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In a flurry of news about MS, Brian Baggett sent an email saying that- Gates says Windows 98 is still on track, despite the DOJ decision. However, Bill Gates said Tuesday the Department of Justice was seeking to have the software company "cripple" its products, sent to us by Mike T, who also sent us on interesting article about another effort to broaden technology access for seniors, Microsoft Corp. has donated $150,000 worth of new software and hardware to senior centers across the nation. This donation will supplement a Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) program announced in September 1997, through which more than 500 computers were loaned to senior centers across the country to provide access to important health-care and Medicare information via the Internet.

Whew-busy day for Microsoft.

The venerable Egghead, one of the computer stores that didn't make it in the late 90s, has decided to close its 80 remaining stores, and go strictly with business over the Internet, at Egghead.com. This change is a wonderful illustration of what the Internet is slowly doing to physical store ideas, and the sheer convience of the Internet. Hey, have any of you ordered groceries online? I would be interested to hear whether you thoght they were cheaper or not.

Compaq computers has stated that it will become the proud new owner of DEC, a purchase that will end up costing the equivalent of 9.6 billion US. This move, the latest in a series of mergers, sets Compaq up to move forward, by obtaining a company that has been faltering in the past couple years.

Microsoft announced earnings that were higher then last quarter, and above analysts predicted earnings. Much of the profit was due to strong sales of Office 97, but the company does warn of possible future quarters problems, because of the current meltdown of the Asian economies. Most stock watchers are also keenly watching the next court date for the MS v DOJ case, which will be next week.

Joining in what appears to be a growth industry for the last 90s, Japan's division of Fair Trade Practices is investigating the Tokyo division of MS for the same practice that the US Dept of Justice is--the integration of Internet Explorer with the Windows operating system. Microsoft, of course, has issued a statement that they are "cooperating".

Sun will be announcing the release, on Tuesday, of a new line of work stations called Darwin. These stations will be designed to compete with the burgeoning NT boxes which are making serious inroads into the workstation area, a traditional Sun stronghold. Sun is hoping that they can hold off the sapping of UNIX boxes from this arena. UNIX box sales have been slipping recently, and it is expected that they will slip a further 70,000 this year, bringing the total sales to a 590,000 that will most likely be sold this year.

Ilya Gaysinskiy sent me this story where you can read about the war between Microsoft, TCI and Sun over which company will create the operating system for the set top web browser of tomorrow.

Netscape is expected to report a large q4 loss, in the range of 80 million or so. Many analysts had expected Netscape to actually clear a profit from q4, with some estimates as high as 14 cents per share. Does this spell for more troubled times ahead?

Probably not. Netscape says that most of the loss comes from a series of one-time charges, and is not indicative of a growing problem within the preimer browser company. However, with its' shrinking grasp on the browser market, it would seem that perhaps Marc isn't sleeping quite as well.