What's bugging you?
Few would deny that Novell is losing out to Microsoft in the networking market, as companies choose Windows NT over NetWare for their servers. But it's good to see that there's one area where Novell scores heavily over its rival, and that's in the size of its bug fixes. The latest service pack for Microsoft Windows 2000 weighs in at around 80Mb. But if your company runs on NetWare 5.1 and you want the collection of fixes released last week by Novell, your modem will be working overtime. Service Pack 2, as it's called, is a shade over 280Mb. At typical modem speeds that's well over 24 hours on the phone (though thankfully you can order it on CD too).
Most companies produce downloadable service packs for their major products at least once a year. It's a cheap way to introduce minor new features and to fix bugs. But even Novell is aware of just how unfeasibly large some of these packs are becoming, as it has published a page on its website offering advice on managing large downloads. It recommends that you use a program which will allow you to resume the transfer if the connection drops during the download instead of having to start again from the beginning. Yes, having to start again when you're 90% through would probably be a tad frustrating.
Music to your ears
It looked for a while as if music-swapping site Napster was to be shut down. But despite ongoing legal action from many US record companies the system is still in business, servicing its reported 35m, users worldwide.
The momentum now looks unstoppable, especially following last month's deal with Bertelsmann and the opening up of the service to Apple Mac users. The latest company to jump on the Napster bandwagon is Headlight Software, responsible for the excellent GetRight download manager. GetRight adds the ability to pause downloads, and to resume downloads that are interrupted by dropped phone connections or website timeouts. It's a favourite tool among users of free internet service providers which prevent excessive usage by dropping the line every two hours or so.
Headlight's new program, to be launched shortly, allows web browsers to access services which are not HTML-based. The first version of File Funnel, as the product will be called, will allow access to Napster for locating and downloading MP3 files without the need to use Napster's own client software. And yes, it will work with GetRight, which is something that the standard Napster software won't. If you want to be sent an email when File Funnel is launched, sign up at www.getright.com/ filefunnel.html.
Number crunching
Another month: another welter of statistics about British SMEs' take up of the internet. A new NOP survey suggests they are jumping into e-commerce in ever greater numbers. A total of 42% of companies now have a website, and 45% of those think it has increased revenues. However, while a further 34% think it will increase revenue over the next six months, a similar proportion think it will never account for more than 50% of sales. There's good news for BT, however: while it might not be winning any friends for its heel-dragging over new technology, it is, at least, winning a hefty chunk of business from Britain's SMEs. BT is the most popular ISP among businesses with between 10 and 499 employees. It is also the most recognised supplier of access to the internet among companies which do not have net connections.
Duff information
A new poll from business information service Hoover's Online Europe suggests "dot.com workers are exchanging objectivity and accuracy for speed and convenience" when looking up vital business information. The poll shows that 68%of dot.com staff looking for information think company websites give a truthful and honest account of the company's activities.
