Lenovo, the world’s fourth largest PC maker, plans to phase out the IBM brand to which it acquired rights when it purchased IBM’s PC division three years ago. Lenovo sales rose 20% to $4.4bn in the third quarter of 2007 compared to the same period a year ago, while profits surged 178% to $105m, suggesting that Lenovo’s efforts to merge itself with the former IBM PC division have finally succeeded. “By making substantial progress on all of our critical priorities over the past few quarters, we are now a stronger, healthier company. One important sign of this progress is our decision to completely transition our Think products from the IBM brand to the Lenovo brand two years earlier than planned,” said Lenovo chief executive William Amelio.
A Douglasville man has now found out how hot the iPod can be, and we are not making this up…
His old iPod nano caught on fire, leaving a burn hole from “his 15 seconds of flame”. “So I look down and I see flames coming up to my chest,” said Danny Williams to WSBTV, “I’m still kind of freaked out that after only a year and a half my iPod caught fire in my pocket.”
The iPod uses a lithium-ion battery - the same one that is being recalled by laptops for bursting into flames. In 2006, a major recall was done after it was found that the lithium-ion batteries made by Sony were able to combust into flames. Apple was one of the companies affected; as well as Toshiba, Acer and Lenovo.
Apple has said that they will replace the iPod.
Leaders of the non-profit One Laptop Per Child that was spun out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology have acknowledged that the devices are now slated to cost $188 when mass production begins this fall. The last announced price was $176 and $100 was touted as a long-term goal. Spokesman George Snell blamed the latest increase on a variety of factors, including currency fluctuations and rising costs of such components as nickel and silicon. He said the project was committed to keeping the price from rising above $190. The laptops are being made by Taiwan’s Quanta Computer Incorporated, the world’s leading manufacturer of portable computers.
One Laptop Per Child says it has commitments for at least 3 million of its rugged “XO” computers; among the nations that have shown interest are Brazil, Libya, Thailand and Uruguay. While less than $200 for an innovative, wireless-enabled, hand-powered laptop is a relative bargain, a price nearly twice than what was promised could make it harder for OLPC to sign up international governments as customers. Those governments are expected to give the computers to children for them to keep and tinker with, which the project’s founders believe will cause critical thinking and creativity to blossom.
News source: CNN
Not only do Advanced Micro Devices’ new tenth-generation microprocessors promise to increase performance because of micro-architectural improvements and the increased amount of processing engines, they apparently feature DDR3 memory controller as well. Technical documents that cover AMD’s latest microprocessors, such as quad-core AMD Opteron or AMD Phenom and their derivatives, reveal that the new built-in memory controllers can support both DDR2 and DDR3 memory types, provided that processors are installed into mainboards with DDR3 memory slots and appropriate BIOS.
According to roadmaps that AMD shows to its partners, DDR3 memory support will only be available in microprocessors made using 45nm process technology and on AM3 platforms due out in the second half of 2008. However, given that AMD’s documents for BIOS developers already note both AM3 and DDR3, it is highly likely that even current versions of AMD’s tenth-generation microprocessors can support DDR3 memory in certain conditions.
News source: Xbit Laboratories
Nokia said today it is collaborating with several of its rivals to create a common flash memory card format. First virtual machines, now flash, what is the world coming to? The proposed specification is being backed by Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Micron Technology, Spansion, MTMicroelectronics and Texas Instruments. The format will be standardized by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, an open-standards organization in the semiconductor industry.
The new memory card type, called Universal Flash Storage (UFS) aims to remove some of the confusion and need for adapters to accommodate the market’s current cluster of memory card sizes.
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News source: The Reg
Intel will officially start delivering its X38 chipsets in mid-September, enabling motherboard makers to begin volume production of X38-based motherboards by the end of this month, according to sources at the makers. The official launch of the X38 chipsets will also come in time to compete with AMD’s forthcoming RD790 chipsets scheduled in November, the sources noted
In addition to supporting 1333MHz FSB, DDR3 1333 memory, PCI Express 2.0 (PCIe) and dual PCIe x16 graphics slots, the X38 will also be the first core logic chipset using ISH (integrated heat spreader) technology, the sources noted.
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News source: DigiTimes
Hosted desktop pioneer Nivio has taken an undisclosed investment from AMD to help it work on its ambition of making virtual Windows XP desktops and software accessible from any connected device — even a Linux PC or a smartphone. The Nivio service uses virtualization to provide users with a virtual PC, which they can configure and even synchronize with their own PC, if they have one. The virtual PCs are hosted on AMD servers at data centers in Geneva and New Delhi, and streamed out over broadband.
Nivio says it can stream a Windows XP desktop, complete with applications, to any device with a compatible web browser. Software — including Adobe and Microsoft applications — can be rented by the month, so users don’t have to purchase a package that’s only needed for the duration of a short project, said the company’s founder Sachin Duggal.
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News source: PCWorld
The 2-way server market can expect a boost of holiday season cheer in the fourth quarter as Intel is lining up to launch 12 new processors based on its latest 45nm designs, according to sources at server makers. Of the 12 chips, nine will fall into the Quad Core Xeon 5400 series (Harpertown), while the other three will be in the Dual Core Xeon 5200 series (Wolfdale). From the lineup, it looks like Intel is trying to make sure it fields a full team of quad-core products to face off against Barcelona going into next year.
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News source: DigiTimes
Just two weeks after revealing that some employees had falsified corporate revenue to meet earnings targets, Dell reported a profit of $733 million for its fiscal 2008 second quarter, up 46 percent from its mark of $502 million for the same period last year. The strong result was driven by sales to enterprise customers, an increase in the selling prices of Dell PCs, and a drop in component costs, the company said.
Dell recorded revenue of $14.8 billion for the quarter ending Aug. 3, generating earnings of $0.32 per share. Both figures were above Wall Street expectations of $14.63 billion revenue and $0.30 earnings per share, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Financial. However, Dell warned investors to be cautious when comparing the figures to past quarters because the company plans to restate its earnings for the past four years. Dell plans to revise its quarterly and annual financial statements for fiscal 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and the first quarter of 2007.
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News source: InfoWorld
Scientists at IBM said on Thursday that they had moved closer to developing ultra-tiny storage devices(imagine 30,000 full-length movies on an iPod) by learning how to steer single atoms in a way that could create building blocks for such hard drives. Understanding and manipulating the behavior of atoms is critical to harnessing the power of nanotechnology, which deals with particles tens of thousands of times smaller than the width of a human hair. “One of the most basic properties that every atom has is that it behaves like a little magnet,” said Cyrus Hirjibehedin, a scientist at International Business Machines Corp.’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California, in a phone interview. “If you can keep that magnetic orientation stable over time, then you can use that to store information. That is how your hard drive works. What we are trying to understand is how this fundamental property works for a single atom.” Hirjibehedin and colleague Andreas Heinrich studied this property—known as magnetic anisotropy—in individual iron atoms using a special microscope developed at IBM.
