Business Focus: Technology                           
                       (Detroit News; 03/18/99)                       

   Gateway promotes free Internet access

   PC manufacturer and direct seller Gateway is including a year's worth of 
Internet access (150 hours a month) with all new computers that cost more than 
$1,000.

   Previously, Gateway.net, the company's Internet access service, cost $15 a 
month.

   PBS site can give users a Web scare

   While techies are used to thinking in terms of megabytes and megahertz, the 
Public Broadcasting System has an informative -- and scary -- site that focuses 
on megatons as in nuclear bombs. (Head for www.pbs.org/wgbhages/amex/bomb.)

   You can pick a spot -- say your hometown -- to detonate a 1- megaton surface 
hydrogen bomb, then see maps that show the breadth of the pressure damage and 
fallout damage.

   It's a chilling revelation. You can also see video clips of some real 
nuclear explosions.

   Sony launches hype over new PlayStation

   It's a bit early to start getting excited about Sony's new PlayStation, 
which will debut in Japan in a year, but the hype is already starting.

   The chip powering the game machine is expected to run at 250-300 megahertz, 
compared with 33 megahertz in the current model, and have a 128-bit processor 
for executing the goods, up from 33 bits now. Sony describes the processor as 
an "Emotion Engine."

   What it boils down to is that the device, which will cost $250 or more when 
it hits the U.S. market. will be a graphic powerhouse. Sony says the system 
will simulate gravity, friction and mass and such things as water, gas, metal 
and wood.

   Sega, Sony's main rival in the game-station field, sells a machine in Japan 
called Dreamcast, which has a 128-bit processor, a 200-MHz chip and can double 
as a CD player and Internet terminal. It will be available in the United States 
in the fall.

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