Joel Hruska
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
After nearly a year of meteoric growth and exploding unit sales, the netbook market—or at least netbook OEMs—may finally be pausing to catch its breath. With Intel delaying the launch of its next-generation Atom platform (codenamed Pinetrail) until 2010, neither Asus nor Acer are planning new product introductions for the second half of the...
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Fusion-io announced TPC-H benchmark results today in a bid to raise its own visibility and promote solid-state storage as an alternative solution in the enterprise market. The company's PCI-Express-based products turned in a score of 28,772 Queries per Hour on a 100GB database, for a price/performance metric of $1.47...
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Jon Peddie Research released its quarterly report on the state of the GPU market today and optimistically forecasts a strong third quarter. The second quarter bucked seasonal trends; sales were up a massive 31.29 percent. That's in contrast to what we typically see in Q2; over the past eight years sales have usually...
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Dell has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by female employees for $9.1 million. The original case focused on a group of women who were employed at Dell in C1 through D3-level positions. Under the terms of the settlement, Dell will pay $5.6 million to the women in question and will use the other $3.5 million to raise the salaries of currently...
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Several financial analysts have weighed in on AMD's Q2 performance since the company announced results, and their collective opinion has been anything but good. In the wake of its earnings call, AMD has been taken to task over its failure to provide an answer to Atom (or a netbook processor in general), weak margins...
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Amazon made news last week when it began deleting e-books—specifically 1984 and Animal Farm off the Kindle's of buyers who had previously purchased the titles. A few days later, the reason behind the deletions became clear. The books had been published erroneously and should never have been made for sale. The incident impacted only a small...
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Starting this weekend, Wal-Mart plans to change where you'll shop for your next computer, while possibly providing a needed salesboost to OEMs whose profits have fallen due to weaker sales. For most companies, such statements would smack of hubris, but Wal-Mart's size and recession-resistant business model lend credence to the idea that...
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AMD-derived GlobalFoundries broke ground today on what will become the company's leading-edge manufacturing facility and (according to it, at least) the largest and most technically-advanced fab in the United States. The $4.2 billion facility should start production within two years, and is expected to begin volume production in 2012. Currently,...
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Last week, we covered the European Commission's (EC) decision that Intel had abused its market power. One of the findings that lead to the $1.44 billion fine was Intel's rebate system, which only awarded discounted prices to companies that committed to buying the overwhelming majority of their products from the CPU manufacturer. Intel,...
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Alright, it's more of a kiosk and less of a storefront, but Alienware is invading a Micro Center located in Paterson, New Jersey. In honor of the event, the Dell-owned company is hosting a LAN party, giving away a fair amount of free swag, and showcasing their various systems on Saturday, July 25. There's no word on whether or not its a BYOB...
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If recent technology news is any indication, Samsung has taken the concept of spending innovating one's way out of a recession and is running with the ball for all it's worth. We discussed the company's plans to move ahead with 450mm wafer production a few days ago; news today indicates the electronics manufacturer will invest $790 million...
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Data analysis firm IDC has released sales and shipment figures for the PC industry in Q2 2009. It's a glass half-full/half-empty sort of report; the PC industry shrank 3.1 percent in Q2 2009 compared to Q2 2008, but that 3.1 percent dip was just half of the 6.3 percent contraction IDC initially predicted. IDC attributes the difference to "a...
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AMD announced its Q2 2009 results (PDF) today with figures that dashed any hope that the company might have found a rabbit hiding in its hat. AMD reported a loss of 49 cents a share ($330 million), after including some $86 million in revenue the company made selling inventory it wrote off back in the fourth quarter of 2008. Sales were down...
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HP announced today that it has purchased data storage company IBrix in a bid to expand its cloud computing capabilities. The two companies have been partners for several years, and HP believes the acquisition "further solidifies the company’s leadership in the emerging market of scale-out and high-performance computing storage, cloud storage,...
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It was just over a year ago that ATI debuted its HD 4000 series of video cards, but it's rumored that the company will miss its stated one-year refresh cycle by several additional months. The problem, in this case, has nothing to do with the GPU's design, but is the result of continued 40nm yield problems at TSMC. The Taiwanese fabrication...
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The eventual creation of botnet(s) based on mobile devices rather than PCs has been theorized about for years, but no such malware has ever appeared in the real world—at least, not until now. Security researchers believe they may have found the first true mobile worm, dubbed "Sexy View" or "Sexy Space" depending on which version of the program...
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The economy as a whole may not be ready to turn the corner just yet, but new data from the Digital Entertainment Group (DEG) will have proponents and manufacturers of Blu-ray devices dancing a jig. According to the group, Blu-ray disc sales are up a whopping 91 percent compared to the first half of 2008. Total for the year is said to be around...
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Intel has announced the completion of its bid to buy Wind River Systems just five weeks after making the deal public. Wind River is known for its embedded software products, and is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the CPU manufacturer. When it announced the deal back in early June, Intel emphasized that the deal would "become part of Intel's...
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Back in May, Intel partnered with TSMC and Samsung to announce their intention of developing and deploying 450mm wafer starts by 2012. The shift from 300mm (12" diameter wafers) to 450mm was touted as necessary for all the usual reasons—think cheaper, faster chips—and we've not heard much in the way of pushback until now. At the Semicon West...
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Once touted as the manufacturer who put Linux-powered PCs on the shelves at Wal-Mart, troubled Everex has closed its US operations and headed for home. While it operated in the US, Everex was noted both for its ultra-low-cost systems and the fact that its computers used Linux rather than Windows. Everex also teamed up with web OS/applications...
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Ever since Intel debuted its high-end X58/Core i7 platform last November, there's been a virtual sea of users pressed against the candy shop windows. DDR3 prices have come down dramatically since Nehalem's launch, but with X58 motherboards still hovering around $175 and the Core i7 920 at $279, Intel's latest-and-greatest still commands a...
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Intel has announced its fiscal results for the second quarter of 2009, including the impact the European Union's record-breaking $1.44 billion fine against the company. Intel puts a brave face on its report, but the global economic recession clearly took its toll on Intel's sales volume over the past 12 months. The company reports that it...
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