intel

We were recently lamenting the vaporware status of many of the small, low-cost laptops tech types have been buzzing about this year. Apparently, this whole blogging this really works, 'cause less than a month later, two of our MIA systems are sitting right here in the CNET Lab.

First up is the Asus Eee PC. The company's 2-pound, 7-inch, Linux-based laptop built up a lot of buzz for promising a reasonably functional machine for about $200. In reality, it ended up costing $399 (for the middle-of-three model we got), but it's still a creative take on the ultraportable … Read more

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project is not having an easy time of its efforts to bring low-cost computing to the masses. Costs are up and it is struggling to get the scale necessary to lower costs and improve its momentum. OLPC is therefore offering a new program to bring in dollars and pump out laptops (and remove shortages).

Like the Give 1 Get 1 initiative, the Foundation's new philanthropic initiative appears to be aimed at building scale for the program. Originally envisioned to cost $100 each, the OLPC's manufacturing costs have since climbed to $188, and the project is having a hard time getting countries to commit to buying the laptops.

The OLPC Project is also looking at more competition than was envisioned when the project first got off the ground. Last week, Asus officially launched its 7", Linux-running Eee laptop at a $299 price point, and Intel's Classmate PC project offers another alternative to the OLPC XO.… Read more

Sun keeps moving toward commodity software and hardware, today announcing its first Intel workstation since the 1980s when Duran Duran were hip and pegged pants were de rigueur.

Sun announced today it will release its first Intel-based workstation since the late 1980s**.

The new Sun Ultra 24 Workstation is a single socket machine based on Intel's Garlow platform and, according to Sun, made for users that do some hard core technical design work....… Read more

Advanced Micro Devices is not delaying 45-nanometer manufacturing, according to the company, which is trying to correct an erroneous report on a blog.

"We are still on track to produce the first (45-nanometer) products by mid-2008," said Gary Silcott, an AMD spokesman. The company will have "pretty good volumes" of 45-nanometer chips by the end of 2008, he added.

The statement comes after a blog post on the Fabtech site. On its quarterly conference call, Eric Meurice, CEO of semiconductor equipment maker ASML, said that the initial wave of orders for immersion lithography tools, which many … Read more

One tidbit mentioned during Intel's blowout third quarter was the promotion of long-time Chief Financial Officer Andy Bryant to something called "chief administrative officer."

Bryant has been the CFO at Intel for 13 years and will step up to his new title effective immediately, so that Stacy Smith can become CFO in a move planned for some time, said Tom Beermann, an Intel spokesman. The move frees Bryant up from the day-to-day responsibilities of running Intel's finances, which is actually a quite-complicated exercise of making sure Intel's factories are running at optimum capacity in order … Read more

Update: I added a bit more detail, news of the CFO switcheroo, and a self-congratulatory but illuminating quotation from Intel's CEO.

Intel on Tuesday stomped all over estimates of its quarterly financial performance--not only Wall Street's but its own.

Three months ago, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker in September predicted revenue of $9 billion to $9.6 billion for the third quarter of 2007. Then, in September, it raised it to a range of $9.4 billion to $9.8 billion.

The real number: $10.1 billion, a 15 percent increase from the year-earlier quarter. And net … Read more

It's the proverbial win-win situation.

Earlier this week, Intel said it wanted more time to respond to the European Commission's allegations that it abused its market dominant position and sent an extension request to the Commission's antitrust regulators. It turns out, the Commission needs more time too.

A hearing officer for the Commission was due to make a decision on Intel's extension request Thursday, but instead found he too needs more time and will now make a decision by October 19, said Jonathan Todd, a Commission spokesman.

As a result, Intel has been granted a provisional … Read more

From time to time, I'll post a brief summary of some interesting items I come across during the day that I don't have time to call out in more detail. If you see anything interesting out there, drop me a line at tom dot krazit at cnet dot com. Take that, you e-mail harvesters.

LEGAL DEPARTMENT: There's some news about a couple of items that will soon await new Apple General Counsel Daniel Cooperman. Information Week notes that the company has been sued over the iPhone--again--this time by a man claiming that Apple is breaking … Read more

Enterprise Strategy Group's resident expert on all things server virtualization, Mark Bowker, tells me that there were 15,000 people at VMworld a few weeks ago. Not a surprise, the industry is gaga over server virtualization as more users look to turn physical servers into consolidated virtual partitions.

The irony here is that while the server virtualization chatter focuses on VMware, Xen, Citrix, and Microsoft, the venerable IBM zSeries (i.e. mainframe) will likely be one of the biggest beneficiaries of this virtualization frenzy.

The reason for this is fairly simple. Server virtualization is all about rationalizing IT assets … Read more