Sun signals closer technology ties with AMD

Sun has announced its quarterly product lineup, with new chips, support for AMD's 64bit Opteron and new servers. Sun is taking a broad approach, focussing on using its own technologies and those of its partners to create comparable products to its competitors, but paring down the price and offering better performance. It is attacking the low-end server market - the new Sun Fire V20z takes advantage of the new alliance with AMD. ...more

iPods don't mean iTunes sells - analyst

Despite being brandished as the benchmark of success for digital music, all is not rosy in the iTunes/iPod garden, according to Jupiter Research Despite being brandished as the benchmark of success for digital music, all is not rosy in the iTunes/iPod garden, according to one researcher. Jupiter Research analyst Mark Mulligan claims in his latest report: 'Understanding iPod Owners' Music-Buying Habits' that barely one twentieth of songs on a typical iPod will have been bought from the iTunes store. The vast majority will not of themselves have generated the music industry any extra revenue: being either ripped from the owner's existing CD collection or downloaded from file-sharing sites. ...more

Palm changes direction due to lacklustre performance

So that's why Palm machines have been coming down in price: Palm has halved its revenue forecast, doubled the size of its expected loss and promised a completely new way of doing business. The handheld manufacturer didn't go into great detail about this change in direction but Carl Yankowski, chief executive of Palm, said it would be a "dramatic change in our business model". Plus Palm has been engaged in a price war with arch-rival Handspring for the past couple of months, with the Handspring Visor Deluxe falling to ?169 and the Palm M100 selling for ?110. ...more

Dell leads with Lexmark

Dell Computer to enter the printer market with a Lexmark alliance. Dell Computer has ended months of speculation with the announcement that it is to launch its own range of 'imaging products' in the new year. Rumours began when Dell dropped Hewlett-Packard as a partner and the only real question is not 'whether?' or even 'when?' but 'with who?' Over the past few months, Dell has been engaged in a beauty contest with all the leading printer manufacturers before settling on Lexmark. ...more

Apple updates U2 iPod

Apple has updated the U2 iPod and reduced the price, in line with its recent overhaul of its range of portable music and video players. The black-and-red iPod still has a 30GB hard drive but now sports the brighter 320 x 240-pixel QVGA colour display. The price has also been cut, though at ?209 it is still ?20 more expensive than the standard black or white 30GB iPod. ...more