• Intel paid $884m in cash for Wind River Systems, a software company that should help the chipmaker’s push into new markets. Wind River, based in the San Francisco Bay area, represents Intel’s biggest acquisition in the four-year tenure of Paul Otellini as chief executive.
• Data Domain said it would evaluate EMC’s all cash $30 a share offer, a day after saying it had agreed to an offer of $30 in cash and stock from NetApp. The unusual reversal signaled potential discord within Data Domain’s management. EMC has significantly more free cash than NetApp, and is well-positioned to win the bidding war. Continue reading "techfile 5.06.09"

So a new console race is in motion. Literally.

The theme of this week’s E3 video game show in Los Angeles has become motion-sensing controllers, with Microsoft and then Nintendo and Sony all demonstrating new products.

Microsoft unveiled Project Natal - a camera, sensor and microphone array. Nintendo demonstrated the  MotionPlus - a more sensitive controller for the Wii. Sony showed off something that combined its Eye camera with a wand-like device. Continue reading "Console makers tempt 150m with movement"

• Acer said it would start producing the world’s first mainstream notebook computer using Google’s Android operating system before the end of September. The move opens a new front in Google’s battle with Microsoft by offering an alternative to the Windows operating system on small, low-priced PCs.
• Sony has unveiled a new motion-sensing technology for its PlayStation 3 following a trend set by Nintendo’s Wii. The announcement at the E3 video-game trade show came a day after Microsoft demonstrated its Project Natal motion-sensing device for the Xbox 360. Continue reading "techfile 3.06.09"

The fun and games could not wait for E3 to start this year, with Sony blundering at the weekend with a leak of its big announcement, while a hot new game emerged through Twitter that will not even figure at the  big LA trade show.

Sony gave the game away on its new PSP Go handheld console when someone made the mistake of releasing a video and interview ahead of time on the PlayStation 3’s magazine programme - Qore. Continue reading "Spymasters and leaks ahead of E3"

Apple’s MacBook Air, Sony’s Vaio P Series and now Dell’s Adamo belong to an elite category of portable personal computers whose appeal owes as much to design aesthetics as it does to technology, writes Paul Taylor:

Sony and Apple have a reputation for such products. But Dell – outside of its Alienware unit, which builds high-performance PCs for games players – is best known for producing solid mainstream desktops and businesslike laptops targeting corporate buyers and penny-pinched students.

Adamo breaks that mould and represents a radical departure for Dell in terms of both styling and market positioning. It is clearly designed to compete head-on with those ultra-thin executive laptops.

Continue reading “Dell takes on laptop elite”

• A seven-year battle between the US Federal Trade Commission and Rambus, the memory-chip specialist, has ended in defeat for the FTC. The regulator had  ruled that Rambus plotted to get secretly patented technology it developed included in industry standards, but an appeal court had thrown out its ruling and, on Thursday, the FTC dropped the rest of its case.
• Nintendo was the big winner in April in the US video game market. According to the NPD research firm’s monthly figures, it sold 1.08m units of its dual-screen handheld console following the introduction of the new DSi model on April 5. That was nearly double unit sales of 563,000 in March. Continue reading "techfile 15.05.09"

The FT’s Lex column suggests that for Sony, cost cutting alone may not be enough to get the company in the black. Despite the company’s rosy projections, sales of PS3 consoles are likely to remain challenged. And while movies should perform better this year than last, the film unit represents only 10 per cent of revenues.

The Japanese consumer electronics and entertainment group thinks it may break even at the operating level this year. That is a brave call as the company was losing $1bn a month in the last quarter of the year ending in March.

Continue reading “Sony”

A new e-reader entrant is pitching itself as cheaper, lighter and more open than Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader, and with a larger selection of titles.

The Cool-er is the brainchild of Neil Jones, an avid reader and entrepreneur, whose company is based, appropriately, in Reading, in the UK. Continue reading "Cool-er e-reader takes on the Kindle"