Posts by ben_myers

Microsoft's new CEO: The technology isn't his problem

Maybe England would do better?

Maybe England would do better in the World Cup with a foreigner as the coach? For all the talent in the country, it has been barely average at the world level.

Why IBM's server sell-off is a lightbulb moment

Re: How did Lenovo do it?

My thinking is similar. I recommend Lenovo and Dell (believe it or not) BUSINESS-class laptops. In other words, Lenovo Thinkpads and Dell Latitudes. Every company in the computer box business, including Dell and Lenovo, treats consumers like crap, and sells poorly made and unmaintainable crap to consumers. But sell a business 5000 pieces of crap, and Michael Dell, Meg Whitman, Ginny Rometty or any other computer CEO will get a call from the CEO of the business, saying that 5000 pieces of crap are sitting on a loading dock to be returned to the manufacturer. This is only a long-winded and eloquent way of saying that computer mfrs cannot afford to sell poorly designed equipment to large corporations, govts and NGOs. So you buy a Lenovo Thinkpad or Dell Latitude and rest easy. I still like black Lenovo Thinkpads best, because black goes well with anything and it is easy to accessorize.

Re: Avoid the commodity

Funny you should mention "word-processing on a 15-20 year old machine." Recently, someone gave me an old computer as part of a housecleaning. It is a DEC HiNote laptop with small screen, 75Mhz 486, 20MB of memory (that's MEGAbytes!), 504MB hard drive (another mega), Window 95 and Office 7. It is running order and I tried it out. Slow it is not. Office 7 runs just fine. But there is no eye-candy. I did not try to print with it, and yeah, printing might be slow. And maybe it is not so good at integrating graphics and photos into documents. Compared to the computer I am using right now, it has 1/30 the processor speed, 1/200 of the memory, and 1/100 of the hard drive space. Just goes to show how much bloat Microsoft has dumped on us all.

Private pain: Dell layoff bloodbath to hit over 15,000 staffers – insiders

Re: Windows 8 strikes again...

Dell learned too late from Lenovo's Windows 7 playbook. Lenovo made (makes it) oh-so-easy to get a Windows 7 computer, whilst nearly all of Dell's glossy promotions pushed Windows 8, Windows 8, Windows 8, until recently. Last week's Dell ad in the mail showcased Windows 7 as well. Dell can blame itself for drinking the poisoned Microsoft Windows 8 Kool-Aid. Microsoft can blame itself, shooting off one toe after another.

Toshiba upheaval continues as firm scraps EU country managers

Quality products are important, too

Yes, Toshiba can rearrange the deck chairs all it wants. I can't speak for other Toshiba electronics (maybe that is a problem, too), but Toshiba has long been at or near the bottom of my lists for hard drives and laptops. Hard drives, because their laptop drives fail way more than others and because you can't trust the SMART data giving the health of a Toshiba hard drive. And Toshiba laptops are intricately designed, difficult to service, with both spare parts and service manuals being in short supply.

Lenovo and IBM's System x biz: It'll be just like 2005's PC buyout

Crappy Thinkpads? Gimme a break!!!!

I have little or no experience with Lenovo desktops, which don't show up much around here. And I can't speak much for non-Thinkpad laptops, of which I see very few.

But the Thinkpads have remained durable, reliable, well-made laptops under Lenovo ownership. Also easy to repair, find spare parts, find repair manuals. Right now, Thinkpads are my favorite. I resell a few, refurbish a few, and recommend to people who want to buy direct or from a bigger reseller. Dell is in second place, but Dell's track record is now marred by some godawful design decisions, resulting in laptops difficult to repair, as difficult as HPaq, Toshiba and Sony... Ben Myers

Yes, HP will still sue you if you make cartridges for its inkjet printers

Why buy HP inkjet printers?

These lawsuits and their outcomes simply allow HP to have a special inkjet printer accessory that attaches itself to your credit card for regular payments. I have customers who have bought the latest greatest HP all-in-one printers and they complain about how often they need to buy inkjet cartridges, how few pages each cartridge prints, and how expensive the damned cartridges are.

How about a class action lawsuit against HP for gouging the owners of its inkjet printers, maybe possibly providing inaccurate information about how many pages each cartridge prints, and making even expensive printers out of cheap flimsy plastic.

I do not sell inkjet printers, only giving advice to people who might listen. I do not sell inkjet printers because many of the manufacturers follow HP's lead: not much ink for a lot of money.

Oh, yes, the networking part of these HP all-in-one printer-scanner-copier devices that does everything except cure warts and shine your shoes. The networking part of the setup forces use of a DHCP-assigned IP address, never giving someone with a modicum of intelligence the opportunity to assign a printer its fixed IP address, like most of us here in the real world.

Meg, are you reading this?

IBM dive-bombs into all-flash array pool

What in hell is an SVC?

What in hell is an SVC? In English please!

I've just seen 10% of the PC biz disappear into the cloud

A lot of bias in this opinion

Mr. Fosse has a lot of bias here. The more he can push people to the cloud, the better it is for EMC and its cloud services and hardware to support the cloud.

But what about office work?

If office work needs a keyboard, as with document preparation, spreadsheet jockeying, creating PowerPoint and other artsy-fartsy materials, the only choice remains a Wintel or Apple-tel desktop or laptop with a real keyboard. Yes, it may run software from the cloud, but I am having serious difficulty imagining how a tablet computer can do this sort of work. Somebody help me understand.

It was inevitable: Lenovo stumps up $2.3bn for IBM System x server biz

Re: Time to shine :)

One other issue. IBM remains top-heavy with corporate overhead. The only way to support it is with lucrative high-end products and services. Well, Thinkpads and desktops weren't lucrative enough for IBM, due to the severe pressures of a commodity market. Low-end servers fall in behind.

Re: Privacy concerns

Agreed! Why cobble up a BIOS with spyware that can easily be detected. But paranoia reigns in governments, along with lots of other irrational thinking.

You called it right.

Unlike other pundits who blabbed about Dell buying the IBM low-end server biz, the Inquirer got the prediction absolutely right, and exactly the way I saw it going. Dell buying IBM server biz had a snowball's chance in hell... Ben

Office 365 Microsoft's fastest growing business, ever - Microsoft

Selling Microsoft only out of necessity

In the past, I "sold" copies of Office 2000-whatever to my clients at near-zero margin. Why? Because it was necessary to get a sale. Why? Because they could buy it in the store at almost exactly the price I paid my distributor and install it themselves. But maybe they didn't want to be bothered to install it themselves, so they threw a few bucks my way to do the install. Then along comes Office 2013. Whether I buy from a disty or from a store, I get the same piece of paper the customer gets, with a product key and the privilege of wasting my time to go through lots of on-line crap to finally download the damnable thing and install it. And where is my incentive to "sell, sell, sell" Office 365? The customer goes on line, signs up, gives in credit card info and is off and away with Office 365. If somehow I get involved in selling it, Microsoft compensates me handsomely with the usual pigeon droppings. So now, if someone wants Office 365, they can buy and install or they can pay be a very good markup for my time to do the job. The bottom line here is that Microsoft continues to not offer resellers any incentive whatsoever to sell their product, and the only money that can be made is from the client for installing and maybe customizing Office 365 a bit. Now if I could get Microsoft product at a 30-40 discount from list, I would think differently. But right now, I am just as open to selling LibreOffice to my clients.

Acer writes off MEELLIONS again, scraps raw materials

Acer does not do itself many favors

Acer does not do itself many favors by continuing to produce three product lines with three brand names and three distinct images: Gateway once sold quality products. eMachines have generally been pretty awful and cheap. And the Acer product line itself, which has a confusing and vague image. I think it is merely sheer pride of founder Stan Shih that the company is still named Acer. Had I been in charge, I would have called it "Gateway", to trade on fond memories of many long-time Gateway owners. But there is no reason to bring back the cheesy Gateway cow motif.

Why 2014 might just be the year of the Google Chromebook

The year of the Chromebook or something else???

Now if all the egos in the Linux world would put their egos and hundreds of different Linux distros and spins aside, I would say that a Linux-based laptop (but at least dual-core) fills the bill, too. But it's a confusing Linux jungle out there to most people, with no clear winners. You have Ubuntu with quite a few different spins and Mint with its several spins seeming to be the best of the bunch from the standpoint of user interface design and wide choice of programs to run. But it's still a confusing Linux jungle out there.

Android will ship more than ONE BILLION mobes+slabs in 2014

Fun(ded) Surveys

I wonder who pays the funds for a the fun we have with funded surveys? Apple pays for them. Microsoft pays for them. But both of them readily acknowledge that they fund the surveys when they fund the surveys. Who funded this Gartner Group survey? Gartner is not so altruistic that they would pay for it themselves. A little transparency would go a long way here, Gartner.

Well, no matter whose numbers oen believes, most of us believe that Microsoft's future includes some pretty deep doo-doo. It does them no good to continue the arrogant behavior with which they have gotten away when they had a 90% OS market share.

I never had so much fun writing about funding... Ben Myers

IT bods: Windows XP, we WON'T leave you. Migrate? Chuh! As if...

Re: I believe it

Large companies do not have to spend an extra $x per computer to have a proper start button. Haven't you heard? ClassicShell is a free download, no strings attached. Okay, okay. Some someone from IT has to take the time to add ClassicShell into the default Windows 8 system build shoveled out to every desktop and laptop in the enterprise. On a cost per system basis, it IS non-zero, maybe $0.05 per system?

The buggers at Microsoft won't ever roll out an XP Service Pack 4 rollup. Why that would be treating customers with respect. It would also put a damper on the move away from XP to the bright new future of Windows 7 or Windows 8-with-ClassicShell.

Another biased survey

IT firm CDW, which sponsored the research, sells hardware kit. So naturally they'd want to drive home the point that XP is near end-of-life as we know it. A large number of computers running XP today would run Windows 7 poorly, lacking the processor horsepower, main system memory, hard drive capacity, or even driver support for some of the hardware. So in a great many cases, upgrading a system to Windows 7 makes no sense at all, hence KA-CHING! a potential sale by CDW of a replacement.

My rule of thumb is that I would not consider upgrading to Windows 7 unless the processor was at least a dual-core (or upgradable) and the memory could be upgraded to 4GB. But when one takes into account the manpower cost and the hardware cost to get a system up to speed, well, a replacement is less expensive. KA-CHING! for CDW. So goodbye to all the Socket 478 systems, probably the majority of Socket 775 desktop systems, most of the laptops with DDR2 memory, and all laptops with memory older than DDR2. Hello, Windows 7.

Amazon Web Services runs out of (some) servers

Just like banking, isn't it?

Content owners who own broadcast companies are just like the banks that do both traditional commercial/ consumer banking and investment banking, i.e. place bets, and expect bailouts when their bets fail in a big way. What we are seeing here in the nutcase USofA cable TV market are owners of cable channels pushing the content that they own to the exclusion of others and to be boringly boringly repetitive, showing the same films over and over. Worse yet, sometimes same fare is playing at the same time on two different channels, owned by the same content owner, of course. When one complains to the companies broadcasting the various cable channels, they shrug and say they can do nothing, because they only DELIVER the content. And the cable broadcasting companies have conveniently gerrymandered the country so that each one has a monopoly in a specific geographic area, town or city or whatever. Netflix and viewing TV shows without commercials (or fewer of them) never looked so good.

Ballmer: 'We made more money than almost anybody on the PLANET'

An apples-and-apples comparison? Stock splits ARE important to stockholders.

So rather than telling us the misleading factoid that Microsoft's single share price is lower now than when Ballmer took over, how about doing some real math, tell us the value of one share way back then and the value of that single share today, accounting for the stock splits. Then we would all have an apples-and-apples comparison. Pun intended. While at it, do some more heavy lifting and show Apple share price in the same interval with the same accounting-for-splits accuracy. Then we would all have an Apples-and-Microsofts comparison. ;>) ... Ben Myers

I KNOW how to SAVE Microsoft. Give Windows 8 away for FREE – analyst

Close, but no cigar

Give away Windows 8.1! That's eight-point-one, the release that goes a long way toward making a non-touch computer useful again. If if that's not enough, users can always install ClassicShell... Ben

Distie: Build the cloud and resellers will come... so WHERE ARE THEY?

Speaking as a reseller, no real incentives for me to sell the cloud

$40 per seat incentive from Microsoft to sell cloud services is simply not worth it for a small reseller. Maybe the larger resellers and project-oriented consulting firms can integrate the cloud into their webs of offerings. But I can make more money doing repairs and on-site troubleshooting or support.

Win XP? Your PLAGUE risk is SIX times that of Win 8 - NOW

Self-serving, perhaps? Just a little bit.

Microsoft dug themselves into an operating system hole, first with the slow and annoying Vista. Then, while at it, they changed device driver models, something that happens almost every other Microsoft OS release. What happens? OOOPS! Lots of printers and scanners and graphics cards and audio cards and other more specialized hardware no longer work with the bright and shiny but blighted Vista. Windows 7 really ought to have been the free upgrade to Vista, but, yes, it uses almost the same device driver model, so your older but perfectly functioning hardware won't work with it either. Then Microsoft begat Windows 8, the demon spawn of Windows and the iPad. We all know how that is turning out, rejection of Windows 8 by large enterprises plus cries of anguish by consumers given no choice to buy in the stores except Windows 8. (People will race to the free Windows 8.1, because they really have no choice if stuck with Windows 8.)

Oh, yeah, and did I mention that many large companies (like banks) and enterprises (like govts and hospitals) have designed and developed for their own use proprietary applications that run on XP? And sometimes, with VERY special hardware? Now they have to "migrate" these applications to some bright new Microsoft OS. But migration is not a simple thing like birds flying south in the autumn. It is re-engineering the applications to run in a much-changed world of Windows 7 or Windows 8 Application Programming Interfaces (API). Some of Microsoft's API changes are for the good, as they make the software world more secure and more reliable. Others fix serious design errors made by Microsoft in earlier software, e.g. the hugely mistaken tight integration of Internet Explorer into XP, opening a huge hole for operating system contamination. So migration of software to the brave new world of Windows 7-or-8 is both very costly and extremely time-consuming. Yeah, I know you can run XP apps in an XP virtual machine under Windows 7. Well, SOME apps, like regular everyday commodity software you buy in the store. But proprietary software developed in-house? I'll believe it when I see it.

So now they want to use the tactic honed by long-time IBM partner: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt, or FUD. Scare the hell out of everyone still using XP. They will scare a lot of people to Windows 7-or-8, and hardware vendors like Dell, Lenovo, HPaq and Acer-eGateMachines will smile as they sell a lot of systems to replace the ones that run Windows 7-or-8 very poorly. Nevertheless, come April 2014, millions of people will still run XP, probably with Firefox or Chrome and with any anti-virus package except MIcrosoft Security Essentials.

Former Systemax exec faces second probe by Feds

No matter the venue. Those probes always hurt.

Now Seagate posts declining results. Can new tech lift it upwards?

Not too many disk drive vendors left, are there?

All the consolidation in the biz means that there are only three drive vendors left: Seagate, WD and Toshiba. I wonder what new technology Toshiba has up its sleeve.

BOOGIE BALLMER: Steve Dirty Dances at tearful Microsoft leaving do

Microsoft is the most successful company in history at selling other people's ideas as their own.

And they sold the ideas of others as a bullying monopolist that the US govt did not want to harness. But, that was the Ballmer mentality that prevailed all these years. It has pissed off millions, including OEMs, large customers, and other business partners. So they had a good run while it's lasted. What next? Steve is intellectually incapable of answering the question, so billg and two others are tasked with the job of finding and hiring the new visionary to lead Microsoft on to bigger and better. Good luck with that. It will be an interesting business soap opera to watch.

Windows 8.1 to freeze out small business apps

WTF?

WTF WTF WTF? Small ISVs can someday grow into larger ISVs. ISVs are good for the Microsoft Windows ecosystem, because they create apps that make people want to buy Windows instead of something else like a Mac or one of the zillion Linux distros. So once again, Microsoft shoots ISVs and the richochet shoots self in foot.

Microsoft haters: You gotta lop off a lot of legs to slay Ballmer's monster

Re: The next 24 months is Microsoft's true window of vulnerability.

Buyers (or licensees) of Microsoft products and services could do some sort of cost-benefit analysis comparing the way of the Microsoft borg with alternatives. You never know.

Look out, Lenovo! HP: We're not happy with being a 'number two'

Talking through his backside

"We have a multi OS, multi architecture and multi form factor computing strategy that we believe will delight customers and rebuild share. We're also focused on building a profitable business that's smart about its future." Just what did the HP spokesman say here? What does it mean? I cannot grok it.

I still say that if Meg wants to pay me a healthy daily rate plus expenses, I can help fix their personal computer product lines, laptop and desktop both. But, then too, somebody there has to listen, instead of bouncing around in the HP star chamber, nearly as isolated from reality as the US Congress... Ben Myers

Microsoft: Still using Office installed on a PC? Gosh, you squares

Libre Office anyone?

Anyone tried LibreOffice lately? Seems to have more developer resources than the Oracle-owned OpenOffice, from which it forked. Works nicely. High degree of compatibility with Office. Not perfect, but really, really good.

Microsoft seems to be playing the same game in the clouds as it did for years down here on the ground. Integrate Office 365 with other offerings like SkyDrive, to give users a nice comfortable cocoon from which the animals inside will grab your dollars.

And, oh, yeah, the NSA, MI7 and all other spook outfits will have a much easier time to look over your shoulder. The Microsoft borg remains an apt metaphor.

... Ben Myers

Microsoft to ship Windows 8.1 in 'late August'

Re: Windows Orange: Will it be 8.2, 8.11 or 9

No doubt the 11th finger will be part of kenetic gesture control.

Microsoft messed up with a long release cycle

Either with gross misjudgement as to what customers wanted (Bob, Vista, Windows 8) or with buggy software (Windows 95) or both (Windows ME), Microsoft sure messed up a lot using long release cycles and a lot of time between releases of major OS products. Windows XP was a bit of a mess, too, until SP1 fixed it up.

So Stevie Ballmer cracks the whip and all his vassals say "Yessir, we will do a short release cycle." The man has an awfully large set of balls.

Microsoft partners seriously underwhelmed by Windows 8.1

Re: Windows 8? More like Windows Nein

Yep. I bought four Lenovo i7 T430s for a client recently, then tricked them out with big SSDs and more memory. All came with Windows 7 pre-installed and a set of Windows 8 recovery DVDs, now on my shelf as a souvenir. I'm sure Micro$oft counted these as four Windows 8 sales.

I'll bet that the US National Security Agency can tell us how many Windows 8 computers are actually being used.

Well, there's always ClassicShell if you somehow unwittingly get stuck with a Windows 8 computer... Ben Myers

Re: But MS has never been about empowering the consumer with choice

And just when was that time in the far distant past when Microsoft gave users and developers a great deal of choice. Damned if I can remember when, and I was a participant in the original Windows 1.03 developer's conference. That goes way back, nearly 3 decades. Back then, and in various business dealings with Microsoft since, the expressed attitude is my (Microsoft's) way or the highway. Never room for negotiation. Take it or leave it. I'm sure I'm not alone, either, so there is a huge amount of pent-up ill will against Microsoft. Windows 8 (or 8.1) is the best reason ever for all of us to unleash that ill will.

Windows 7 is OK, though. So is XP.

Windows 8 hype has hurt PC makers and distributors - Gartner

Re: Didnt we have pretty much this same article.....

How do you think Gartner gets some press for itself as a "premier" computer research group?

Lenovo Thumbs Up #2

Lenovo has made it easy to get a Windows 7 system? Ya think there is any correlation between ease of buying Win 7 and sales revenue? Had a pricey but like-a-jewel Thinkpad T430 delivered the other day. Win 7 was pre-installed, and there were Windows 8 DVDs included in the carton. These went on the shelf.

Dell is now getting the Windows 7 message, too. A Dell catalog came in the mail the other day, one for businesses like mine. Yep, Win 7 systems there, too!

Ballmer, ya screwed up, big time. It happened on your watch... Ben Myers

KEEP CALM and Carry On: PRISM itself is not a big deal

Skype, Microsoft, US Govt - An interesting marriage perhaps?

Will conspiracy theorists speculate that the Bush administration put pressure on Microsoft to buy Skype, so that Skype traffic could be monitored? Previous to its acquisition by Microsoft, Skype was operated from outside the US, hence away from the influence of the US Govt? Next step is to also wonder what the govt traded to Microsoft to get the Skype deal to happen.

Symantec retires low-end security software

Don't need no PCTools

Give me CCleaner, even the free version, for a handy all-round utility to clean the useless stuff out of a computer. CCleaner removes junk files and obsolete registry entries, and allows you to selectively remove restore points that can clog up a hard drive. Last of all, it does the same sort of program removal that Windows built-in Add/Remove Programs does. And Symantec expects people to pay, even on a subscription basis, for something no better?

Acorn founder: SIXTH WAVE of tech will wash away Apple, Intel

Wavy Dr Hauser

And just what is Dr Hauser doing to prepare to ride the 6th wave?

Microsoft: All RIGHT, you can have your Start button back

Re: So obvious...

Maybe Microsoft should have recommended using another digit on the touch screen, having the band Finger 11 write a special Windows 8 song. And to get the nomenclature to harmonize with marketing theme, call it Windows 11.

Classic Shell

Well, kind of sort of a mea culpa from Microsoft on Windows 8. Maybe they'll stop the blame game, fingering OEMs for not designing hardware that is right for Windows 8. Damned if I know how to design that hardware.

Anyone who can't wait for 8.1 or Blue or whatever it will be called, if and when it is released, go get your start button back,

http://www.classicshell.net/

Ben Myers

Happy dealers, solid managers. So what's wrong at HP?

Yet another symptom of HP Dysfunction - Pavilion v Presario

Hp bought Compaq way back in 2001, yet 12 years later it is still peddling Compaq-branded product. You mean that the Compaq brand still has that magic cachet?

This week I tore down two pairs of HP consumer laptops, a Presario V2000 and a Pavilion dv2000, followed by a Presario 6000 and a Pavilion dv6000. Guess what? They are almost identical, with differing cosmetic appearance. Oh, yeah. And some fools designed the Presario and Pavilion pairs with different hinges, hence a different plastic chassis. What does this mean? It jacks up the cost of producing the two models, because Foxconn has to retool the production line and molding machines between production runs of near-identical models.

You want to improve margins on the junky HP consumer laptops? Kill off one brand name or the other, either Presario or Pavilion. Same with the consumer desktops, although they use all the same plastic, metal and electronics, just a different BIOS showing HP or Compaq, and different markings on the plastic.

Ben Myers [e-mail]

Tech support blog removes Toshiba manuals after legal letter

Toshiba just does not get it. Arrogant!

Here is yet another reason not to ever use Toshiba kit ever again. I refurbish a lot of laptops, and the Toshiba brand has long been last on my list of recommendations to buyers. Even with the service manuals, Toshiba laptops have a downright kinky design and they are extremely difficult to service. It's almost as though they are designed that way so people will simply throw them away and buy another when they break.

I have long been critical of Toshiba as the only hard drive manufacturer that does not provide its own hard drive diagnostics to be used to test and field-recertify hard drives. Toshiba hard drives seem to have a worse than average failure rate. Coincidence? Maybe.

Toshiba continues to insult and disrespect customers and independent service providers. Seems like the company does not have any marketing or public relations people to temper its corporate arrogance... Ben Myers

Microsoft offers cut-price Win 8 PCs and fondletops to UK schools

Can we remove Microsoft Office and IE9 from these systems and install OpenOffice and Firefox?

'It's not a post-PC world: Just a post Windows one, maybe'

If it's post-Windows, Microsoft has only itself to blame!

I have been a reseller of Micrsoft products for many years, of necessity, but not because I make any money selling their stuff. Microsoft has not exactly made friends its of distributors, smaller system builders, and resellers. My price from my distributor for any Microsoft product is a percent or two less than the retail selling price. In turn, my distributor pays Micrsoft a couple of percent less than he sells it for. Talk about a dis-incentive! Microsoft products are must-sells at near zero margins.

I can make very nice margins on the hardware, but when it comes to the software I have no room real to mark it up. Why should my customer pay me $400 for a copy of Office Professional, for example, when he can buy it for $350 in the big box store and install it in minutes? So I "sell" Open Office when I can and I can also sell refurbished computers with the official Windows stickers already on them. If I could convince people to run one of the ten thousand Linux distros, I would. But the Linux crowd shoots itself in the foot with too many distros that look way different than one another, several different UIs on top of naked command Linux, and childish names for programs like Konqueror, KAddressBook, and Kontact, which everyone thinks is oh, so cute!

Yang, bam, thank you ma'am: Lenovo supremo wallops rival biz

Lenovo has damned good products, too.

Lenovo has damned good products, too. Maybe there's a relationship between good products and increased sales?

I continue to be impressed by Lenovo product quality, its easy to maintain products, AGGRESSIVE pricing, and a continually improving web site. I still like Dell products just as much, but consider this. My recently replaced 5- or 6-year old Thinkpad X60 has a 5+-hour life on battery. My newer, but not the newest X200, runs for 8 hours with its SSD.

HPaq and Acer-eGateMachines both have a long way to go to match Lenovo and Dell. Sony, Toshiba and Fujitsu also ran... Ben Myers

Quantum just can't seal the deals, slides deeper into red

Is Quantum still in the league?

After Leo Durocher, manager of the NY Giants baseball team many years ago: "Is Brooklyn still in the league?" I had no idea Quantum was still in business.

Goldman Sachs slapped over iPad price-cut call

Stock manipulation?

Could this simply be a ballsy attempt by Goldman Sachs to manipulate the price of Apple stock?

Rambus tumbles in antitrust reversal

Printed on???

Maybe printed on the shirt cardboards one gets with shirts laundered and folded.

I am so weepy over the Rambus loss.