Sterling strength strangles industry UK electronics manufacturing industry influenced by pound. Alex Mayhew-Smith The unusually high strength of the pound is making life difficult for the UK’s electronics manufacturing industry, according to managers and industry bodies. The Sterling Index, which gauges the relative strength of the UK’s currency, reached 103.9 points – a six-month high – at the end of ...

Datrontech sells partner DMC stake Alex Mayhew-Smith Datrontech has sold its share of DMC to its joint venture partner, Memory Corporation, for ?1.75m. The venture was set up at the beginning of last year to deliver unbranded memory products in the UK and Europe. DMC made a pre-tax profit in 1998 of ?180,000 on a turnover of ?47.2m and is ...

W.H. Smith/Egg offer free Web access Melanie Reynolds Retailer W. H. Smith and financial services company Egg are the latest to jump on the free Internet access bandwagon. W. H. Smith’s offering, in conjunction with BT and Microsoft, will include such services as on-line banking and news. In addition to free Internet access, Egg will be offering Pentium III Multimedia ...

2004 to see 30 million xDSL users Steve Bush The xDSL and cable modem market will increase from over 11 million subscribers at the beginning of 1998 to 30.3 million at the beginning of 2004, according to market researchers Intex Management Services. Short term growth will come from the business sector.

Wanted: Learning materials Richard Ball The University for Industry (UfI) is looking for companies to supply learning materials for courses due to start in the autumn of next year. UfI, the government’s adult education initiative, aims to provide information and advice to 2.5 million people a year. Courses will cover basic numeracy through to advanced business management. Learning materials will ...

E-commerce security misses bill Richard Ball The issue of electronic commerce security will not be resolved in time for inclusion in the government’s bill promoting Internet business in the UK. That was the conclusion of a conference on e-commerce at the IEE in London. A government document released earlier this month said that any legislation on electronic commerce must include ...

Fatter pay packets for young engineers Melanie Reynolds The starting salary for engineering graduates is rising as a result of growing competition, according to the latest pay survey from the Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE). “We noticed that of the younger people who did respond, their salaries seem to have gone up quite a lot in certain areas,” said Beryl ...

HSE plans PC health study Melanie Reynolds A year-long study to investigate the potential health risks of using portable and handheld computers is being funded by the Health and Safety Executive. The study will be carried out by ergonomics consultancy, System Concepts, and will look at the issues arising from the extended use of portables. “A lot of these things ...

NEC has announced an Asic process featuring drawn gate lengths of 0.18 and 0.15?m. Richard Ball The CB-11 process aims to integrate high speed logic and dense memory on chips running at up to 500MHz. A modular process allows the standard CMOS logic to be placed on the same die as DRAM and Flash memory. Analogue components and BiCMOS transistors ...

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