Tom Krazit

Building on the success of a PDA (personal digital assistant) launched last year that offered mobile phone and Wi-Fi functions, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) says it plans to offer a number of new devices to its business customers throughout 2005 and 2006.

Now that Carly Fiorina is leaving the helm, the survivors at Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) must decide how to move forward with a company that analysts feel is either weighed down by low-margin businesses or missing opportunities to reach customers. One of the more contentious debates surrounding HP's acquisition of Compaq Computer Corp. in 2002 was the reluctance on the part of long-time HP executives and shareholders to increase the company's stake in a low-growth, low-margin business like PCs. PC market growth has hovered above 10 percent for the last several years, but is forecast to fall below that pace in 2005 and 2006 as consumers, HP's strongest customers, slow their purchases of new equipment, according to IDC and Gartner Inc.

Researchers from IBM Corp., Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and Toshiba Corp. unveiled the long-awaited Cell microprocessor Monday, revealing a multicore, multithreaded gaming engine described as "a supercomputer on a chip." The three companies disclosed some of the first technical details about the four-year project at the International Solid State Circuits Conference in San Francisco.

Building on the success of a PDA (personal digital assistant) launched last year that offered mobile phone and Wi-Fi functions, Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) plans to offer a number of new devices to its business customers throughout 2005 and 2006, company executives said Wednesday. The Palo Alto, California, company will demonstrate a second PDA that can be used as a mobile phone - which the company bills as a smart phone - later this month at the 3GSM World Conference in Cannes, said Ted Clark, senior vice president and general manager of HP's Mobile Computing Business Unit, during a press conference at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose, California.

U.S. holiday shoppers continue to turn to the Internet when searching for presents for family and friends, according to data released recently by VeriSign...

The teenage creator of a variant of the Blaster worm that infected tens of thousands of computers in 2003 was sentenced to 18 months in prison on Friday, prosecutors said. Jeffrey Lee Parson, 19, will spend 18 months in prison followed by a three-year supervised release program, and will be required to do 100 hours of community service, Judge Marsha Pechman ruled Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.

Todd Bradley, chief executive officer (CEO) at PalmOne Inc., will resign at the end of the first quarter but remain with the company until May, PalmOne announced Monday in a release. Bradley was named CEO in October of 2003 when PalmOne spun off PalmSource Inc., which develops the Palm OS, and acquired Handspring Inc. Ed Colligan, currently PalmOne's president and formerly president and chief operating officer at Handspring, will become the interim CEO while PalmOne's board of directors searches for a replacement.