Network: Bytes

COMPAQ CHAIRMAN Benjamin Rosen tried to reassure shareholders the future was bright last week after the forced resignation of chief executive and president Eckhart Pfeiffer and chief financial officer Earl Mason's departure. Rosen said Compaq, which achieved half its expected first-quarter profits, had become too bureaucratic and a change in leadership was needed to maintain profitably its

PUBLIC DEPOSITIONS in the Microsoft trial adjourned in February until at least 10 May will go ahead this week as the company tries to contest allegations that it used monopoly power to compete unfairly. They will focus on the three-way deal between Sun, Netscape and AOL that fatally undermines the anti-trust case against Microsoft, the company claims.

APPLE RELEASED its beta version of QuickTime 4 on its website last week and said it is opening up the source code of the server version to help it compete with IBM, Sony, RealNetworks and Microsoft in the multimedia streaming market. By letting firms modify QuickTime for other operating systems and easily tweak it for maximum affect in their own software or multimedia titles, Apple is hoping to boost acceptance of the latest version, which now includes built-in support for the MP3 music format. A final version, that for $29.99 lets users create and edit digital content, is due for July.