Online media company CNET Networks Inc said on Wednesday it will eliminate 120 jobs, or about 10 percent of its staff, in a restructuring to help it focus on long-term growth amid complaints from some investors.
CNET expected pre-tax restructuring charges from the job cuts to run between $3.5 million and $4 million, most of which will be taken in the first quarter of 2008. The job cuts are effective immediately. The moves come after hedge fund Jana Partners LLC won a key court ruling earlier this month that could help it take control of CNET's board.
Advanced Micro Devices Inc on Wednesday unveiled new microprocessors for the desktop personal computer market, in a move that could sharpen its competitive edge against rival Intel Corp.
Among the chips in AMD's Phenom family of processors is one that has three cores, or electronics brains, compared with the two or four most generally available. AMD said that its Phenom X3 has as much as a 30 percent performance improvement in some instances compared to a dual-core chip operating at the same frequency. AMD first disclosed plans to make the Phenom X3 in 2007, saying then that it was able to build a three-core chip because the brains are on the same piece of silicon, rather than two or four cores on different pieces of silicon joined together.
The maker of the popular photo-editing software Photoshop on Thursday launched a basic version available for free online.
San Jose, Calif.-based Adobe Systems Inc. says it hopes to boost its name recognition among a new generation of consumers who edit, store and share photos online.
While Photoshop is designed for trained professionals, Adobe says Photoshop Express, which it launched in a “beta” test version, is easier to learn. User comments will be taken into account for future upgrades. Photoshop Express will be completely Web-based so consumers can use it with any type of computer, operating system and browser. And, once they register, users can get to their accounts from different computers.
Asustek to roll out second-generation Eee PC with touchscreen panels and possibly GPS support in May or June. Asustek's 8.9-inch second-generation Eee PC lineup will include touchscreen panels and possible GPS support, with shipments expected to begin in May or June, according to Kevin Lin, vice president of Asustek's sales department. Pricing is projected to reach NT$15,000 (US$500), Lin added.
The company is also looking to ship its E-DT (desktop PC) priced at US$199 at the same time, according to Lin.
The company aims to ship up to five million Eee PCs in 2008 through retail channels and contract orders combined, with quarterly retail-only shipments expected to total 650,000-700,000 units, according to the company. The device is seeing a 50% supply shortage in the Taiwan and Hong Kong regions and 70% worldwide in the first quarter of 2008.
Microsoft has sought to appease frustrated Windows Vista customers by giving away free support to anyone struggling to install service pack one (SP1).
A huge swath of people has been frozen out of the upgrade until an unknown date in April, but some were able to manually download SP1 as of last week via the firms Windows Update website.
However, a heap of complaints have been stacking up on the firms official Vista blog, over troubles with the service pack install.
So, in an apparent attempt to ease some of the grumbles, Microsoft blogger Brandon Le Blanc says that anyone, including customers with original equipment manufacturer (OEM) copies of Vista, will be eligible for free SP1 installation support.
Citigroup said it is likely Microsoft Corp will raise its $31-per-share offer for Yahoo Inc and upgraded Yahoo shares to “buy” from “hold.”
The brokerage raised its price target on Yahoo's stock to $34 from $31, saying it believed Microsoft remained committed to its offer and “is capable of and willing to” increase that bid to conclude the deal.
“While we continue to see no other competing bidders, we believe Yahoo is aggressively pursuing strategic alternatives,” analyst Mark Mahaney said in a note to clients.
Intel released a few incremental details about its future graphics chip on Monday, but left a lot of unanswered questions about the company's push into uncharted waters.
Larrabee, a “many-core” graphics processor scheduled for 2009 or 2010, will come with a brand-new set of vector-processing instructions as part of its design, said Pat Gelsinger, senior vice president and co-general manager of Intel's digital enterprise group. Vector-processing instructions are used to improve the performance of graphics and video applications; you may have heard of previous vector-processing implementations such as SSE4.
These new instructions, combined with Larrabee's compatibility with the x86 instruction set, will make life easier for software developers, according to Gelsinger. In addition to regular graphics tasks currently dominated by Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, Intel wants Larrabee to be able to take on a wider variety of tasks
