Intel

This week Apple updated its MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops to include Intel's newest Penryn processors, with the Pro models also getting the multitouch track pad introduced on the MacBook Air earlier this year. Initially it looked like Apple had also updated the laptops' battery life expectations with lower numbers, despite the promise of power savings with Penryn. But as Dan Ackerman quickly pointed out, the apparent drop (from 5 hours to 4.5 hours on the 17-inch MacBook Pro) was the result of a change in how Apple reports battery life and not the battery life itself. Phew. … Read more

When a high-ranking executive at your strongest partner openly thinks your technology "barely works," perhaps it's time to make that a higher priority.

A series of internal Microsoft e-mails discussing Intel's 915 and 945 integrated graphics chipsets in unfavorable terms made its salacious way around the Internet this week. Microsoft is currently being sued over its Windows Vista upgrade programs, which were designed with pressure from Intel, but over the objections of the PC industry, to include support for a graphics chipset that couldn't run Vista's Aero interface.

In February 2007, just after Vista … Read more

Time was when Microsoft inspired dread in the tech industry. With a few exceptions, most rivals and partners did their best not to get on Bill Gates' bad side.

So why did Microsoft agree to a two-tiered Vista upgrade program that its managers knew was a mistake? The trove of e-mails released in connection with a pending class action lawsuit paint a Microsoft strangely unwilling to stand up to pushy Wintel partner Intel.

Check out these juicy passages highlighted by Todd Bishop at The Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

"We are caving to Intel," wrote Microsoft's Mike Ybarra in a … Read more

We updated this blog at 6:25 p.m. PST after Microsoft released a statement.

As far back as 2005, Microsoft executives knew that confusing hardware requirements for the Windows Vista Capable program might get them in trouble. But they did it anyway--over the objection of PC makers--at the behest of Intel, according to e-mails released as part of a class-action lawsuit pending against Microsoft.

In early 2006, Intel's Renee James, vice president and general manager of Intel's software and solutions group, was able to prevail on Microsoft's Will Poole to change the proposed requirements for Microsoft'… Read more

There are lots of things I don't understand. They make me crazy. But don't worry, it isn't contagious.

What I don't understand How was Lou Gerstner able to reposition a zillion-year-old company like IBM from big iron to services, while Jerry Yang doesn't even know where to begin reinventing Yahoo!?

Why does my wife clean the house before the cleaning people come?

When you tell telemarketers you're not interested, why do they keep talking until you hang up on them?

Why do criminals go to all the trouble of robbing a bank or smuggling drugs and then get caught with the goods doing something stupid like speeding?

Last week my dog pissed on the couch; the same day the cat threw up in my slippers. Why do bad things happen in groups? Is there some unknown force of attraction between disastrous events? Where are the physicists on this?… Read more

Intel's upcoming low-cost Diamondville notebook processor will break from Intel's multicore strategy of the last few years and be primarily a single-core processor.

In this respect Diamondville is not that different from Celeron, a long-standing design (introduced in 1998) that has been exclusively single-core until very recently. The reason for the single-core strategy is simple: With Diamondville, Intel has a "fanatical focus" on low power and low cost, according to Dean McCarron, founder and principal of Mercury Research. A single core means fewer transistors and lower power consumption.

Diamondville is not Celeron, however. "It's … Read more

After months of deriding rival Advanced Micro Devices' strategy of cramming four cores onto one chip, Intel is set to take that concept a step further.

A leaked presentation authored by Sun has shed some light on Intel's plans for its Dunnington processor, which appears to be a six-core server chip where all six cores are part of a single chip. Intel had previously hinted that Dunnington would have four cores or more, but it hadn't been clear whether the company would reuse its multichip module strategy of cramming several distinct chips into a single package.

Sources familiar … Read more

Why can't we all just get along? Because it doesn't work that way. There are lots of reasons why folks don't get along. There are cultural differences, gender differences, style differences, all kinds of differences. And that's just the beginning.

According to a number of studies, at least 10 percent of the U.S. population has some sort of personality disorder. That includes depression, bipolar disorder, and borderline personality disorder, to name a few. That can't help.

In the workplace, it gets even worse. There are bullies, jerks who want to stab you in the back, and folks you just plain don't like. My personal favorite are people who are passive aggressive--they openly agree to something and then do the opposite.… Read more

Talk--or speculation in this case--is cheap, but it's a starting point. Only Apple knows what form the next MacBook Air will take but big hints are out there already.

Intel's upcoming 45-nanometer Montevina mobile processors are strong candidates for the first refresh of the Air. Currently, the Air uses special 1.6- and 1.8-GHz "Merom" (65-nanometer) processors that use extra-small 22mm sq. packaging (see accompanying graphic) to yield a Thermal Design Power (TDP or thermal envelope) of 20 watts.

This class of small form factor (SFF) processors will also be part of the "Penryn&… Read more