Andy Patrizio

If ever there was a good technology barometer for consumer sentiment, Apple would have to be it. After all, if the country were truly on bad economic ground, would people buy $300 MP3 players, $400 phones and $2,000 laptops? Well, they are, and in record numbers. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) reported on Wednesday net profit for […]

Source: Reuters On Wednesday Apple Computer did something it almost never does: make an acquisition. The strategy behind it, though, is baffling. Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) spent $278 million for PA Semiconductor, a developer of processors based on IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) PowerPC line, according to a report in Forbes.com. Meanwhile, Apple confirmed the purchase and price […]

Microsoft has issued a rare security alert, something it usually doesn’t do because then that tells the bad guys where to go look for an exploit. That usually means it’s pretty severe. The problem relates to a vulnerability that could give an unauthorized user access to LocalSystem, a user account not normally accessible by Windows […]

Is there a light at the end of AMD’s long dark tunnel? Or is that just the headlight of an oncoming train with a big blue “I” on it? The chipmaker reported its sixth consecutive loss in a row on Thursday. The one bright spot was the loss wasn’t that bad, only $358 million, or […]

PALO ALTO, CALIF. – What if someone held a debate and only one side showed up? The likely result is what happened here Thursday on the campus of Stanford University, where a bunch of people sat around mostly agreeing with each other. To be sure, there were some differences of opinion in this debate on […]

SAN FRANCISCO — On-demand software company NetSuite on Wednesday took the wraps off its new global services suite, designed to offer consolidated business management tools for companies with multiple regional or multinational subsidiaries. NetSuite OneWorld, unveiled today at a launch event here in the city’s financial district, supports customer relationship management , accounting, Enterprise Resource […]

Sometimes, it’s all about finding the silver lining. In the case of IBM, the weakness of the U.S. dollar ended up being a strength for the company, helping the tech giant to top Wall Street’s expectations for the first quarter. IBM (NYSE: IBM) reported quarterly income from continuing operations of $2.3 billion, or $1.65 per […]

Now that AMD (NYSE: AMD) has gotten its troubles behind it and is producing its Quad Core Opteron in large volumes, tier 1 OEMs are lining up to announce hardware systems supporting the long-delayed processor line. The Quad Core Opteron, a.k.a. Barcelona, had been plagued by development delays and was several months late. Just as […]

Basic economics tells you that when there is an oversupply of something, you cut back on production. It took memory manufacturers a little while to figure that out, but at least they did figure it out. Gartner estimates that worldwide capital spending on semiconductor equipment in 2008 will be $47.5 billion, a 19.8 percent decline […]

(Update: 4/18) It’s amazing how quickly things change these days, thanks to the Internet, and more important, just how dogged some blogging sites have become. A Florida company called Psystar created a stir on the Internet with its PC white box that runs Mac OS X. It was selling the $399 mini tower under the […]

Intel CEO Paul Otellini at CES 2008. Source: Intel After causing a one-day scare on Wall Street in March with a warning that its margins would suffer from the NAND flash oversupply, Intel ended up delivering a fairly decent quarter after all. Intel (NASDAQ: INTC) even managed to pull out respectable numbers despite seasonal weakness, […]

Some times people just rattle the saber, other times they draw it. After doing the former, Seagate Technologies on Monday did the latter. It filed a patent infringement suit against STEC over its solid state drive (SSD) controllers. STEC is a tiny company; only $189 million in sales with about a dozen patents, compared to […]