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Strategies & Market Trends : Rande Is . . . HOME -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rande Is who wrote (3415)	2/14/1999 10:56:00 AM
From: Bill on the Hill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57584

So many picks - So little time! TNTX - Primary business is contractual communications services with correctional facilities. They also have developed software for voice recognition securities. (Big Brother is watching type stuff) TNTX third quarter filings shows that their calls place dropped by 18,000 calls from 255,000 down to 238,000 primarily due to losing contracts to a competitor in Dallas, Texas by the name of Gateway Communications, Inc. biz.yahoo.com Thursday TNTX of Englewood, Co. bought its main competitor for the correctional facilities contracts for 35.2 million. TNTX issued common shares totaling a little over 4 million and assumed a little over $10 million of Gateway debt in the transaction. Gateway will become a division of TNTX and will continue with all employees, salespeople and the CEO of Gateway will become a board member of TNTX. biz.yahoo.com TNTX on Friday traded at its three month high. I have talked with key service and sales personnel of Gateway and the excitement of the purchase because of the alignment and fit between the two companies will give them a nationwide edge in this lucrative communications market. quote.yahoo.com TNTX appears to me to be headed for a breakout with the finalization of this agreement. The only item I need to know about is whether or not the 4 million shares issued for the purchase are restricted from trading and for how long. I will be in Denver today and possibly tomorrow and within a few miles of the headquarters of TNTX and will be stopping by to chat with them. Let me know what you think Rande. Looks interesting to me. Bill

To: Rande Is who wrote (3415)	2/14/1999 1:34:00 PM
From: ~digs	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57584

Re: TDFX <<<Another thing I have learned about these board makers. . .if you have no deals with top suppliers like Computer City, Best Buy, Office Depot or similar, then your boards sit in your warehouse until they are discovered...>>> From their website: Using the industry standard Quake II time demo benchmark, demo version of the Voodoo3 product are capable of generating record frame rates of over 106 frames per second at a resolution of 800x600, over 84 frames per second at 1024x768 and a remarkable 35 plus frames per second at 1600x1200. "We are resetting the bar for performance and delivering an exhilarating visual gaming experience." Greg Ballard President and CEO To address growing consumer demand for the new boards, retailers CompUSA, Babbage's Etc., and EB today announced nationwide promotions to allow game and entertainment fans to reserve a Voodoo3 board online and at stores throughout the United States. I honestly don't know a lot about the technology, as I'm not a gamer, and am not in the market for a really nice video card. As far as how fast the fastest board specs are, I'm not sure. From what I am told, the TDFX board is the best of the best. I place a lot of value on comments made by friends of mine as they are way into using leading edge technology, building computers, running alternative operating systems, etc. You brought up a great point though that I should repeat: so they built the best mousetrap... can they PROFIT from it? The answer is unclear. Stock price is in a definite downward trend and would have to show a reversal before I'd consider investing. Have you ever visited (edit: the correct url) slashdot.org Rande? The people over there are really on the ball... or so it seems.

To: Rande Is who wrote (3415)	2/16/1999 10:11:00 AM
From: Vegas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 57584

RE: TDFX Protege, looks good, but I would want to see a comparison to some other popular offerings. For instance, what is the fastest Diamond board specs? And Number Nine Video? and others? 128-bit 2D is not new. . .I think there are boards with 128-bit 3D now; nor is 16 Meg of RAM new. . Some Note since I am a long term holder of TDFX. Main Competitors: ATI and NVida. ATI holds the #1 OEM spot, not because they make great cards but because the make cheap, reliable cards. ATI does not compete on the high-end of 3D-Cards, they actually have a bad reputation with Power-gamers. N-Vida is the upstart and just recently ipo'd last month. They compete on the very high-end and are quickly becoming the power-gamers choice of a 3D card, but alas TDFX was smart enought to brand themselves as the best, and Nvida cannot overcome that brand as of yet. TDFX by far leads in the retail market. (It owned the top 5 spots in '98) TDFX only hold OEM deals with 2nd tier companies like Micron, this may change soon (see below) Diamond and Creative are not players. They are BOARD makers not chip makers. They get their chips from TDFX and NVIDA, for instance I have a Creative 3D-Blaster Vodoo-2 (Vodoo is TDFX's chip) which spots the TDFX logo on the board, box, software and docs. TDFX just cut off Diamond and Creative (see below) The uncertainty The wrench in the works and reason for the lack-luster stock performance is the impending takeover of STB. TDFX is buying them out (end of March) in order to become vertically integrated. Right now they just make chips. STB makes boards and chips, has manufacturing capabilities and the infrastucture to sell and distrubute the products. STB has OEM deals in place with 1st tier companies like Gateway, CPQ, DELL etc... STB also owns a chunk of NVIDA (hmmm). If TDFX can pull this off they will be in a position to take away the #1 OEM spot from ATI and also remain in the #1 reseller spot... A few notes: TDFX revs have went from $20million (IPO) to $160million (Now) yet the price is less then the ipo price. TDFX next generation cards . While its true that the specs for the Vodoo3 3500 is somewhat disappointing - there are also other cards in the works for the summer (Rampage) TDFX keeps their product maps secret. I think this really hurts the stock short-term. TDFX has a lawsuit agianst NVIDA for patent infringement. I suggest anyone interested go to the TDFX thread there are many techy types as well as savy investors there. JF