Grey Wyard

[Graph Not Transcribed]

Who: Greg Wyard

Where: Ottawa via England

What: Melodic pop-rock of the first degree

Contact: (416) 652-0676, greg@wyard.com, www.gregwyard.com

If your goal is to graduate from the University of Melodic Pop-Rock, the professors you want to study with are obvious: The Beatles, of course, and other tune-scholars like Crowded House's Neil Finn. These are the melody-masters Greg Wyard has obviously been studying, and by the sound of things, he's been getting straight A's. Originally from southern England, Wyard moved to Ottawa as a teenager and has spent the past 20 years becoming a fixture on the local music scene. In 1995 he formed …

Get the right PC: judging from questions from friends, relatives, acquaintances, co-workers and many readers of our magazine, the quest for the right machine can often be a confusing, wearying and trying one. It is very easy to get bamboozled by a myriad of details suddenly thrust upon you when you shop around for a new PC. (Feature PC Head-To-Head).

Here, we offer some information that should be helpful in determining which current system best suits your wants and budget, using two Intel-based systems and two AMD-based systems to illustrate. This article will not tell you which brand of computer to buy; rather it will help you to understand various configurations of current components. As these configurations will vary in price from vendor to vendor, sample street prices are provided for these systems to guide you.

Although components such as monitors, speaker systems and fancy keyboards and mice will affect the final price of the PC and the enjoyment you get from it, these items are easily interchangeable and will not affect the performance of the system.

TAKE A LOOK

We asked a vendor to supply us with four Windows XP systems based on Intel and AMD's best performance and best budget processors. For your own reference, look at the four configurations that appear in boxes. These are our sample PCs and in order to get the most from this article you need to take note of at least the CPU, details of the graphics card, the amount and type of RAM, and the hard disk drive.

All of these system configurations will provide you with excellent all-round usability and solid graphics, games and application performance, even at the budget end. Street prices for each system are included as a guide and include operating system, speaker systems, keyboards, mice and a high-end 17in monitor for the performance systems or a standard 17in monitor for the budget systems.

PROCESSOR (CPU) RELEVANCE

All PCs are based on a central processing unit (CPU) so this is often the defining point of the system. Street prices of current processors can range in price from $110 to almost $1100 and it can have a large effect on the overall cost of your system. The strength of the processor is generally indicated by a figure in megahertz (MHz) or gigahertz (GHz) (1000MHz roughly equals 1GHz) that appears before or after the processor's name, e.g., Pentium 4 2.2GHz. This varies somewhat with the AMD Athlon XP line of chips, which has been a point of contention among many in the IT industry. To illustrate, in AMD's Athlon XP 2000+ the `2000' does not indicate a clock speed of 2000MHz. AMD has adopted a different naming convention whereby they name a chip after what they claim is the equivalent-performing Intel chip.

The Athlon XP 2000+ actually runs at 1.67GHz but is AMD's equivalent performer to the Pentium 4 2GHz. This might help to explain the $500 price difference between the top-of-the-line Intel 2.2GHz Pentium 4 and the AMD Athlon XP 2000+. If we compare price by clock speeds, a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 costs $200 less than the XP 2000+ but provides nowhere near the performance.

The four processors you'll encounter in 2002 are Intel Pentium 4, Intel Celeron, AMD Athlon XP + and AMD Duron. The Pentium 4 and the Athlon XP + series of processors represent the performance end of the market, while the AMD Duron and the Intel Celeron represent the budget end.

As one look at our sample street price table will tell, the prices of processors range massively between the budget and performance ends of the market.

AMD ATHLON XP +

The relatively lower street prices of $285 to $595 for an Athlon XP + versus a Pentium 4 mean that users who buy systems based on these processors can redirect the money saved into enhancing their systems with better quality sound, graphics, memory or storage. Expect to see high-spec Athlon XP + systems cost considerably less than the equivalent Intel system; you should also expect more fiddling with chipsets and hardware configuration.

INTEL PENTIUM 4

The Pentium 4 has been around since last year when it was first introduced using 0.18-micron technology. Clock speeds ranged from 1.4GHz to 2GHz.

The processor was heavily promoted and took the lion's share of the market despite the fact …

Joe Budd.(PERSONNELFILE)(Budd Group)(Occupation overview)(Brief article)

Even as a child, Joe Budd took the family business seriously. After church, he helped make the rounds of buildings cleaned by what was then North State Supply Inc., a small janitorial company his father, Richard, had purchased in 1963.

Budd, 46, still works at the family business, though things have changed. For one, he's in charge. In 2001, he bought the Winston-Salem-based company, renamed The Budd Group, though his father is chairman emeritus. For another, it now operates in the Carolinas, West Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia and Florida, and it provides security and landscaping in addition to cleaning services. About 1,100 of its 3,100 employees are in security.

…

Seven killed, 17 wounded in bombing in Turkey.(Main)

ISTANBUL, Turkey - A bomb struck a predominantly Kurdish city in southeastern Turkey on Tuesday, killing seven people and wounding 17, the local governor's office said.

Authorities said the bomb in the city of Diyarbakir was made from powerful explosives and was set off by a cellphone timer. Although nobody claimed responsibility, the blast occurred in a region where Kurdish separatist rebels are known to be active.

The …

R E V I E W S.(PREVIEW)

DANCE

``The Casablanca Records Story.'' Various artists. (Casablanca) :

This is, without a doubt, the quintessential dance album: four CDs, each crammed with more than 75 minutes of the cream of Casablanca's crop.

And what a crop it is: Donna Summer, the Village People, Parliament, Love and Kisses and Cher, to name a few.

Summer's 17-minute ``MacArthur Park Suite'' alone is worth the price of admission (about $60). This is the masterpiece of the genre, the ``Stairway to Heaven'' of disco, without peer for its sheer musicality. Forget the inane lyrics about some cake left out in the rain. The song's brilliant segues, its blend of melancholy and Summer's dynamic drive are simply heavenly.

To a lesser extent but still terrific are Summer's rocking ``Hot Stuff/Bad Girls'' medley, Teri Desario's ``Ain't Nothin' Gonna Keep Me From You,'' with its hummable Barry Gibb-written hook, and ``Chase,'' Giorgio Moroder's hypnotic theme from the film ``Midnight Express.''

But let's face it, disco could also be mind-numbing, and there's plenty of ammunition here for those who think so. Stephanie Mills' ``Medicine Song,'' D.C. LaRue's ``Let Them Dance'' and Dennis Parker's ``Like an Eagle'' are featherweight entries, even by disco standards.

There are also some puzzling omissions. Santa Esmeralda's ``Don't Let Me Be …

Steady movers: transportation offers a good ride in a sluggish market.

Transportation is a bellwether sector. Not only does it reflect the overall performance of the economy, but the activities of railroads, trucking companies and freight forwarders can signal future trends. Lately, those signals have been encouraging.

"Railroads and trucking are looking better," says Stanley Nabi, managing director on the value team at Credit Suisse Asset Management in New-York, "partly because the economy has stabilized."

Nabi believes that both trucking and railroads have been forced to improve their efficiencies by pricing weakness. He adds that railroads rid themselves of the costly working practices that used to be part of union contracts. These practices, known as featherbedding, included the assignment of firemen to diesel locomotives where they shoveled coal. Currently, the railroad industry's labor costs are lower than those of the airline industry.

The ability of railroads to attack costs was bolstered by the creation of mega-carriers as a result of consolidation. Analysts agree that there is now little scope for further railroad amalgamation. "I would be surprised if over the next 10 years we have more than one significant merger," says Nabi.

Credit Suisse Asset Management has made a policy decision not to hold transportation stocks. Nabi says the reason for this has been the negative effect of deregulation in these industries. Deregulation, which began in the 1970s, did particular damage to the trucking sector.

RAILROADS MOVE PRODUCTION

Rick Paterson (****), an analyst with UBS Warburg, believes that an upturn in railroad haulage activity can point to a recovery one or two quarters ahead in the rest of the economy, noting the importance of railroads in moving …

NKorean defector arrested in alleged attack plot

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A North Korean defector allegedly armed with poison needles has been arrested on suspicion of plotting an attack on a leading anti-Pyongyang activist, South Korean officials said Friday.

A prosecution official and an intelligence official said that a North Korean defector surnamed Ahn targeted Park Sang-hak, another North Korean defector who leads a campaign that sends leaflets attacking Pyongyang's leaders to the North.

Another National Intelligence Service official said Ahn was carrying poison needles when he was arrested. The officials refused to be named because of the continuing investigation.

Earlier this year, a South Korean court …