ADN

Oct.16.2006

Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Hitachi Mull are contemplating seeking compensation from Sony for possible damages to their brand image after the companies had to recall Sony-made batteries. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Washington Post, Associated Press

Steve Ballmer has his hands full. The next version of the Windows operating system, Vista, is finally about to arrive - years late and clouded by doubts that it might violate antitrust rules in Europe. The CEO of Microsoft recently spoke with the New York Times about Vista, his job and the future of software. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ New York Times

Intel Struggles to Bring Viiv Alive. The chipmaker that made Pentium a household name has yet to achieve brand recognition for its media PC platform. So what is a Viiv, and will you care come Christmas? Intel (INTC ) sure hopes so. So do its PC vendor partners, including Hewlett-Packard (HPQ ), Toshiba (TOSBY ), Gateway (GTW ), and others. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Business Week

Intel shipped 5 million of its new dual-core processors in the first two months of its sales, amid signs of strong demand for laptop PCs this quarter. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Bloomberg

Wall Street Journal Asia readers have ranked Lenovo No.1 in the category of long-term management vision. Also, according to the Wall Street Journal, Lenovo has taken IBM's place in an industry group that sets standards for the Bluetooth technology. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Wall Street Journal Reader Survey, WSJ Bluetooth (Link not available)

Carly Fiorina, on a book tour for her memoir, Tough Choices, has been talking to reporters non-stop for a week. Interviews have focused on the snooping scandal at Hewlett-Packard that led to the firing and felony charges against former chairman Patricia Dunn. Fiorina, the most celebrated female CEO to date, was fired as CEO in 2005. During one of the last interviews of her tour, she told USA TODAY corporate management reporter Del Jones the lessons she has learned. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ USA Today

Computing enthusiasts like to say that the computer gaming crowd is what really helped get 64-bit computing and multi-core processors into the business world at a faster rate. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ InternetNews

I don't yet know the power of 64 bit computing but multi core processing is the shit..!

I think sometime next year, I will rebuild my desktop w/maybe a quad core system...

Industry News

Sony is adding its own name to the list of PC makers recalling Sony-made batteries by recalling 60,000 of its notebook computer batteries in Japan, and as many as 300,000 globally. Sony's move comes a day after Sharp announced its recall of 28,000 battery packs, bringing the worldwide recall total to about 8 million. Sony is expected to revise down its annual earnings forecast due to the costs of the widening recall and losses in its game division. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Washington Post, Reuters

The global battery recall has caused many people to look twice at their computer batteries. The troubles prompted the IPC (a trade association representing component makers) to begin work in September on a new industry standard for lithium ion battery production and quality control. Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Polycom, among others, are helping craft the standard. The group aims to publish the standard by the second quarter of 2007. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ CIO Magazine

ABC News and PC Magazine recently released reviews of Dell¢¢¬¢ž¢s XPS 210, the DLP-based 1800MP Projector, the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 926 and the Dell Photo All-In-One Printer 966. Dell announced these products at last weekends DigitalLife technology show. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ XPS 210, 1800MP, Printers

Dell is setting its sights on the small and midsize business segment ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ and acknowledging that it continues to be willing to work with solution providers who add value to technology delivery. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ ChannelWEB

EMC Corp., the world's biggest maker of computers and software that store records, reported a 33 percent drop in third-quarter profit after recording expenses for stock options. The company also plans to cut 1,250 jobs. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Bloomberg

Sun Microsystems plans to introduce a new feature in early January to let its UltraSparc T1-based servers run multiple operating systems simultaneously, partly matching abilities of rival machines from IBM and Hewlett-Packard. The announcement is the latest move in a race to make servers as flexible and efficient as possible through a general technology called virtualization. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ ZDNet

Microsoft is expected to announce on Tuesday that it is making its virtualization file format available for free and without a license. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ CNET

IBM announced last week it will move its global procurement headquarters to China from its present location in New York. This is the first time a global IBM organization has been established outside the United States. - BusinessWeek

Yahoo will revamp its e-commerce hosting platform to make it easier for small businesses to open and manage online stores by introducing two new "wizards" intended primarily for small businesses that have balked at the technical difficulties of setting up shop online. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ InfoWorld

Lenovo is offering a new line of ThinkPad notebooks that will secure the entire contents of the hard drive with the swipe of a finger. User authentication is required during the boot up process, not after Windows has already launched. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ USA Today

Oct 18th and 19th Industry News - with links

Dell has broken its silence on the AMD chip shortages that have seen several PC manufacturers forced to jump ship to Intel. One PC manufacturer claims AMD is starving the supply of its high-end chips to smaller OEMs in order to meet its new commitment to Dell. Leaked reports suggest that AMD has agreed to supply 20 million chips to the world's biggest PC maker by the end of 2007, leaving other manufacturers with only "handfuls" of high-end processors. - PC Pro

Yahoo! leads the list of most visited Web sites for August 2006, attracting more than 131.3 million unique visitors. Time Warner came in second with 121.5 million visitors and Microsoft took the bronze with 119 million hits. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ ZDNet

For a hundred years or more, Western businesses have dreamed of selling to the vast Chinese market. With sights set on the country's 1.3 billion consumers, they are finally getting their chance, but experts from Wharton and Boston Consulting Group say that firms should not underestimate the skills they will need to develop to compete there--particularly as they try to expand outside China's largest 30 or 40 cities into the country's more than 500 other large markets. The report states that China's goods and services are still mostly supplied via the labyrinthine networks of state-owned distribution companies and small, private wholesalers. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Forbes

IBM reported Q3 earnings of $1.45 per share yesterday (Oct 17). The company¢¢¬¢ž¢s profit rose 47 percent, sales were slightly higher and its revenue was up 5 percent. IBM said its services results were "mixed" but hoped for a good fourth quarter. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ CBS MarketWatch

IBM announced the IBM Information server aimed to be a one-stop shop for companies seeking tools for dealing with such data-intensive issues as business intelligence. The server is scheduled to be available next month. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ InformationWeek

In a recent Forrester Research poll, CIOs said the scandal at HP was interesting. However, out of 28 companies planning to work with HP, only 3 said they were now reconsidering their options. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ InformationWeek

Online Security supplier McAfee is claiming that Microsoft has failed to keep its part of a new bargain to cooperate with security software companies, falling short of commitments to the European Commission. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Reuters

For better or worse, one of the hottest names in technology these days is Linden Lab's "Second Life." Linden Lab CEO Philip Rosedale's recently spoke with CNET about the metaverse's latest developments. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ CNET

Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ) reclaimed the No. 1 spot in worldwide personal-computer shipments from Dell Inc. (DELL) in the third quarter, a prominent research firm said, though another put the two companies in a statistical tie. - The Wall Street Journal

In a surprisingly ambitious report, called Apple Should License the Mac to Dell, Gartner says Apple should concentrate on what it does best -- create software -- and make use of Dell's production and distribution infrastructure. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ ZDNet Australia

Investigators dug through a Wall Street Journal reporter's trash as part of a now-discredited boardroom leak probe that led to criminal charges. In a first-person story on the front page of Thursday's Wall Street Journal, reporter Pui-Wing Tam said HP disclosed to her that a security firm, hired by HP, rummaged through the garbage of her suburban home, hoping to glean possible details about her reporting efforts. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ USA Today, Wall Street Journal

For more than two decades, Microsoft's software and Intel's processors were so wedded that the pairing came to be known as Wintel. But as that computing era wanes, Microsoft is turning to a new source of chip design - its own labs. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ New York Times

Microsoft is ready with the final production version of IE 7. The new Web browser, which has been in testing for months, is now available for download from Microsoft's Web site. Yahoo! has also released its own version of the browser. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ CNET, CNET Yahoo!, CNET Review

Bah, IE7..
FF2 is the shit..!

I don't care for IE either, but I think the new IE is better than the old IE, and thus the better version for my Firefox driven IE tabs....

Meanwhile, AMD is going to shit... /:D" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt=":D" />

If you're gonna bag AMD, keep it to a single thread.. /wink.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=";)" border="0" alt="wink.gif" />

I need to get me a Core Duo userbar... /:D" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid=":D" border="0" alt=":D" />

A few more articles covering the past 5 days....

Dell still has its admirers in the financial community. For example, Jesse Tortora, an analyst at Prudential Securities, asserted Friday morning that investors over-reacted to news that the company had lost its top spot in the global personal computer market to HP. Citigroup¢¢¬¢ž¢s Richard Gardner also came to the stock¢¢¬¢ž¢s defense. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Seeking Alpha

EMC's "aggressive upgrade strategy" is continuing as the information systems vendor today unveiled a new high-end Symmetrix system, along with refreshes for its midrange, network-attached storage and disk library systems. EMC also introduced its Clariion CX3 UltraScale midrange systems with the ability to run both Fibre Channel and iSCSI concurrently in the same array. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Internet News Bureau

The metrics used to measure the value of IT resources and investments are changing as CIOs go beyond classic return-on-investment and total-cost-of-ownership formulas to prioritize their investments. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ InformationWeek

Blogging tends to be personal, social, lively and irreverent ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ terms that are not typically associated with big business. However, "corporate blogging" is no longer an oxymoron ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ or a rarity. According to a running tally of big-company blogs, more than three dozen Fortune 500 companies now produce blogs. Blogs are increasingly being used to shine a spotlight on companies¢¢¬¢ž¢ consumer issues. For consumer advocates, they are a true equalizer. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Fortune, CRM

As its OpenWorld event kicks off, Oracle is sending signals that it's shifting from big buyouts to building alliances. Oracle likely still has more acquisitions ahead of it, but analysts expect the deals to be smaller than the blockbuster Peoplesoft and Siebel deals. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ CNET

Microsoft aims to double the number of mobile phones running its Windows software this year and to keep up this rate of growth in coming years. Approximately 6 million mobile phones employed Windows at the end of 2005. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Reuters

Intel has demonstrated a prototype of a working four-way server running on the firm's forthcoming quad core Xeon processor, codenamed Tigerton. Intel plans to continue making its multi-core processors beyond 2007. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ PC World, Infomatics

Dell and AMD cemented their growing partnership Monday, unveiling two business computers that will feature the chipmaker's Opteron microprocessor. The PowerEdge 6950, a four-socket server, and the PowerEdge SC1435, a two-socket model ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Dell¢¢¬¢ž¢s first servers running AMD¢¢¬¢ž¢s Opteron processors ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ were introduced at Oracle OpenWorld. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ PC World

Sony executives apologized Tuesday for inconveniences caused by a massive global recall in notebook batteries, but said the problems were now fixed and that none of the company's top leaders would resign due to the incident. For some, Sony's woes have shaken Japan's confidence in its long prized manufacturing prowess. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Associated Press

IBM files lawsuit against Amazon. In a legal case that could have broad implications for e-commerce and patent law, IBM sued Web retailer Amazon.com on Oct. 23, accusing the company of violating five patents that were filed in the late 1980s and early 1990s. IBM is seeking an injunction that would stop Amazon.com from using the patents, which Big Blue claims are at the heart of the retailer's online business. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ BusinessWeek

Fujitsu raised its half year profit outlook by 45 percent yesterday. The company cited healthy sales of network equipment, hard disk drives and software services outside of Japan. Fujitsu has introduced its high-end server in the U.S. to go head to head with IBM and HP. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ Forbes

Until recently, one of the biggest concerns for business travelers was that someone might steal their notebook containing private and confidential corporate information. But now there¢¢¬¢ž¢s a new worry ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ what if the notebook is seized or its contents scrutinized at U.S. customs and immigration checkpoints upon entering the United States from abroad? ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ New York Times, NYTimes non-subscription link

Alienware will bundle the Phantom Lapboard keyboard with their media center PCs. The Phantom Wireless Lapboard and Phantom Wireless Laser Mouse enables users to work or play games from a couch, easy chair or any comfortable setting in the home or workplace. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ I4U News

Computer buyers who pick up a new PC this holiday season won't get the latest version of Windows or Office, but they can score a discount if they decide to upgrade later. Those who buy a system with Windows XP or Office 2003 between Thursday and March 15 will be eligible to move up to Windows Vista or Office 2007. The terms of the Vista "Express Upgrade" offer will vary from one PC maker to another, Microsoft said Tuesday. In some cases, the upgrades will be free, while in some other cases, they may require the customer to pay up to half the price of the updated software. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ CNET

There was no mention of corporate spying, false identities or criminal indictments when Mark Hurd took the stage at the Oracle OpenWorld convention for his first major appearance in the post-HPGate. Instead after walking out to a new Madonna song "Sorry," with lyrics about being sorry for lying (he didn't choose the music), HP¢¢¬¢ž¢s CEO began his keynote address with some subtle references to the embarrassing scandal that has engulfed HP during the past two months. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ San Francisco Chronicle, ZDNet

HP, Oracle and Intel are collaborating to help customers move away from mainframes, a market dominated by IBM. ¢¢¬…œWhere HP is behind some [of] its competitors is in offering a broader range of technology choices,¢¢¬‚ said analyst Barry Rubenstein, program manager for Application Outsourcing & Offshore Services at IDC. ¢¢¬…œEDS, for example, brings together Sun, EMC, Dell, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft." ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ InfoWorld

A coalition of 43 major Silicon Valley businesses, non-profits and government agencies have announced their intention to reduce CO2 emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ San Jose Mercury News

Nipping at the heels of Microsoft¢¢¬¢ž¢s recent release of Internet Explorer 7, Mozilla has made public Firefox 2 with an emphasis on security. ¢¢¬¢‚¬Å“ CNET This one is for you, Ayhja

Glorious tidbit format you got working for us st4, thanks..!!

I'm an Intel fan boy at this point....