Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Strategies & Market Trends : Graham and Doddsville -- Value Investing In The New Era -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: porcupine --''''> who wrote (766)	9/12/1998 10:39:00 AM
From: porcupine --''''>	Respond to of 1722

AT&T to unveil new service - USA TODAY NEW YORK, Sept 10 (Reuters) - AT&T Corp. is expected to launch within a month a major new high-speed communications service that will let many of its 10 million business customers cut costs by combining their phone and computer networks, USA TODAY reported on Thursday. Code-named AT&T INC, for Integrated Network Connect, it will not be available to customers until 1999, sources close to the project said, according to the report. Sprint Corp. unveiled a similar service, called ION, three months ago, the report said. The rollout of the network would be a major step in AT&T Chief Executive Officer C. Michael Armstrong's overhaul of the corporation, and a bellwether of industry change, the report said. ((-- New York Equity News at 212 859-1700, fax 212-859-1717 or nyc.equities.newsroom@reuters.com))

To: porcupine --''''> who wrote (766)	9/12/1998 10:47:00 AM
From: porcupine --''''>	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1722

"Saturn plant to almost double capacity, add vehicle" By Ben Klayman DETROIT, Sept 9 (Reuters) - General Motors Corp. said Wednesday it plans to almost double annual capacity at its Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., with the possible addition of a new sport utility vehicle. Saturn Chairman and President Don Hudler said during a conference call with reporters that the world's largest automaker plans to increase the small-car plant's annual capacity to 500,000 units from around 300,000. "Our focus is clearly on growing the company, which will include not only additional product from a variety of products but will include higher volume levels going forward," he said. The announcement was part of GM's deal with the United Auto Workers to avoid a strike by the plant's 7,300 hourly workers. The automaker also is set to add some 1,000 jobs at the plant, people familiar with the deal said. About 700 jobs would be added if the production goal is reached and the rest if Saturn is picked to make new four-cylinder engines for the cars and sport utilities. Hudler declined to confirm reports by UAW Local 1853 officials that the additional product will be a car-based sport utility vehicle that would compete against Honda Motor Co. Ltd.'s <7267.T> CR-V and Toyota Motor Corp.'s <7203.T> RAV4, but acknowledged Saturn has a "high desire" to make a sport utility. Nextrend consultant Wesley Brown said GM plans to introduce the sport utility in January 2002 as a Saturn and six months later as a replacement for the Chevrolet Tracker. Plans to make it under the Pontiac brand were dropped, he said. ING Baring Furman Selz analyst Maryann Keller said it was about time GM put another product in a plant that makes an old car with slowing sales. "There should have been another product scheduled for that factory, frankly, four years ago," she said. "No factory can live on the same product forever and that factory has been building that car since 1990." Saturn sales were down 10 percent to 158,108 cars through August, and the next-generation Saturn small car is not due until mid-2002, Brown said. Next year's introduction of a mid-size Saturn sedan at GM's Wilmington, Del., assembly plant will only further erode Saturn's small-car sales, Keller said. Hudler said GM still believes small cars have a "bright future," but added the way to protect jobs at the Saturn plant is to make it flexible enough to build other vehicles. He said the decision to expand the plant is unrelated to the company's plans to consolidate its small-car operations. Nextrend's Brown said GM's decision to build the sport utility in Tennessee raises questions elsewhere. Speculation about closures had previously centered on the assembly plant in Lordtown, Ohio, where GM makes the Chevrolet Cavalier and Pontiac Sunfire small cars. However, Brown said the facility in Ingersoll, Ontario, where the automaker has a joint venture with Suzuki Motor Corp. <7269.T> making the Tracker and Suzuki Sidekick, also could be in jeopardy. Canadian Auto Workers President Buzz Hargrove said the Ingersoll plant is not in jeopardy because workers there just approved a new three-year agreement, which starts in September. He does not know what product will be made there. UAW officials in Tennessee said GM's decision was not made simply due to pressure from workers, who authorized in July the plant's first strike. GM also will turn a profit, UAW Local 1853 manufacturing advisor Mike Bennett said. "General Motors' principle of investing capital where it will earn the return is preserved," he said during the conference call. Almost all 1,500 of the plant's hourly workers who attended two meetings Tuesday approved the agreement, UAW Local 1853 President Joe Rypkowski said. Saturn employees work under a separate agreement from the national pact that covers all other UAW workers at GM. Saturn workers, who earn bonuses to make up the difference in the GM pay rates, will receive $1,010 apiece as part of the the plant's unique risk-and-reward pay system based on plant quality and production, according to a summary workers received Tuesday. They each had previously received $390 for the quarter. Each worker will receive about $400 for the third quarter, the document said. The fourth-quarter payout and 1999 compensation formula also were resolved but first must be approved by Saturn's board of directors. ((--Detroit Newsroom, 313-870-0200))

To: porcupine --''''> who wrote (766)	9/12/1998 10:59:00 AM
From: porcupine --''''>	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1722

"IBM researchers declare victory over PC eyestrain" By Eric Auchard NEW YORK, Sept. 10 (Reuters) - Computer users, rest your weary eyes on this. Scientists at IBM Research said Thursday that they have developed a new flat-panel computer display that allows users to see text and images with 200 pixels-per-inch clarity that is virtually indistinguishable from the printed page. The prototype display, code-named Roentgen, after the inventor of the X-ray machine, has four times the pixels, or picture elements, in the same space as common cathode-ray tube desktop monitors, which display 80 and 100 pixels-per-inch. Roentgen displays rely on new active-matrix liquid crystal technology to produce razor-sharp color images that, from a normal viewing distance of 16 inches or more, eliminate for the human eye the fuzziness associated with electronic displays. "We are right at the point at which human vision ceases to notice any distortion," Robert Wisnieff, leader of the research team, said of the 200 pixels-per-inch displays. Office equipment using such displays will significantly reduce, if not eliminate, eyestrain, he said. "There's a good experimental correlation between (computer screen) legibility and lower eyestrain," Wisnieff, manager of the advanced display technology laboratory at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., said in an interview. Experts believe computer eyestrain is linked to the effort the human eye must make to fill in gaps that exist between the small light elements of computerized displays, which represent only a fraction of the elements of a real world image. The displays initially are aimed at high-end niche uses like aircraft design, medical imaging, legal record scanning and digital art libraries, but eventually should find their way into International Business Machines Corp. desktop and notebook computers, Wisnieff said. Early Roentgen displays will cost in excess of $5,000, or several times the $1,500 to $2,000 price of IBM's most expensive cathode-ray monitors, but prices will fall as demand picks up and mass manufacturing economics take hold, he said. "Ultra-high resolution displays have the potential to greatly increase the usability ... of digital images, including ... architectural and electronic blueprints, historical archives and scanned records such as those stored by hospitals or insurance companies. "We also expect the degree of clarity and crispness offered by the Roentgen prototype to be in high demand for graphic design and electronic publishing applications," Wisnieff said. The first Roentgen products should be in customer hands later this year, starting with medical imaging systems, he said. Besides offering 200 pixels-per-inch, the new displays offer full color depth and gray-scale shading on a 16.3 inch diagonal viewing area of 2,560 by 2,048 pixels, or 5.2 million full-color pixels in all. Each screen uses 15.7 million transistors and 1.64 miles of thin film aluminum alloy wiring. Fellow IBM researcher Kevin Warren said his group has devised a graphics adapter system, using standard, off-the-shelf components, capable of processing the more than one billion bits of graphics data per second that such screens demand. This allows the displays to be connected to widely available high-performance personal computers running Windows operating system, he said. Work on the Roentgen displays, which began 18 months ago, is the latest outgrowth of research begun in the mid-1980s by IBM on active matrix displays. It builds on a 150 pixel-per-inch monitor under development since 1995 known as "Monet," so-called due to its capacity to depict fine line brushstrokes of a painting. Monet technology is now used in IBM's state-of-the-art ThinkPad 770 notebook model. The latest development represents more a triumph of manufacturing improvements than design breakthrough, researchers said, and is the product of close work with IBM's ThinkPad display factory in Japan. "We had to think in advance how far we could stretch the design by working with our factory counterparts in Japan," which allowed IBM to build scores of prototypes on a standard manufacturing line instead of one-of-a-kind models in a lab, Wisnieff said. The researchers contrasted the work, which uses existing materials and display manufacturing equipment, with efforts by competitors to develop new imaging materials known as polymorphous silicon. Such technology is unproven and more costly, since it will require these companies to switch over their plants to new equipment. Major rivals in the field include Asian electronics makers NEC Corp. <6701.T>, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. <64050.KS>, Toshiba Corp. <6502.T>. Also, a unit of U.S.-based Xerox Corp. currently offers at 142 pixel-per-inch screen. -- Eric Auchard, New York newsdesk, 212-859-1840