the usual fashion, Advanced Micro Devices has one, debuted a new 1.2GHz Athlon running faster than any of its predecessors.

If you have any comments or questions, please contact me at rich@digitallabs.com.