Tech Talk-Flat Rate Pricing
Thursday, February 28, 2008SUSIE GHARIB: And finally tonight, a revolution for the cell phone industry, a battle between Adobe and Microsoft and the death of the mainframe computer has been greatly exaggerated. Those topics and more in tonight's tech talk segment with New York bureau chief Scott Gurvey.
SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: The earnings problems at SprintNextel which we reported earlier may not be the last bit of bad news for the domestic cell phone industry. The entire sector is being rocked by a new flat rate pricing model first introduced by Verizon and now offered by all the major firms. These plans generally allow unlimited calling for $99 month, replacing the pay-by-the-minute plans which have been in place for decades.
A couple of warnings, before you sign up, check for other fees. Some of the companies are increasing charges for text messaging, Internet browsing and video. You may not come out ahead if you switch. And don't forget taxes and other government charges.
Adobe this week fired another shot at Microsoft, announcing Adobe Air, which builds on its popular flash technology to create rich Internet applications which also run on all desktops and are not dependent on Microsoft's Windows. Today Microsoft answered with a complete refresh of its major business products, Windows server, sequel server and visual studio. Visual studio includes technologies known as dot net and Silver Light, which let developers make versions of applications which run on Apple, Linux and other systems as well as Windows. It's a high stakes game and Adobe has a big lead, but Microsoft senior VP Bob Muglia says his company means to compete.
BOB MUGLIA, SR. VP, SERVER AND TOOLS BUSINESS, MICROSOFT: There certainly is always competition. Everywhere we look there's always competition. But we feel that developers are familiar with dot net and Silver Light provides an environment that they know already and it also provides a much, much richer set of capabilities than anything else on the planet.
GURVEY: Believe it or not, the mainframe computer is not dead and IBM is still making them. This week Big Blue announced the Z-10. Each of these cases can contain thousands of individual processors. One Z-10 can do all the work of 1,500 PC-class servers. They run most of the same software, take up less space, use much less power and are competitive in cost.
Electronic Arts recently previewed its fall line, including new editions of its market leading sports games. Something that looks like the "Sims" meet "Survivor" and something called BoomBlox (ph), which defies all explanation but looks like loads of fun. For more fun try the web site leftversusright.com, a site driven by MSNBC. Here, you political junkies can search for all the latest election news and perhaps, talk back to the chatty animated hosts as they debate the issues of the day. Hopefully newscasters will not be automated out of the business completely. Scott Gurvey, NIGHTLY BUSIINESS REPORT, New York.
