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OLPC slashes workforce in half, cuts salaries

The One Laptop Per Child project announced Wednesday that it is slashing its workforce by 50 percent, reducing salaries for the remaining staff, and restructuring its operations.

Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the group that aims to provide low-cost laptops to children in developing countries, announced the cuts in a company blog post:

Like many other nonprofits that are facing tough economic times, One Laptop per Child must downsize in order to keep costs in line with fewer financial resources. Today we are reducing our team by approximately 50% and there will be salary reductions for the remaining 32 people. While … Read more

The weekly Crave vodcast: All good things must come to an end

To all the Crave viewers:

Bonnie Cha and I would like to thank you for watching and hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did putting it together. But we're not going away!

CNET wants me to focus on some of my other projects, but we will work to try to bring something back down the road. Thanks again and please let us know what you'd like to see more of!

We appreciate everyone who wrote in and all the prizes will be sent out this week.

Click the video for a look back at our … Read more

For China, the financial crisis is an opportunity

I asked my colleagues in frog design's Shanghai studio about their perspective on the current economic downturn, and here's what they wrote back:

"The US may be the initiator of this round of global economic recession but it may not be the final payer. China's economy is about to suffer as well - and in more ways than one.

And yet, the people who have been around the longest know not to pay too much attention to one-direction comments. They know that the sufferers will always shout much louder than the beneficiaries. They also know that … Read more

Photos: Cracking open the 2GoPC

Low-cost laptops are pretty much the bare bones of what a user needs in a computer, so consider this an X-ray.

CNET sister site TechRepublic runs a regular series called "Cracking Open," in which it takes a look inside a variety of gadgets. Here's an excerpt of a photo gallery that takes apart the Classmate 2GoPC.

Click on the picture above for a full teardown of the low-cost portable based on Intel's Classmate PC reference design.

Yahoo falls into $12 range, Dow enters 8,000 territory

Yahoo fell into the $12-a-share-range Thursday, marking the second consecutive day its stock tumbled to a new low.

The Internet company dipped as low as $12.47 a share during intraday trading, before ending the day at $12.65 a share--down just over 8 percent.

Each time Yahoo's stock drops into a new dollar range, analysts have noted that the border crossing serves as a psychological landmark for investors.

On Wednesday day, Yahoo crossed the $13-a-share threshold. Fear and loathing seem to have taken hold of its stock, with analysts panning the company's prospects in display advertising, given … Read more

Super Talent to release budget solid-state drives

Two weeks after announcing two new high-speed solid-state drives (SSD), Super Talent Technology on Tuesday announced it will release the MasterDrive LX as a budget solid-state drive later this week.

The MasterDrive LX comes in 64GB and 128GB versions and will cost about $179 and $300, respectively. Both drives are SATA-II and use NAND flash technology. They will be compatible with computers that support the ever-popular 2.5-inch SATA hard drive.

The low prices do come with a shortcoming: the throughput speed. The new MasterDrive LX drives are significantly slower than other SSDs; it's even slower than some regular … Read more

Are you buying ultra-low-cost notebooks yet? Well, someone is

Writing about the Tuesday introduction of new iPods by Apple, American Technology Research's Shaw Wu observed that the product debut came smack in the midst of a lousy economic cycle where "macro headwinds are becoming more apparent."

That qualifies as more than mild understatement.

The economy's wheezing, big banks are collapsing and oil prices remain sky high. So then why is PC demand expected to be strong through the end of 2008--and beyond?

That's the gist of a new report out of IDC. No matter that Lehman's on the ropes or that Uncle Sam … Read more

Study: Low-cost laptops to drive PC market growth

Turns out, the sky isn't falling on the PC industry.

That's according to an update from IDC, an analyst firm that tracks the global PC market. Despite economic sluggishness in the U.S., PC shipments have actually increased worldwide more than expected.

Worldwide PC shipments are expected to grow by 15.7 percent this year to reach 311 million units, according to a report released Wednesday by IDC. Growth will slow slightly, but remain above 9 percent through 2012. IDC says that amounts to annual PC shipments reaching more than 482 million in 2012.

This growth is to … Read more

Intel ships low-power chips for servers

Intel is shipping new server processors that consume as little as 12.5 watts per core.

Cumulatively, the racks and racks of servers in large data centers can require power rivaling that consumed by entire city blocks. So, getting power consumption as low as possible while delivering adequate performance has become a delicate balancing act for Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

New additions to the Xeon 5000 Series include the L5430 and X5270 processors, the fastest of which boasts a clock speed of 3.5GHz, Intel said.

The low-voltage L5430 uses only 50 watts of power or just 12.5 … Read more