Scott Ferguson

There are more tough decisions ahead for Michael Dell and his company. After reporting disappointing fiscal fourth-quarter results Feb. 28, the PC vendor is likely to face a number of challenges as he tries to bring the company back to the profitability that so many on Wall Street have come to expect. During its fiscal […]

IBM researchers are preparing to demonstrate their latest efforts to use light pulses instead of electrical signals to transmit data at greater speeds, which could make it easier to download video or crunch data. Researchers for the Armonk, N.Y., company will present two papers on Feb. 28 at the 2008 Optical Fiber Communications Conference in […]

Dell has trimmed 3,200 employees from its payroll in the last eight months as part of its effort to return to profitability by streamlining its operations and cutting costs. The company announced the job cuts when it disclosed its 2008 fiscal fourth-quarter results Feb. 28. In May, Dell announced that it would eventually trim about […]

Intel is expanding its embedded chip portfolio to include a number of Xeon processors manufactured at 45 nanometers. Intel will add five dual- and quad-core Xeon processors to the company’s embedded portfolio and will expand its life cycle support for its embedded products from five to seven years, the Santa Clara, Calif., chip maker announced […]

Hewlett-Packard continued to gain ground on IBM in 2007 when it comes to server revenue, although Big Blue still managed to dominate all other system vendors, according to an analyst report. In a report released Feb. 27, IDC analysts found that for 2007, worldwide server revenue topped $54 billion for the year, an increase of […]

The European Commission approved Acer’s acquisition of Packard Bell, which now opens a new and substantial market for the up-and-coming Taiwanese company. In a statement released Feb. 27, the European Commission-the antitrust enforcement arm of the European Union-announced it would not block the acquisition. When Acer bought Gateway in 2007, the company gained the right […]

Lenovo is rethinking the ThinkPad. After much talk and favorable review in the Wall Street Journal, Lenovo announced Feb. 26 that the company is ready to sell the ultrathin ThinkPad X300 laptop, which weighs less than 3 pounds but comes with a hefty $2,800 price tag. While the new ThinkPad X300 has already drawn comparisons […]

A couple of IT heavyweights are offering new options for server virtualization. At VMware’s European showcase, which kicked off in France Feb. 25, Hewlett-Packard and Dell will each announce that they will each begin embedding VMware’s ESX Server 3i product into their server portfolios. On Feb. 26, HP announced that it will embed VMware’s ESX […]

NEW YORK-The latest installment of IBM’s “Big Iron” product has landed with a splash and the company is trying to turn that into a wave of new mainframe customers. At events in the United States and elsewhere Feb. 26, IBM unveiled its System z10, the latest installment in its mainframe line. This $1 million machine […]

A code name for a product in development says a lot about a vendor’s intentions. In the case of the ThinkPad X300, which went on sale Feb. 26, Lenovo used the code name “Kodachi” for the new laptop. The word describes a sleek, thin Japanese sword that falls between a full-length blade and a dagger. […]