SAN FRANCISCO -- CNet (CNET) - Get Report is up sharply even as the tech sector remains mostly flat.

The stock rose 15 3/8, or 13%, to 130 after hitting a high of 139. The window for employees to sell stock closed Friday, eliminating a factor that could weigh on the stock, a spokeswoman said. CNet's

Snap

division will present at the

Hambrecht & Quist

tech

conference in Utah today, while CNet will present on Tuesday.

Elsewhere, computer hardware makers continue to retreat on a

cautionary note from Wall Street.

Lehman Brothers

cut earnings estimates on

IBM

(IBM) - Get Report

,

Hewlett-Packard

(HWP)

and

Sun Microsystems

(SUNW) - Get Report

. Analyst George Elling cut yearly earnings estimates for each firm by 5 cents a share, though he maintains his ratings of buy on Sun Microsystems and H-P and outperform on IBM. Elling was not available for comment, but

Reuters

reported that Elling made the cuts based on his view that fourth-quarter sales may sag as a result of the year 2000 bug.

IBM was down 2 7/8, or 1.3%, at 166 7/8, while Sun Microsystems was up 13/16 at 98 1/8 after falling as low as 94 1/8 and H-P was down 1/8 at 66 5/16. Other box makers were also lower:

Dell

was off 19/16 at 79 9/16,

Compaq

(CPQ)

was down 1 3/4, or 5%, at 33 5/8 and

Gateway

was down 13/16 at 71 7/8 despite a

NationsBanc Montgomery Securities

upgrade to buy from hold.

Online Brokers In the News

E*Trade

(EGRP)

was up 1 1/16, or 2%, at 47 1/16 on news that it was added to the

Standard & Poor's

MidCap 400 index. It was previously listed in the MidCap 600 Index.

Meanwhile, online trading at

Charles Schwab

(SCH)

went out Monday morning for the second time in less than a week. Customers were unable to trade through the Web from about 10 a.m. EST to about 10:20, according to a Schwab spokeswoman.

The No. 1 online broker by online transactions also suffered an hourlong breach in Web trading last Wednesday. While Schwab is still investigating the source of the problem, a spokeswoman says it could be related to the system enhancements Schwab is making. The Wednesday outage was related to the installation of a new mainframe computer.

Schwab was trading 1 3/8 lower at 73 3/16.