Austin American-Statesman (Austin, TX) articles from October 2000

Austin American-Statesman (Austin, TX) archives from October 2000

Dell Computer Plans to Expand in Fort Worth, Texas.
October 31, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 31--Dell Computer Corp. is expanding again, but this time it's staying close to home. Dell will announce today plans for a new sales and support center in Fort Worth near the Alliance Airport in the Gateway...

Austin, Texas-Based Software Maker Cuts 200 Jobs.
October 31, 2000... Byline: Heather Cocks Oct. 31--Drained of cash and scrambling to stay alive, Austin's Globeset Inc. on Monday terminated 200 people, even as it staunchly denied rumors that it is closing down completely. The cuts eliminate about 70...

As Sales Growth Slows, Computer Makers Seek New Revenue in Other Channels.
October 30, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 30--The IBM-compatible desktop turned 19 this year, and the box that built an industry is showing its age. To be sure, the desktop personal-computer business is still growing, but its best days have passed....

Growing Segment of Austin, Texas, Population Prefers Renting to Owning a Home.
October 30, 2000... Byline: Katy Marquardt Oct. 30--Although holiday celebrations at Lois and Derrick Booth's apartment may not be physically identical to those at their old house in Houston, the spirit's still there in their amenity-packed unit overlooking...

Austin, Texas-Based Natural Foods Chain Closes Mail-Order Vitamin Operation.
October 27, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 27--After three years of foundering, Whole Foods Market Inc. is pulling the plug on its foray into the manufacturing and mail-order vitamin business by putting its troubled Amrion subsidiary up for sale. The...

Austin, Texas-Based Software Maker Stock Slips as Quarter Report hits Market.
October 27, 2000... Byline: Heather Cocks Oct. 27--Vignette Corp. didn't beat the Street, and on Thursday it paid the price. Just one day after reporting third-quarter results that matched Wall Street's expectations, shares in the Austin software maker...

Qwest Forges Links with Austin, Texas.
October 26, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 26--Qwest Communications International Inc. is moving into Texas with an aggressive campaign to bring its international broadband communications network right to the doorstep of business customers. The...

Sales Soar More Than 350 Percent for Austin, Texas, Software Firm.
October 26, 2000... Byline: Heather Cocks Oct. 26--Vignette Corp. pleased analysts Wednesday simply by failing to surprise them. The Austin software company, right in line with Wall Street's expectations, said its sales soared 358 percent to $110...

Austin, Texas-Based Software Developer to Buy Public Shares of Its Spinoff.
October 26, 2000... Byline: Jerry Mahoney Oct. 26--PcOrder.com Inc. moved back in with its parent Wednesday, the latest corporate offspring that couldn't make it in the real world. Austin-based Trilogy Inc. said Wednesday it would buy back all the...

Last Group of Advisors to Foreign Currency-Trading Firm Settle Out of Court.
October 23, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 23--The last professional firm sued on behalf of investors in Austin Forex International, the failed foreign-currency trading firm run by Russell Erxleben, has agreed to settle out of court. Kuperman, Orr,...

Texas Homeowners Upset over Late Introduction of Reverse Mortgages.
October 23, 2000... Byline: Katy Marquardt Oct. 23--The late introduction of reverse mortgages to Texas -- the upshot of a three-year struggle to finalize the rules -- has created a sizable pool of impatient homeowners, industry officials say. Calls...

Austin, Texas, Venture Capitalists Scavenge in Wreckage of Dot-Coms.
October 23, 2000... Byline: Heather Cocks Oct. 23--Boxer Lou Savarese stepped into the ring in June sporting brand-spanking-new boxing trunks with the Mall.com logo. Twelve seconds later, Savarese lay splayed across the boxing-ring floor, thanks to a...

Texas Consumers Union Recommends Against Prepaid Funeral Contracts.
October 20, 2000... Byline: Amy Schatz Oct. 20--Prepaid funeral contracts may sound like a good idea, but a review of consumer complaints suggest they might not be a good investment, according to a study released Thursday by the nonprofit Consumers Union....

Austin, Texas-Based Power Supply Exceeds Expectations with Small Loss.
October 20, 2000... Byline: Andrew Park Oct. 20--Active Power Inc. is doing pretty well for a company with one customer. The Austin-based power-supply company, which reported financial results for the first time as a public company Thursday, enjoyed a...

Austin, Texas-Based Measurement Company Sees Growth Slow Down.
October 20, 2000... Byline: Jerry Mahoney Oct. 20--Although Austin-based National Instruments Inc. was slowed by an industrywide shortage of components in the third quarter, the maker of scientific measurement products for computers reported Thursday that...

Economics Expert Raises Warning Flags about Austin, Texas-Area Economy.
October 19, 2000... Byline: Amy Schatz Oct. 19--The Austin area's economy might be booming right now, but external pressures -- from increasing sluggishness of tech stocks to rising oil prices -- could hurt it next year, according to Sung Won Sohn, chief...

Austin, Texas-Based Audio Chip Maker Cirrus Increases Revenue Again.
October 19, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 19--Cirrus Logic Inc. recorded its fifth-straight quarter of increased revenue Wednesday as the Austin-based chip maker continued to make strong gains in selling audio chips and processors for Internet music...

Chip Makers Rue Sagging Share Prices.
October 18, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 18--The semiconductor industry and its suppliers are going great guns this year, but participants at the Semicon Southwest trade show in Austin based in Sunnyvale, Calif., saw its stock decline last week...

Liquidator Named for Bankrupt Furniture Retailer Living.com.
October 17, 2000... Byline: Andrew Park Oct. 17--Creditors for Living.com Inc. got their first hint of how much they'll be able to recover from the bankrupt Internet retailer Monday when lawyers auctioned off the company's unsold and undelivered...

Sales Double From Last Year at Austin, Texas-Based Silicon Labs.
October 17, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 17--Silicon Laboratories Inc. of Austin on Monday said third-quarter sales had doubled from a year ago, and reported a profit bigger than analysts had forecast. The 4-year-old company, which designs and...

Time Warner High-Speed Internet Service Succeeds in Austin, Texas, Market.
October 17, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 17--In the crowded marketplace for high-speed Internet access in Austin, Time Warner Cable's Road Runner service seems to be more than holding its own. The big cable operator has invested millions of...

Enron's E-Commerce Sales Show up Dell at Austin, Texas, Fortune 500 Forum.
October 16, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 16--The introductions at a Friday morning session of the Fortune 500 CEO Forum had a familiar ring. One chief executive ran a company with the best-performing stock of the 1990s. One CEO operates the world's...

Austin, Texas, Golf Resort Plan Is Up for Vote Next Month.
October 16, 2000... Byline: Andy Alford Oct. 16--Here's the pitch: By approving a 99-year lease of untapped public parkland on Lake Walter E. Long in Northeast Austin, the city would get a privately built, $65 million luxury golf resort there that would...

Austin, Texas, Needs to Ensure Development Won't Become Excessive.
October 16, 2000... Byline: Bob Keefe Oct. 16--SAN JOSE, Calif.--Silicon Valley has always had an appealing story line, beginning with its near-mythic founding in 1938. That's when Bill Hewlett and David Packard started their electronics business in a...

Manufactured-Housing Glut Forces Texas Retailers to Consolidate.
October 16, 2000... Byline: Krissah Williams Oct. 16--Eric Thomas, a third-generation manufactured-housing dealer in Buda, has navigated and survived rough times. But this time, he said, the slump in manufactured-home sales is self-inflicted. In...

Austin, Texas, Tech Start-Up to Help Big Companies with Supplies, Orders.
October 16, 2000... Byline: Heather Cocks Oct. 16--LOMBARDI SOFTWARE INC. Founded: 1998 What: Software that helps big companies automate the process of working out unexpected kinks -- such as sudden, huge orders -- with their suppliers and...

Austin Biotech Firm's IPO Closes with Modest 6 Percent Gain.
October 13, 2000... Byline: Andrew Park Oct. 13--On one of the year's worst days on the stock market, Austin's Introgen Therapeutics Inc. went ahead with an initial public offering that had been four years in the making. It found only tepid interest...

Fortune 500 Executives Discuss How to Make Contributions in 'New Economy'.
October 13, 2000... Byline: Amy Schatz Oct. 13--The problem might sound ludicrous to most people, but for the outrageously wealthy, giving away millions -- even billions -- is a lot more involved than it might sound. At least that was the message...

Dell Computer Is Set to Recall Laptops' Batteries.
October 13, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 13--Dell Computer Corp. plans to announce today a recall of thousands of batteries for its notebook computers after one customer's machine overheated and caught fire a month ago. Dell said the recall affects...

Sunnyvale, Calif.-Based Chipmaker Reports Record Third-Quarter Revenue.
October 12, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 12--Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. on Wednesday reported record third-quarter revenue and profits based on continued strong sales of microprocessor and flash memory chips. The company expects to...

Motorola Reports Vigorous Third Quarter.
October 11, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 11--Motorola Inc. rode strong growth in its semiconductor, cable modem and wireless network equipment businesses to a robust net income of $531 million for the third quarter, more than four times the total for...

Texas Inventor of Integrated Circuit Wins Nobel Prize in Physics.
October 11, 2000... Byline: Bill Bishop Oct. 11--Don't blame people for the traffic on MoPac, or the crowds at the grocery store meat counter, or the insufferably mangled downtown, or the orange cones that line our streets like bright decorations for a...

Texas Task Force Seeks Better Education, Training for Tech Workers.
October 10, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 10--Texas needs to do a better job of educating and training technology workers or it will run the risk of cutting short its high-tech job boom, a new state task force warned Monday. The Advisory Council...

Sunnyvale, Calif.-Based Chip Maker AMD Expected to Report Strong Profits.
October 9, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 9--In its July conference call with Wall Street securities analysts, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. finally had something to crow about. The frequently embattled chip maker had just posted record financial...

Advanced Micro Devices Succeeds with New Athlon Processor Chip.
October 9, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 9--When Advanced Micro Devices Inc. introduced the first versions of its new Athlon processor in 1999, industry analysts quickly dubbed it a "bet-the-company chip." The new high-performance chip was...

East Austin, Texas, Neighborhoods Clean Up Images through Community Spirit.
October 9, 2000... Byline: Katy Marquardt Oct. 9--Community groups know that cleaning up a neighborhood -- ridding it of the run-down buildings and trash-filled lots that damage morale and drive property values down -- is hard work. Their plans of...

Manager of IBM's Austin, Texas, Computer Design Labs Looks to Tech Future.
October 9, 2000... Byline: Andrew Park Oct. 9--In his early days as a fresh-out-of-college IBM Corp. engineer, Mark Dean achieved more than most of his peers. His work on personal computer design and architecture earned him four patents before he was 30...

Businesses Find Challenges Nestled within Outreach to E-Commerce.
October 9, 2000... Byline: Kirk Ladendorf Oct. 9--As businesses shift more operations to the Internet, they are having to confront new challenges, like finding ways to perform secure online business transactions that also are legally binding. Law...

Austin, Texas, Hotel to Host Conference of CEO's from Fortune 500 Companies.
October 9, 2000... Byline: Amy Schatz Oct. 9--As the hotel of choice for visiting celebrities, the Four Seasons has had plenty of experience catering to the rich and famous. But general manager Paul Cherrett acknowledges the hotel has never hosted an...

Tech Industry Lobby Treated Well by Current Session of Congress.
October 9, 2000... Byline: Marilyn Geewax Oct. 9--WASHINGTON--With the exception of Tiger Woods, perhaps no one is enjoying a more professionally rewarding year than technology industry lobbyists. Time and again, lobbyists representing computer makers,...

Austin, Texas, Residents to Decide Fate of Light-Rail Project.
October 8, 2000... Byline: Michele Kay Oct. 8--City and business leaders tell us that the light-rail vote in November will have a profound effect on how Austin grows and the kind of city we become. Yet a month before the election, the campaign remains...

Financial Planner Encourages People to Start Saving as Soon as Possible.
October 8, 2000... Byline: Krissah Williams Oct. 8--Certified financial planner Mary D. Wright calls it "the cost of waiting." Financial planners encourage their clients to start saving early for retirement, but people who don't understand why often...

Both Sides of Austin, Texas, Light-Rail Issue Campaign Fiercely.
October 7, 2000... Byline: Kelly Daniel Oct. 7--Austin's focus on light rail is like a driver gripping the wheel, eyes riveted on traffic. Brake lights ahead signal congestion, and congestion inspires debate about what light rail can do to solve it. ...

Dell Computer Corp. Fares Badly on Wall Street in Wake of Warning.
October 6, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 6--Its once-high-flying confidence sagging with its stock price, Dell Computer Corp. retreated to what it knew best Thursday morning in an anticlimactic finish to a two-day meeting with Wall Street analysts. ...

Austin, Texas, Metro Transit Officials See Light-Rail as Best Alternative.
October 6, 2000... Byline: Kelly Daniel Oct. 6--Tenacity has rarely been an attribute pegged to Capital Metro, an agency more often hit with the harsher sounds of "obstinate," "extravagant" or "irrelevant" in its 15-year history. But as Capital Metro...

For Dell, a Day of Dips in Stock, Forecast.
October 5, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 5--Dell Computer Corp. joined the growing chorus of computer makers warning Wall Street that business is looking a lot worse than expected. Dell told financial analysts gathered for its fall meeting in Austin...

High-Tech Money Jumps into Austin, Texas, Politics with Pro-Rail Push.
October 5, 2000... Byline: Leah Quin Oct. 5--Next month's light-rail election could make political history, no matter which side wins. For the first time, high-tech money has made an indelible mark on a campaign, bolstering billboard ads, community...

Work Visa Bill Isn't Enough, Austin, Texas, Technology Leaders Say.
October 5, 2000... Oct. 5--Even as they applauded passage of a bill to vastly increase visas for skilled foreign workers, Austin high-tech executives Wednesday warned that the legislation acts more as a Band-Aid than a long-term cure. "This helps a great...

Dell Computer Now Must Sell Itself to Skeptics as Stock Slips.
October 4, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 4--As it welcomes influential Wall Street analysts to town today for an important two-day meeting, Dell Computer Corp. finds itself in unfamiliar territory. The stock of the Round Rock-based computer giant,...

Proposed Austin, Texas, Mixed-Use Development Would Cover 4,000 Acres.
October 4, 2000... Byline: Stephen Scheibal Oct. 4--Picture 1,400 homes. Up to 4,700 apartments. As much business space as six Lakeline Malls. All over enough land to hold nearly four downtown Austins. A proposed deal between Stratus Properties and...

IBM Unveils New Line of Servers with E-Commerce in Mind.
October 3, 2000... Byline: Jerry Mahoney Oct. 3--IBM on Monday introduced a family of servers designed to eliminate confusion over the diversity of its products, simplify customers' purchasing plans and prepare them for expected explosive growth in...

Austin, Texas-Based Internet Appliance Maker Is in Need of Financial Support.
October 3, 2000... Byline: Andrew Park Oct. 3--Netpliance Inc. probably wouldn't label itself a dot-com, but the company is suffering from some of the same problems that have plagued Internet companies this year. Despite raising $144 million in an...

Home Builders, Buyers Find High-Dollar Havens in Austin, Texas, Area.
October 2, 2000... Byline: Julie Bonnin Oct. 2--For years, the coastlines of Lake Austin and Lake Travis have been drenched with stunning waterfront-property homes. Lakes Marble Falls, LBJ, Buchanan and Inks, meanwhile, were a haven for retirees. And...

Entire Desktop-Computer Industry Suffers as Apple Stock Plummets.
October 2, 2000... Byline: John Pletz Oct. 2--The wheels that came off Apple Computer Inc.'s cart Thursday night caused a pileup Friday for the entire desktop-computer industry. Stocks of other computer makers, including Round Rock-based Dell Computer...