AMD leaps back into the game with Puma
Watch out, Intel: Advanced Micro Devices has a laptop with turbo power.
In essence that’s what the chipmaker has created in its Puma chip platform, which it plans to unveil Wednesday. On regular settings, a Puma-powered laptop conserves battery life and does a so-so job handling complex graphics. Switch to turbo and it’s a powerhouse that effortlessly renders 3D games and plays HD video.
HP reaches for the cool factor
 |
| Later this year, select Micro Center stores will set up HP-branded areas like this one that show off sleek designs and demonstrate how the products work together. Image: HP |
Rahul Sood was working in a Calgary rug store when fate beckoned in 1991. A friendly customer saw him fixing a computer by the front desk, and suggested he take his skills into the PC business.
Sood borrowed $1,500 on a MasterCard and started Voodoo PC, buying high-end parts and building powerful workstation computers for clients in the local oil and gas industry. It didn’t take long for him to find a more appropriate niche: In the early days Sood and friends stayed up until 2 a.m. playing graphics-rich video games on the office computers, so it felt natural when Voodoo began building eye-catching rigs for fellow video game enthusiasts.
Now Sood is a key player in Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) push to create breakthrough new computer designs to push it further ahead of its rivals. Since HP acquired Voodoo in 2006, Sood and his team have been working to bring Voodoo’s artistic, high-performance culture to HP’s mass-market audience. HP’s latest efforts, which will be unveiled on June 10, could begin to establish the company as a provider of beautiful technology gear – an image that consumers had traditionally associated with competitors like Apple (AAPL) and Sony (SNE).
HP and EDS: A chat with CEOs Mark Hurd and Ron Rittenmeyer
Early in the life of Hewlett-Packard, an adviser warned co-founder Dave Packard that more companies die from indigestion than starvation. The message: Be careful how you handle acquisitions.
With CEO Mark Hurd’s announcement Tuesday that Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) will purchase services giant EDS (EDS) for $13.9 billion (including EDS’s cash and debt), Hurd is making a bold statement that his team is operationally strong enough to handle the heartburn.
Why HP is smart to gamble on EDS
 |
| HP CEO Mark Hurd is taking a risk by bidding for troubled services player EDS. Image: HP |
Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd has built a world-class reputation as a cost-cutting turnaround artist, and he’s risking it all with a smart bid for technology services giant Electronic Data Systems.
HP (HPQ) announced Tuesday that it would pay $13.9 billion in cash for Texas-based EDS (EDS), which manages technology projects for a range of large clients. If HP does it right, buying EDS is the business equivalent of a triple-play. In one fell swoop HP is more than doubling the revenue of its services arm, mounting a more serious threat to IBM (IBM), and shutting down a distribution channel for other competitors.
EMC eyes consumer storage
 |
| Iomega’s Rev drives compete with portable hard drives from Seagate and Western Digital; EMC hopes to buy the company and turbocharge the brand. Image: Iomega |
What happened to Iomega (IOM)?
It was a gravity-defying technology stock during its best run a decade ago. At its peak in 1996, the company’s nearly $6 billion valuation meant many investors were betting it would be the future of digital storage.
Iomega seemed to be at the right place at the right time; broadband connections and music downloads were not yet common, and few tech companies recognized that storage would be a growth market. Meanwhile Iomega’s proprietary Zip disks and Zip drives provided the capacity of a computer hard drive and the portability of a floppy disk, making it a snap to move chunky files like digital images or huge spreadsheets from one PC to another.
Getting innovation out of the lab at Xerox
 |
| Xerox technology chief Sophie Vandebroek is placing bets on technologies to spur growth. Image: Xerox |
Xerox (XRX) PARC has come a long way. A generation ago, the Palo Alto Research Center famously developed many of the technologies that led to modern PCs from folks like Apple (AAPL) and Dell (DELL), but never got them beyond the lab. Today the unit is determined to get its inventions out of the lab, even if it means sacrificing secrecy.
To underscore that point, the company’s normally secretive Silicon Valley researchers and their colleagues from around the world held an open house this week to show off surprising projects they’re developing. Among them: A blood scanner that uses a twist on laser printing technology to spot rogue cells, a type of paper that can be erased by ultraviolet light and reused, and a new hybrid plastic that’s partly made of corn and grass.
Microsoft looks for Windows of opportunity
 |
| Microsoft stock has crept higher since it sank three months ago on word of its Yahoo bid. |
Can Microsoft do it again?
Late last year, investors and analysts were wringing their hands over a tech stock collapse. With the economy starting to slow, investors punished a slew of big techs including Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). Not even hot-growth companies like Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM) were spared.
Then Microsoft reported earnings in January, and the sun came out: $6.5 billion in profit for the holiday quarter on sales of $16.4 billion. And best of all, the forecast was bright. “We actually feel very optimistic,” said Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell. “The next six months we feel very good about.”
MacBook has Apple walking on Air
 |
| The MacBook Air was a top-seller for Apple last quarter, helping to deliver the equivalent of a second holiday season. Image: Apple |
iPod growth has stalled. The iPhone is basically doing as expected. So in Apple’s financial results, the real surprise was the MacBook Air.
This time, gadgets didn’t save the day for Apple (AAPL). Even after adding a pink iPod nano to its lineup in time for Valentine’s Day, the company sold just 100,000 more iPods in the first three months of this year than it did a year before. iPhone sales came in 26 percent (or 600,000 units) lower than the holiday quarter, which isn’t a great sign.
Seagate sues flash drive maker
 |
| Hard drives and flash memory are increasingly vying for share in the storage market. Image: Sandisk, Samsung |
Hard drive maker Seagate (STX) filed a patent suit against flash drive maker STEC (STEC) in federal court on Monday, firing the first shot in a new intellectual property battle between hard drive makers and providers of flash storage technology.
Seagate, the world’s largest hard drive maker, claims that STEC has violated four of its patents covering the way a storage device communicates with a computer. The suit was filed in the Northern District of California.
STEC said it believes Seagate’s lawsuit is “completely without merit and primarily motivated by competitive concerns rather than a desire to protect its intellectual property.” The company said it began building flash drives before Seagate won its patents. (STEC’s full statement is below.)
HP’s mini laptop packs a punch
 |
| The HP Mini laptop is aimed at the education market, but it could appeal to road warriors as well. Image: HP |
Pick up HP’s new $500 mini-laptop, and the first thing you notice is the aluminum casing. Though the thing weighs only about 2.5 pounds, what’s striking is how its sleek skin makes it feel solid and professional – not at all what you’d expect from a budget PC.
I’m in a suite at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco getting a first look at Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) latest machine, which the company hopes will help it steal share from Dell (DELL) and Apple (AAPL) in the education market. (Each of the three companies has just under 20 percent of the worldwide market.) HP’s development team, I’m told, consulted educators as they designed the 2133 Mini-Note, and as I turn the laptop over in my hands that comes through in little details.
1 comment:
http://www.reliancebroadband.co.in/images/BroadnetUserManualSME.pdf
Post a Comment