Dell Latitude X200

Dell Latitude X200 Bang for Buck: 7 Street Price: $2,299Inside: 800 MHz Pentium III-M, 256MB RAM, 30GB HD, 8MB AGP 3D graphics card; 3.5 inch floppy drive and 8X DVD/CD-RW combo drive (docking unit)Outside: 12.1 inch XGA display, EZ Pad pointing device, fullsize keyboardPorts: 2 USB, FireWire ...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 1, 2002

Compaq Evo N410c

Compaq Evo N410c Bang for Buck: 6 Street Price: $1,799Inside: 1.2 MHz Pentium III-M, 30 GB HD, 256 MB RAM, 16 MB ATI Mobility Radeon graphics cardOutside: 12.1 inch display, touchpad pointing device, fullsize keyboard, external 8X combo DVD-ROM drivePorts: 2 USB, serial, VGA, PC card (Type II)...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 1, 2002

Explore the Trendline➔

The CFO Strategy for Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence’s impact on the office of the CFO continues to evolve, and finance chiefs must be aware of the opportunities it will create for growth. 

By CFO.com staff

Apple iBook

Apple iBook Bang for Buck: 7 Street Price: $1,499Inside: 700 MHz PowerPC G3, 128MB RAM, 20GB HD, 16MB ATI Mobility Radeon graphics card; DVD/CD-RW combo driveOutside: 12.1 inch XGA display, trackpad pointing device, fullsize keyboardPorts: 2 USB, FireWire (IEEE 1394), VGA, S-videoCommunication...

By CFO Editorial Staff • Sept. 1, 2002

Kicking the Tires: A Buyer’s Checklist

Making a smart decision when buying a notebook computer’s not that tough. Here are the basics.Battery life — To discover the Achilles heel of the current crop of notebooks, simply unplug them. Most of the machines in the roundup ran less than two hours on a single battery charge — some lasted bar...

By John Goff • Sept. 1, 2002

This Year’s Models

While the prices of desktop computers have never been lower, now may be the best time in years to purchase a notebook computer. With Intel’s new mobile Pentium-4 chip starting to show up in ultralights, portables with mobile Pentium-III chips are getting cheaper and cheaper. You can now buy a pow...

By John Goff • Sept. 1, 2002

Charge of the Light Brigade

Consider the following sentence:“It’s been a long-time coming, but the latest wave of small machines finally delivers on the original premise of notebook computing: near-desktop performance with true portability.”For anyone who stays current with the state of mobile computing, the statement would...

By John Goff • Sept. 1, 2002

Outsourcing: Where’s the Big Deal?

Outsourcing, so often presented as a cure-all for companies that sign on for it, may not be so healthy for companies that offer it. In July, Electronic Data Systems Corp. (EDS) announced that it was withdrawing from consideration for a massive outsourcing contract being dangled by The Procter &am...

By Scott Leibs • Sept. 1, 2002

Making a Statement

Many software products have been touted as user-friendly, yet live up to that claim only if the “user” happens to be a crack code-writer in the IT department. That can be particularly frustrating for finance staffers, who face increasing pressure to produce financial statements and other reports ...

By Scott Leibs • Sept. 1, 2002

Lessons from the Aftermath

At the one-year anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center, reevaluations of public safety policies will be as visible as FDNY baseball caps. Less celebrated but no less important will be the ongoing efforts of businesses to make sure that a future disaster of that magnitude, whatever t...

By Scott Leibs • Sept. 1, 2002

Lesson from 9/11: It’s Not about Data

Best-laid plans abound, but will they be enough to ensure that operations always run smoothly?As the one-year anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center approaches, reevaluations of policy will be as conspicuous as NYFD baseball caps. Less celebrated but no less important will be the on...

By Scott Leibs • Sept. 1, 2002

Security Insecurity

Despite all the costly technology deployed to stave off a computer virus attack, the probability of an infection at any company anywhere is still depressingly high. Last year at least one of the top ten companies in the Fortune 500 experienced a serious virus intrusion.The Nimda virus (“admin” sp...

By Karen Winton • Sept. 1, 2002

Web Services: Talk Talk Talk

No one — not even the Singapore government — expects Singapore to mobilize for war. Yet the Lion City teems with potential soldiers, including some 350,000 active and reservist national servicemen. Fact is, Singapore roars not in the tactics of battle but in its government’s grasp of how to use t...

By Karen Winton • Aug. 1, 2002

World Wide Wobble?

As stunning as the cooked-books angle may be, the WorldCom saga extends well beyond the financial realm. The company’s role as a major telecom provider and operator of vast stretches of the Internet makes its troubles all too relevant to Corporate America.Shortly after the accounting scandal was ...

By Scott Leibs • Aug. 1, 2002

HP/Compaq: Is it Working?

Addressing a group of analysts in June, one month after she won her battle to merge Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, Carly Fiorina said, “I would [not] want to relive the last nine months.” Yet the next nine may be tougher still.Fiorina, HP chairman and CEO, led a phalanx of senior executives to the B...

By Scott Leibs • Aug. 1, 2002

CRM Rollouts: Mulligans Required

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit; no use making a fool of yourself.”—W.C. FieldsDeployers of CRM software probably know what Fields was talking about.It’s ironic too, since the concept of customer relationship management software is a simple one. Treat customers well, and...

By Russ Banham • Aug. 1, 2002

The Waiting Is the Hardest Part

Addressing a group of analysts in June, one month after she won her battle to merge Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, Carly Fiorina said, “I would [not] want to relive the last nine months.” Yet the next nine may be tougher still.Fiorina, HP chairman and CEO, led a phalanx of senior executives to the B...

By Scott Leibs • Aug. 1, 2002

First, Who’s On?

Despite its name, the Deloitte & Touche computer forensics laboratory looks less like a cybercrime research facility than a clandestine Internet café. A single counter of perhaps two dozen PCs lines one wall of a narrow, windowless room. Two young men, casually dressed, stare at monitors and ...

By Scott Leibs • Aug. 1, 2002

The Deployment Trap

Spending shareholder money on a customer relationship management (CRM) system in the fervent hope it will generate indisputable and invaluable information about customers is akin to corporate roulette. Place your bet and hope for the best.How else can you characterize an IT investment that costs ...

By Russ Banham • Aug. 1, 2002

Going Hybrid

When the hordes of volunteer programmers who make up the open-source movement met this week for their annual convention in San Diego, one constituency was conspicuously absent: entrepreneurs. Many start-ups that tried to make money from open-source software have already gone bust, and many of tho...

By Economist Staff • July 26, 2002

Identity Rules

When an industry group called Liberty Alliance announced specifications for how to manage “digital identities” on July 15th, it was hardly headline-grabbing stuff. Yet the event may prove important in the history of the computer industry, by marking the beginning not only of an ID system for the ...

By Economist Staff • July 19, 2002

Be My PayPal

The real surprise is that it took so long. For months, rumours had been circulating on Wall Street that eBay, the leading online-auction service, would buy PayPal, the dominant provider of Internet payments. When the takeover was finally announced on July 8th the terms, too, were much as expected...

By Economist Staff • July 12, 2002

Keep IT Simple, Stupid

Ask Philip Scorgie what the most significant IT improvement for his business has been in the past few years, and the answer won’t be newfangled wireless technologies or obscure EDI solutions. It will be simply that, for the first time, everyone at his company is reading from the same script. Scor...

By Jake Statham • July 1, 2002

ROI: The Age of Reason

It all started not long after Michael Kutschenreuter joined Siemens Information & Communication Networks (ICN) in April last year. Results for the quarter ended June 30th were devastating — Ebitda was minus $558 million (E563 million), compared with $132 million for the same period the previo...

By Janet Kersnar • July 1, 2002

IT Spending: Same Budget, Different Day

For IT budgets, tomorrow is still a day away. New surveys from Morgan Stanley, Meta Group, and Gartner/Goldman Sachs find scant evidence of a second-half rebound in tech spending. The surveys do suggest that further belt-tightening is unlikely, but none found much reason to expect a significant u...

By Scott Leibs • July 1, 2002

Seek and/or Destroy

There are two problems with E-mail: how to lose what you want to hide and how to find what you need to retrieve. Merrill Lynch’s Henry Blodget and Andersen’s Nancy Temple can attest to the hazards of the former, after discoveries of their E-memos led to federal prosecution. Untold numbers of less...

By Scott Leibs and Alix Stuart • July 1, 2002