The culprit is largely rising oil prices and the effects of the buoyant world economy on other commodity prices he said

“The culprit is largely rising oil prices and the effects of the buoyant world economy on other commodity prices,” he said.Continued rate fears knocked about more than 2 per cent off the blue chip FTSE 100 index.The fall in the cost of inputs took the City by surprise. Analysts had pencilled in a rise of 0.4 per cent and some said the weaker than expected figures were good news for inflation and interest rates. “Certainly we think the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee will hold off [raising rates] at least until April,” said Rob Hayward, economist at Bank of America.”Any relief at the weakness of producer prices should be tempered,” said Michael Saunders of Salomon Smith Barney. “The drop was almost totally due to the pound’s sharp rise last month … the chances are that input prices will rise again in February.” He said output prices – at a two-year high even after stripping out oil and erratics – were a good indicator of inflation in the pipeline.So far factory price rises have failed to feed through to the high street where core inflation, excluding housing costs, was constant at 2.2 per cent over the last quarter of 1999.Figures published today are expected to show a drop to 2.1 per cent in January.. Waterford Wedgwood, the Irish ceramics and glassware group, yesterday said it had achieved record sales in 1999, boosted by the appointment of Sarah, Duchess of York as an official spokesperson for the Wedgwood brand in the US. Waterford Wedgwood, the Irish ceramics and glassware group, yesterday said it had achieved record sales in 1999, boosted by the appointment of Sarah, Duchess of York as an official spokesperson for the Wedgwood brand in the US.
In a trading update ahead of full-year results in March, the company reported turnover up 20.4 per cent at 879.6m euros (£545m) for the year to 31 December.

Like-for-like sales, excluding All-Clad, the recently acquired US cookware unit, rose 9.8 per cent to 842.9m euros.Dr Tony O’Reilly, WW’s chairman, said: “The strength and global reach of our brands and the acquisition of All-Clad reinforces our position in the luxury goods market and is an excellent platform to accelerate future growth.” The company said the recruitment last year of the Duchess of York to promote Wedgwood in the US had proved “effective and beneficial”.Much of the growth was driven by sales of crystalware and millennium products, with ceramics attracting less demand.WW yesterday appointedPeter Goulandris, the group deputy chairman, to the new role of executive chairman of the ceramics division. Richard Barnes, WW’s finance director, said: “We wanted someone to oversee our ceramics strategy at group level at a time when the industry is undergoing a period of restructuring.” WW shares closed up 2p at 58p. Dr O’Reilly is also chairman of Independent News & Media, The Independent’s parent company.. It has been four years in the making, and cost Microsoft something like $8bn to produce. Now, Windows 2000, the software giant’s latest offering, is ready to make its début.

But will it sell?

It has been four years in the making, and cost Microsoft something like $8bn to produce. Now, Windows 2000, the software giant’s latest offering, is ready to make its début. But will it sell?
The question, for a company that is in a very complex political, commercial and technological environment, is if its new product will sell enough to justify the expense of its development, and the expectations of the market. But more than that, can Windows 2000 underpin the company’s future as its management hopes? That question, more than the anti-trust case which the US and state governments have brought, may determine the company’s future.Though the launch of the new products has attracted less of the hyperbole that was previously given to Windows 95, Microsoft will spare no expense in trumpeting its latest baby at the Windows 2000 Expo in San Francisco and other worldwide launch events this Thursday.”Windows 2000 is a bet-the-ranch product for Microsoft,” chief financial officer John Connors told investors at a recent conference. “It is the fundamental core of our programming effort for the next several years.” The company has talked about increasing revenue growth from 18 to 25 per cent, largely on the back of the new product.Many of the company’s other products, like SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange, depend on making Win2000 a success. Indeed, in the future it isn’t too much of an exaggeration to say that the systemis Microsoft. Hardware manufacturers are gearing up to cash in on its launch, as is everybody else from retailers to the publishers of guides.It is not just the money that will make investors look very hard at the new product.

It is two years over deadline, it is one of the largest and most complex software projects ever, with more than 30 million lines of code, and it is in the market sector that the company most needs to nail down, quickly and securely.This is just the latest in the family of Windows operating systems. It is the heir to Windows NT, the company’s professional tool, and comprises four separate products: Windows 2000 Professional, for business desktops and laptops; Windows 2000 Server, a network operating system, and Windows 2000 Advanced Server, targeted at e-commerce companies. Later in the year will come Windows 2000 Datacenter, aimed at the high end of the business market. None of them is aimed primarily at home users now running Windows 98 or 95; Windows Millennium, also due later this year, is aimed at them. Indeed, upgrading from either to Win2000 is problematic and some applications will not work.The higher up the market, the more competition Microsoft has. It has been dogged by complaints about scalability – the ability to expand to handle larger tasks – and reliability. The kind of instability that is irritating when doing a little word processing and surfing the Web for fun is lethal for companies which depend on the internet for their very survival.

This time, the company has aimed to deliver greater reliability, better performance and more support for newer technologies, and from most of the product reviews seems to have succeeded.The key question is how quickly and to what degree its latest offering is taken up. A study by World Research forecast that 40 per cent of desktops would use the software by January of next year. But another, by Survey , estimated that MS would actually lose market share to Unix in some key sectors – especially servers. Microsoft’s rivals, like Novell, Oracle and Sun, have used the delays with Win2000 to fill the gap.But perhaps most important, while the programmers were slaving away in Redmond, another system emerged: Linux, the open source operating system with its roots in Unix which has been commercialised by companies like Red Hat. Linux’s share of the server market more than doubled to 17 per cent last year from 7 per cent in 1997, while Windows NT remained steady at 36 per cent.So far, the market has been basically content with the idea of Win2000, but it had a scare at the end of last week. Gartner Group, a technology consulting firm, said that one in four corporations would run into problems with compatibility between the new system and its existing software.