INTEL'S NEW BRANDING CHOOSES NOT TO SELL

Intel plans to launch a new, 3-year branding campaign next Monday, and I think the inadvertent message is that there's no reason to buy a gizmo powered by one of its products. The inanity of the campaign belies some serious decision-making dysfunction.

The creative conceit contrasts common ideas of stardom with the geeky importance of the stars within Intel. So a print ad puts the line "Your rock stars" superimposed over a bevy of rockers (who look like the band Spinal Tap) next to a photo of two nudnick scientists labeled "Our rock stars." A TV spot has employees going berserk because the guy who invented USB walks by them.

Entitled "Sponsors of Tomorrow," the campaign will run in 30 countries by June, because, according to the VP of corporate marketing, "...we really needed to put some meaning into Intel, so 'Intel inside' means something again."

Meaning, eh? This thing means that the company couldn't come up with a reason why anybody should buy its products.

Intel and its agency wasted lots of time (and smarts) looking inward, analyzing the company's people and culture, and not outward, studying why consumers might value a device because of its Intel-ness. Because it's a component, and not the entire end-product, the marketers felt that they had to discover some unappreciated attribute, then associate it with the brand via lots of spending.

Will anybody care, or do anything because of it? No, it's branding, silly.

The real killer is that the company's original brief was to talk about Intel's role in everyday life. This was a functional-based idea that challenged the agencies to help realize how vital -- and, my guess, reliable, capable, valuable, and relevant -- its products were to people. It would have been a hard to make functions fun and engaging enough to influence consumer purchase decisions.
But it might also have helped sell stuff.

Instead, the agency discarded the approach because "it’s just really trite," and came up with a campaign that could have been produced for Microsoft, Sun, or just about any other technology brand. Or bank. Or floor polish.

A new branding campaign that told us real, meaningful reasons why we should want to buy things with Intel inside of them could have been a really smart move.
"Sponsors of Tomorrow" tells us only that Intel can't market its way out of a paper bag.

Intel Unveils Quad Core Q8400

After staying away from the limelight for a while, Intel has quietly introduced a new Core 2 Quad processor. This new Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 will compete head-to-head with AMD Phenom II X4 940 which we have reviewed recently. Intel has also introduced low power variant Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400S. These processors were spotted in the April SKU pricing (PDF) list.

The new 45nm process Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 is clocked at 2.66GHz with 4MB of L2 cache and 1333MHz front side bus with LGA 775 socket support. Essentially, Q8400 is a stripped down version of Q9400 which is clocked at 2.66GHz with 6MB L2 Cache and 1333 front side bus. Intel introduced Q8400 at price of $183 (Rs. 9,250 approx.), while the Q9400 is priced $213 (Rs. 10,700 approx.) and the difference lies in Q9400 having 1MB cache per dual-core die and virtualization support.

In terms of performance, Intel's Q8400 will bout with AMD Phenom II X4 which is clocked at 3.0GHz with 2MB L2 cache, 6MB L3 cache and TDP rating of 125W. But on the other hand, Intel Q8400 has Thermal Design Power rating of 95W. AMD's Phenom II X4 940 is priced at $190 (Rs. 9,600 approx.) on Newegg.com while Intel proposes to sell Q8400 at $183.

The low power 45nm process Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400S has Thermal Design Power rate of 65W carrying same specs as Q8400 but is priced at $245 (Rs. 12,400 approx.). The company has discounted price of Q9300 processor by 20 percent and of three low power Core 2 Quad processors by 13 percent.

Rackspace Sponsors Web 2.0 Info Site

Amidst the confusion of how to best make use of rapidly emerging web 2.0 technologies, a new online community, sponsored by web-hosting provider Rackspace (www.rackspace.com), endeavors to track the latest trends and help companies in all fields move their business operations into the 21st Century.

Launched last week, Building43 (www.building43.com) is designed to show how companies can make use of all the new online tools launching every day. Created by Rackspace's Rocky Barbanica, Rob Lagesse and Robert Scoble, Building43 seeks to answer questions such as "How do I use Twitter? How do I use Facebook? Do I need to develop an iPhone app? What technology am I not using that could help grow my business?"

Scoble, a popular blogger (www.scobleizer.com), technology evangelist and co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, has posted on his blog that the lead-up to Building43's launch has taken up a lot of his efforts. "I'm up at 5am to help the team put the finishing touches on the site and thought it would be a good place to start my blog back up," Scoble posted. "Sorry for disappearing from my long-form blog for a while. I just didn't have the energy to write more than 140 characters or so."

Building43, however, will not only focus on connected high-tech professionals such as Scoble, who create loads of social content, but rather help regular companies and individuals take advantage of technologies that are driving business. One of the first posted items, for instance, is an interview with Facebook founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, where he gives his dad some ideas for how to use the Internet to promote his dentistry business.

In a Rackspace blog post, the company notes that its customers frequently ask what else Rackspace can do to help them. "There is one theme that comes up more than any other: Help me grow my business! While this strays from our core of offering on-demand computing services, today we are pleased to announce something that should help," Rackspace said.

Host Color Discounts Managed VPS Web Hosting Plan

New coupon code offers 50% discount on Managed VPS hosting services, powered by Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. 

June-16-2009- Host Color has reported to web hosting media that it is now offering a 50% instant rebate on its Managed VPS Hosting (http://www.hostcolor.com/vps ). The company enables its VPS customers to turn their Virtual Private Servers into “FM VPS” (Fully Managed VPS hosting service) by paying a flat monthly fee of $24.95. The regular price of FM VPS service is $49.95. Host Color’s customers can take advantage of the instant rebate by using code - S2009FMVPS.

The Fully Managed VPS hosting service includes the following operations: Initial VPS Set-up, IP management, OS installation and maintenance, Antivirus and Antispam installation, Reboots, VPS recovery, Control Panel updates, and Resource monitoring. By outsourcing them to Host Color the company’s VPS customers can focus on business and to make sure that their virtual servers are well-managed and regularly updated.

Host Color powers its VPS by Virtuozzo Power Panel, an elegant and easy to use virtual server management tool part of the world’s leading OS virtualization solution - Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. The hosting company offers video tutorials which provide newbie VPS owners with a step-by-step guides on how to use Virtuozzo Power Panel (VZPP), Plesk Panel 9, NextColor web hosting control panel, and other accounts management tools. VPS customers of Host Color have a link to tutorials
section in their pZone, the personal client center that Host Color’s customers use to organize and manage their web hosting accounts.

Host Color offers one of the lowest prices of quality VPS hosting services and products based on Parallels OS virtualization solutions. Its VPS Start ( http://www.hostcolor.com/vps/vps-start ) virtual private server features 256 MB RAM, 10 GB disc space and 100 GB data transfer per month for the low monthly fee for only $19.95. The most powerful pre-configured virtual server of Host Color - VPS Custom (http://www.hostcolor.com/vps/vps-custom ) comes with 1792 MB RAM, 100 GB disc space and 1000 GB data transfer per month, and costs $119.95/month. The “VPS Custom” users save $14.95 per month on Plesk VPS license and get the popular web hosting control panel for free.

The web host has recently announced nice offerings on its VPS Hosting plans. Prospective customers now get 1 free service month with any virtual private server. This will be the 6th service month. The provider has also increased the resources of its virtual private servers including RAM, disc space, and data transfer quotas. All coupons and rebates are published in section - Web Hosting Rebates (http://www.hostcolor.com/webhosting/rebates).

Host Color is well-known with its approach to hosting business named Quality Web Hosting. Its executives say that Host Color “customizes not just VPS and Dedicated Hosting, but even Shared Hosting services to allow anyone to work in personalized business environment.”

About Host Color
Host Color LLC is a U.S. web hosting provider incorporated in Delaware. It powers thousands of business and personal websites in data centers in South Bend, Indiana, U.S. and Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The company also provides fully Managed dedicated hosting through HC Servers and European hosting services through HC Europe. It offers discounts to academics and non-governmental organizations. The Host Color’s corporate message is “Web hosting about people, not about gigabytes.”

Webhosting.uk.com Launches Hyper-V Windows 2008 VPS Hosting

Webhosting.uk.com, a leading UK based managed web hosting provider, today announced the launch of Hyper-V powered Windows 2008 VPS Hosting. Hyper-V is the next-generation hypervisor-based server virtualization technology from Microsoft which delivers a dynamic, reliable, and scalable platform combined with a single set of integrated management tools to manage both physical and virtual resources.

The company states that Hyper-V represents the next era of virtualization, allowing them and their customers to get the most out of their sever investments and usage. Another aspect of Hyper-V virtualization which sets it apart from other virtualization platforms is the ability to run a number of different operating systems in parallel on a single physical server.

The new VPS servers are hosted on the most powerful Dual Quad Core server with 12-16 GB RAM and RAID arrays for redundant data protection and replication. The entry-level Hyper-V Starter plan includes 15 GB of data storage, 300 GB of monthly data transfer, and access to 512 MB of server RAM while Plesk control panel is optional. When combined with the company's managed services, 24/7 support and reputation for experience and reliability, the new VPS offering positions Webhosting.uk.com VPS plans as the industry's leading virtual server solutions.

"With the addition of Hyper-V Windows 2008 VPS to our existing portfolio, we are glad to offer our customers a user friendly and reliable virtualization platform for hosting their Web applications and services"
states James Anderson, Business Development Manager of WEBHOSTING UK COM LTD. He adds further "With Hyper-V VPS hosting plans, customers are going to have the same level of control as on a dedicated server, but they will be paying significantly lower prices."

About WebHosting UK

Founded in 2001, WebHosting UK offers an array of managed hosting services which includes cPanel hosting, windows hosting, Linux and Windows Resellers, VPS Hosting, Semi-Dedicated Servers and Dedicated Hosting Servers with all important features such as 24x7 technical support, 99.9+ % Uptime Guarantee included as standard.

More information at: www.webhosting.uk.com/hyper-v-vps-hosting.php

Seven Common Web Hosting Mistakes to Avoid

Web hosting services are extremely beneficial for the business or individual looking to establish a web presence.  However, this market consists of many pitfalls and without taking precautions, you could fall right through.  Here are seven common mistakes you want to avoid when looking for a web hosting provider.

1.) Take the Price Bait

True, hosting plans are generally affordable these days.  At the same time, you should know that the cheapest price usually doesn’t translate into the best service.  There is nothing wrong with purchasing the so-called “cheap” plan, but use your instincts to make sure the host isn’t sacrificing quality for that low price.

2.) Fail to Define Your Website Requirements

One of the worst things you can do is enter a web hosting contract without knowing what your site needs.  This could end up costing you a lot of money and grief in the end.  To avoid this, jot down and seek all the features and resources your site needs to successful.  Moreover, put emphasis on a host that provides an easy way to upgrade as your needs increase.

3.) Excuse a Poorly Designed Site

More than likely, you are looking to create a professional website to promote yourself online.  If this is the case, then why would you choose a web host whose site lacks professionalism?   A hosting company that does not take the time to properly design their site probably cannot provide the tools you need to create a professional site of your own.  They don’t care about their own image so, why would they care for yours?

4.) Put Too Many Eggs in One Basket

On the surface, hosting multiple websites on a single account appears to be a good idea.  Unfortunately, this is often not the case.  If you intend to generate money from one or more of your websites, you may want to strongly consider running them on separate servers.  Just think if something happens to the provider’s server.  Can you really afford to have all your sites down at once?

5.) Fall for the Testimonials

It is refreshing to see positive feedback on the web host you’re looking to do business with.  That doesn’t mean you should always take all hosting testimonials at face value.  Many companies have been known to toot their own horn so you need to be very cautious when approaching testimonials.  Instead of putting all your faith in what you see on the company’s website, get out and comb the web for some genuine customer feedback.

6.) Rely on Someone Else to Backup Your Data

Most web hosting companies backup their servers and customer data on a regular base.  The key term here is most.  You should never rely on a web host to perform such critical tasks.  If you really want the ability to restore your data, back it up yourself.

7.) Trust that a Host Utilizes the Latest Technology

CheapHostingRUs optimizes its servers with load balancing. SuperIncredibleHost fights network attacks with DDoS protection and intrusion detection.  That doesn’t mean the host you’re looking into takes the same precautions.  Never assume that a prospective hosting company is using the necessary technologies and security mechanism to keep you protected.   If not, you just could be in for a rude awakening.

Netbooks want 3G and Win7 declares analyst

NETBOOKS are to get bigger, cheaper, include in-built 3G, have touch functionality and run on Windows rather than Linux according to Lenovo worldwide competitive analyst, Matt Kohut.

In an interview with TechBlorge, Kohut said netbooks were entering their second phase, shuffling away from first-generation limited functionality and the original Intel reference design built to revolve around the Atom.

"Initially people weren't sure what to do with them," explained Kohut, noting that the average Joe didn't understand the point of the little lappies until too late, buying them with the belief they had more functionality than they did ("oh wow, that's small, maybe I can run photo shop").

"As an industry, we ended up with a lot of returns, because the functionality of what netbooks could do was not well communicated," said Kohut, adding that people were now starting to demand more functions and bigger screen sizes. "There is no reason why a netbook has to be a small system," conceded Kohut, reckoning "we are going to see a lot of different sizes of netbook" in the near future.

"Over the next six months, you are going to see a lot of 3G built into these," added Kohut, who also predicted Windows 7 would push Linux out of the netbook market, partly due to it being a "familiar solution", but mostly due to its ability to accommodate touch functionality.

Kohut argues that staying with Windows "just makes more sense" because" you just take it out of the box and it's ready to go," controversially adding that people "didn't know what to do" with Linux, and that despite it saving them between $50 to $100 per netbook, Linux loaded lappies were returned in droves.

Sensing the Linux lynch mob closing in, Kohut changed the subject to overall pricing, saying portable prices would continue to drop as Intel et all improved their ability to integrate whole systems on chips.

While Kohurt says it is true netbooks are forcing prices of portables down, he doesn't believe the notebook market will take too much of a hit. This, said Kohut, is down to Intel who, in a drastic attempt to prevent further cannibalisation of its Celeron offerings, has tried "very hard to limit what netbooks can do."

Chipzilla, says Kohut, wants to promote netbooks as machines only good for noodling around on the interwibble and reading email, because the firm wants punters asking themselves ""does it make more sense to just buy a notebook with the lower end Celeron processor so that it can do everything you want it to do versus buying a higher end netbook that is going to be limited in some way?"

Certainly explains why Intel is getting its knickers all in a twist over Nvidia's Ion platform for netbooks, doesn't it?

Intel May Face Record Fine, Rebate Ban in EU Antitrust Case

Intel Corp., accused by the European Union of giving computer sellers rebates to not buy a rival’s chips, may be ordered to stop the discounts and pay a more than 1 billion-euro antitrust fine ($1.36 billion).

The European Commission will rule this week on charges that Intel impeded competition and harmed consumers by muscling out Advanced Micro Devices Inc. from the chip market. The penalty could double the record 497 million-euro fine against Microsoft Corp. in 2004 for abusing its monopoly in personal computer operating systems, said Thomas Graf, an antitrust lawyer at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton LLP in Brussels.

“There is a good chance that there could be a record fine for an abuse of dominance case, and that it could exceed the fine against Microsoft,” Graf said.

The commission decision may increase pressure on Intel as computer sales decline because of the economic downturn. Intel the world’s biggest computer-chip maker, has kept its market share at about 80 percent by granting rebates that are conditional on computer makers buying all or the majority of their chips from the company, the commission has charged.

Intel has been entangled in a dispute with the EU for more than eight years following a complaint by AMD. Intel, facing a related civil lawsuit filed by AMD in federal court in Delaware and an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for alleged unfair business practices, is likely to start a lengthy appeal at European courts to prevent the EU ban on rebates from taking effect, lawyers said.

‘Pricing Strategy’

“A lot of their business is based on this pricing strategy,” said David Anderson, an antitrust partner at Berwin Leighton Paisner LLP in Brussels. “If you’re defending your strategy, you’re defending something that’s pretty valuable. They’re taking a staunch defense and they are playing the long game.”

Santa Clara, California-based Intel has argued that it’s operating fairly in a competitive industry. Computer makers’ choice of its chips is based on quality and performance, Intel has said. AMD’s contention that Hewlett-Packard Co. was “pressured” to use Intel processors is wring, Intel said in the Delaware case.

Robert Manetta, an Intel spokesman in London, said the company’s business practices are “legal, pro-competitive and good for consumers. Jonathan Todd, a commission spokesman, had no comment.

Fine Calculation

The commission uses 2006 guidelines to calculate fines. Lawyers expect a record amount because penalties are based on 30 percent of the sales of products and are then multiplied by the number of years the violation occurred. The commission can raise levies against large companies as a deterrent. Failure to cooperate with investigators is also considered.

Intel’s European sales were $7.1 billion last year, meaning the potential starting amount is $2.1 billion. That amount would be then multiplied by years of the violation.

“We have new fining guidelines and the identified infringement has a fairly long duration,” Cleary Gottlieb’s Graf said. Intel has substantial sales “in the affected market and there have been reported tensions between Intel and the commission, which may render the commission less lenient.”

EU Challenge

Intel lost a bid to delay the EU investigation last year by filing a lawsuit at the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg. The tribunal said the company failed to demonstrate enough “urgency” to qualify for interim relief. Intel sued in October, arguing that the EU probe is discriminatory and that regulators breached the company’s rights by denying it access to relevant evidence.

The Brussels-based commission accused Intel in July of giving computer sellers “substantial rebates” not to sell machines using Sunnyvale, California-based AMD’s chips. Those charges followed an initial set of accusations in 2007 that Intel gave rebates and made below-cost sales to manufacturers, including Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard, to coax them not to use AMD’s chips, according to the Court of First Instance ruling.

Intel fell 48 cents, or 3 percent, to $15.29 in Nasdaq Stock Market trading in New York on May 8.

Intel said on April 14 that first-quarter profit fell 55 percent to $647 million, or 11 cents a share, from a year earlier, because of slowing computer demand. The company signaled that sales won’t recover in the current period.

Dell Planning Android Based Netbooks

Rumorsville is abounding with the news of Dell readying an ultra-portable laptop, (commonly known as a Netbook) that will run Google's Android OS, instead of Windows XP or Linux.

The current rumors arose from a recent press release by BSquare, a software firm. The release mentioned about a "system to use certain Adobe software on Dell netbooks running Google's Android platform". Interesting! Because, currently there is no Dell notebook running on the
Android platform!

There were further twists to the tale when BSquare announced that it was an error on their part to publish the press release. Further, Dell spokesperson Andrew Bowins too confirmed the release was erroneous without going into the details of what exactly the erroneous part was. He neither confirmed nor denied if we would be seeing Android based netbooks in the near future.

Originally developed for smartphones, Android is fast becoming the OS of choice for low cost notebooks. Being open source, it offers a cheaper alternative to users who no longer need to be dependent on Microsoft's software or Intel's processors for their computing needs. Additionally, Android will do well with cheaper ARM-based processors. Netbooks, as most people might be aware are low cost, smaller versions of notebooks. Back in April, there were reports about Dell's arch-rival HP too being interested in Android.

Intel to stop shipping one Core i7 desktop chip later this year

Intel plans to stop selling one of its high-end desktop chips this year, less than one year after it was released, the company confirmed Thursday.

The 2.93GHz Core i7 940 processor is one of three desktop chips based on Intel's Nehalem microarchitecture that were released in late 2008. Designed for high-end PCs, the chip includes an on-chip memory controller and support for DDR3 memory and Intel's QuickPath Interconnect technology.

The last date for customers to confirm orders for the Core i7 940 will be Sept. 4, Intel said in a notice.

"We have communicated our shipment plans for Core i7 940 to our customers. It is actively shipping and will ship through 2009.," Intel spokesman Nick Jacobs wrote in an e-mail.
The Core i7 940 was caught between two more successful products. The 940 didn't sell as well as the 2.66GHz Core i7 920, which was significantly cheaper, and it couldn't match the performance of the 3.2GHz Core i7 965 Extreme Edition, according to a source at a Taiwanese motherboard maker.

Intel is expected to release more advanced desktop chips based on the Nehalem microarchitecture later this year.

In February, the company announced plans to accelerate its shift to a 32-nanometer manufacturing process and the upcoming Nehalem desktop chips, called Clarkdale, will be produced using this process. The more advanced manufacturing process means Clarkdale should run faster and consume less power than existing Core i7 processors.

Wireless Gigabit backed by Intel, Microsoft, others

More than a dozen major technology companies have established the WiGig Alliance to develop a standard for high-speed wireless communication.
Members of the Alliance include Dell, Intel, LG Electronics, Microsoft, NEC, Nokia, Panasonic, Samsung, and others.

The roster demonstrates the consumer-electronics focus of the group, which claims that their wireless technology "provides the optimal way to connect consumer electronics, handheld devices and personal computers."

Operating in the 60GHz spectrum, products based on the WGA specification are expected to be capable of at least 1 Gbps within a range of about 10 meters.

That makes the technology suitable for streaming multimedia content from one room to another, if not for blanketing an entire residence. The Alliance acknowledges that other technologies will be better at providing whole-home coverage.

But they envision a WiGig "ecosystem" that joins together wireless displays and entertainment docks that will enable devices from multiple manufacturers to connect to each other.

Accordingly, the FAQ for potential Alliance members has answers for manufacturers of handhelds and consumer electronics, as well as of PCs, chips, and networking equipment.

The Alliance plans to make the final WiGig spec available some time toward the end of 2009, with products available possibly as early as next year.

XP mode a no-go on some AMD chips too

WE RECENTLY REPORTED that Windows XP mode, which will allow certain XP apps to run on the Vole's upcoming Windows 7, may not work on a number of Intel chips, especially those in consumer laptops. Now AMD too has confessed to having chips that won't run XP mode.
AMD says all of its CPUs with the exception of its very low-end Sempron and Turion K8 Rev E processors will include AMD-V, the firm's hardware-based virtualisation technology needed to support XP mode.

"With the exceptions of Sempron-branded processors and Turion K8 Rev E processors, all notebook processors shipped by AMD include AMD-V and therefore support Windows 7 XP mode," AMD noted, adding that in the desktop space only Sempron-branded processors and pre-Rev F Athlon branded processors would not support XP mode.

All Opteron processors, claimed AMD, would include AMD-V and thereby would support XP mode.
Whereas Intel would have consumers believe this is all quite irrelevant because installing a high end OS like Win 7 Enterprise, Professional or Ultimate on a lower end processor is unlikely, the key difference is Chipzilla's non mode-ular offerings are priced around the $600 to $899 portable range, whilst AMD's Sempron line lappies cost about $329.

So AMD's non-compatible chips really are low end, whilst Intel's non-compatible offerings are sold in more mid-range kit.

AMD also reckons Windows 7 will be able to take advantage of its RVI (Rapid Virtualisation Indexing), for better virtual management when hypervisors, guest OSs and other apps are brought into the mix.

Both Intel's VT virtualization tech and AMD's AMD-V are actually just BIOS settings which AMD says system makers tend to switch off in their machines before shipping.

Also, said AMD, to be fair, the whole issue is not just a hardware one, as chipmakers share their designs with software makers well in advance, who are supposed to make sure their programmes are compatible.

This makes the recent XP mode issue a relatively rare beast, as there are usually few, if any, compatibility problems between chips and software, said AMD.

AMD: Tough first quarter; Ready for Intel encroachment for thin, light notebooks

Advanced Micro Devices reported a first quarter net loss of $416 million, or 66 cents a share, on revenue of $1.17 billion, down 21 percent from a year ago. However, CEO Dirk Meyer said Tuesday that AMD is “more nimble” following the spin-off of its manufacturing assets, but the company projects revenue to slide in the seasonally slow second quarter.

Even though AMD’s quarter was tough it still managed to beat Wall Street’s low expectations. The company’s net loss (statement) included a charge of 4 cents a share. Excluding that charge, AMD topped estimates by 4 cents. The first quarter for AMD was about burning off inventory that was built for demand that never arrived.

The company has consolidated GlobalFoundries, the manufacturing joint venture, in its results but referred to AMD “the product company” as the chip design outfit. AMD’s chip design and product business had a net loss of $189 million.

Like its much larger rival Intel, AMD forecasted some balance in supply and demand. “The severe inventory corrections of the last quarter have stabilized,” said Meyer on a conference call with analysts. Meyer stopped short of calling the bottom like Intel has, adding that “I don’t know how anyone can do that.”

Meyer said customers are only buying the processing power they need. Notice AMD’s plan: It is pitching itself as a value chip maker and hinting that Intel gives you more processor than you need. He touted AMD’s Yukon and Congo platforms, which target light notebooks.

CFO Bob Rivet added that AMD saw some demand in the first quarter from value buyers. Nevertheless, Rivet said that second quarter revenue will decline from the first quarter for AMD. AMD hopes to be cash flow positive in the second half of the year.

However, AMD is still going to have a tough time. Meyer was asked about Intel’s launch of chips for the light, thin notebook market. Meyer said AMD wasn’t planning to cede market share, but noted the second quarter was “murky at best.” Meyer said that Intel’s CLUV move was in response to AMD’s move.

Kobian unveils PIG41M and PIG43M Intel Motherboards with HDMI Support, in India

Kobian, the Singapore based manufacturer of Mercury products, launches two new Intel-based motherboards, namely the PIG41M and PIG43M, for the Indian consumers.

Featuring HDMI support, these Intel platform motherboards require no add-in cards or decoders and ensure easy playback of high-definition audio video content on the conventional desktop PCs.

Starting with the PIG43M motherboard, it works effectively with Intel G43 Express and ICH10 chipsets. Moreover, it is compatible with FSB1333, the 4 DIMM DDR2 800 memory and Core 2 Duo processor. Users can even extend the memory to around 8GB. Other highlights of the PIG43M are a built-in GMA X4500 graphic engine that offers smooth HD playback and Vista Premium Eligible with DX10. Users will appreciate the ultimate graphics performance, thanks to the incorporation of the PCI-E Gen2.0 x16 interface that has the ability to enhance the visual and gaming experience.

Speaking about the latest Intel-enabled PIG43M motherboard, Sushmita Das - Country Manager (India), Kobian, stated, “The highlight of this Motherboard is the HDMI support. The HDMI interface supports existing high definition video formats (720p, 1080i & even 1080p), plus multi-channel digital audio on a single cable. Combination with HDCP provides a secure audio/video interface that meets security requirements of content providers and system operators. The board is power packed with the 8Channel High Definition Audio Codec & Gigabit Lan, which enhances every computing & gaming experience.”

Coming to the next Mercury motherboard, the PIG41M supports Intel G41 Express chipset, Intel 45nm processors and Core 2 Quad processors. It features two DIMM DDR2 800 memory support (up to 4GB), assuring superior scalability and total efficiency. Additional attributes of the motherboard are an integrated GMA X4500 graphics and Clear Video technology to deliver an alluring output with 6.1 channel audio codec. It is said to be a perfect motherboard for personal and commercial purposes.

Apart from that, the company guarantees two years walk-in warranty through all Kaizen Infoserve service centres. The PIG41M and PIG43M Intel motherboards are available for purchase from Kobian’s authorized distributor. The price of each motherboard is not announced though.

New Intel chips prompt rise in demand for DDR3 memory

A new series of Intel microprocessors aimed at the computer server market has caused a spike in demand for DDR3 (double data rate, third generation) DRAM chips, according to Samsung Electronics.

Prediction: U.S. automakers file for bankruptcy?

The world's largest memory chip maker said Tuesday it has ramped up production of DDR3 memory chips over the past month to meet heavier demand related to the launch of Intel's Xeon processor 5500 series.

The production increase is important for DDR3 technology because new DRAM technologies normally find their way into the computer server market before finally making it into desktop and then laptop computers. As production of DDR3 increases, the price-per-chip declines, making them more affordable for less expensive devices such as PCs.

Server makers are generally willing to pay a premium for the increased performance of new memory chip technologies, while a sluggish PC market this year means vendors are less willing to trade up from DDR2 (DDR, second generation) chips because they're much cheaper.

DDR3 memory chips boast several improvements over DDR2, including twice the system performance, speeds up to 1,333Mbps (Megabits per second) and using at least 60 percent less power, Samsung said.

Intel plans to launch two more DDR3-only chip series in the second half of this year, according to a joint statement.

Samsung currently sells 1Gb and 2Gb DDR3 DRAM chips and several memory modules that have already been validated by Intel to work with its microprocessors.

IBM aims to secure clouds and virtual networks

IBM on Tuesday introduced cloud security services and said it is initiating a company-wide project to develop a security architecture for hosted computing.

The company, which made the announcements at the RSA security conference, also unveiled an appliance designed to protect virtual network segments. Proventia Virtualized Network Security Platform, an appliance that includes intrusion prevention, Web application protection, and network policy enforcement.

IBM also announced:
Proventia Web application firewall, which is embedded into the IBM ISS Proventia portfolio of products and which acts as a virtual application patching mechanism.
Malware scanning for IBM Rational AppScan, which allows users to automatically scan Web sites for embedded malware.
IBM Tivoli Identity and Access Assurance, which offers centralized identity, access and audit services for corporations.
IBM Tivoli Data and Application Security, designed to mitigate privacy and compliance risks by encrypting data stored on tapes and disks.
IBM Tivoli Security Management for z/OS, which features centralized management for mainframes.

MSI Offers Cheapest All-in-one TouchScreen Desktop

Last month MSI, a Taiwanese manufacturer better known for its netbooks, announced a new 18.5-inch touchscreen desktop PC. Now the company has disclosed a recession-friendly price tag of $530 for the machine.

All-in-one desktop computers also called 'kitchen PCs' have become important to PC makers who are betting consumers want a sleek, touchscreen desktop in their home for web surfing, leaving notes and checking internet videos.

Four major PC makers including Dell, HP, Asus and MSI now offer all-in-one systems with touchscreens instead of keyboards.

The new MSI Wind desktop is available with an Atom processor, 2GB of RAM, a 160 GB hard drive, 1.3 megapixel webcam and WiFi capability.

At $530, the machine is the cheapest in the market. The Asus Eee Top costs $600, while Dell's all-in-one machine, yet to launch in the U.S., has been priced at $800 for a touchscreen model.

forex Strategy Outlook: US Dollar Volatility Complicates Trading Outlook

Extreme US Dollar volatility leaves our forex trading signals at somewhat of a disadvantage, as sideways price action gives little indication on short-term trends. The Euro/US Dollar has seen some of the most extreme intraday price changes in history, but the currency remains stuck in a fairly wide range. Absent a break in either direction, we see few clues on what to expect next. Our Sentiment indicators signal that traders remain largely neutral on the US dollar, and ideally we would wait for clearer trading bias before committing to trend-based currency trades.

Forex Trading Automated Systems Outlook
DailyFX+ System Trading Signals – Momentum2, Breakout2, and Range1 trading strategies remain as our top performers in the past 60 days of trade. We are nonetheless mindful that that Momentum2 and Breakout2 trades may underperform through near-term on extremely choppy price action. Just recently Momentum2 and Breakout2 went short the EUR/USD on the heels of previous declines, but the almost-unbelievable intraday spike higher stopped out both systems at a sizeable loss. All the same, Momentum2 and Breakout2 trades remain attractive from a risk-reward perspective.

It will nonetheless be important to monitor US Dollar pairs through the near term and manage our trading biases accordingly. For the moment, we favor Momentum1 and Momentum2 trading signals. Yet this could easily change if we see signs of rangebound markets, and we will update our Forex Trading Strategy Outlook accordingly.

Definitions

Volatility Percentile – The higher the number, the more likely we are to see strong movements in price. This number tells us where current implied volatility levels stand in relation to the past 30 days of trading. We have found that implied volatilities tend to remain very high or very low for extended periods of time. As such, it is helpful to know where the current implied volatility level stands in relation to its medium-term range.

Trend – This indicator measures trend intensity by telling us where price stands in relation to its 30 trading-day range. A very low number tells us that price is currently at or near monthly lows, while a higher number tells us that we are near the highs. A value at or near 50 percent tells us that we are at the middle of the currency pair’s monthly range.

Range High – 90-day closing high.

Range Low – 90-day closing low.

Last – Current market price.

Strategy – Based on the above criteria, we assign the more likely profitable strategy for any given currency pair. A highly volatile currency pair (Volatility Percentile very high) suggests that we should look to use Breakout strategies. More moderate volatility levels and strong Trend values make Momentum trades more attractive, while the lowest Vol Percentile and Trend indicator figures make Range Trading the more attractive strategy.

The information contained herein is derived from sources we believe to be reliable, but of which we have not independently verified. FOREX CAPITAL MARKETS, L.L.C.® assumes no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies or omissions in these materials, nor shall it be liable for damages arising out of any person’s reliance upon this information. FOREX CAPITAL MARKETS, L.L.C.® does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information, text, graphics, links or other items contained within these materials. FOREX CAPITAL MARKETS, L.L.C.® shall not be liable for any special, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages, including without limitation losses, lost revenues, or lost profits that may result from these materials. Opinions and estimates constitute our judgment and are subject to change without notice. Past performance is not indicative of future results.

India Inc may get 2-year relief over forex losses

The National Advisory Committee on Accounting Standards (Nacas),

which is the final word on accounting policies followed by the
Indian industry, has
favoured suspending for two years a key rule that requires firms to mark-to-market foreign exchange assets and liabilities, a decision which comes as a victory for corporate India, as it sits down to draw yearly financial results.

The demand to suspend this rule, known in accounting circles as AS-11 , was made by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) on grounds that it could severely distort the earnings of many companies. It was contended that this accounting standard, designed to address normal conditions, should be suspended for the time being, as the present market conditions were not normal.

India Inc may post better results if Nacas’ recommendations are accepted, as it would spare several companies from taking a hit to reflect the 27% depreciation of the rupee against the dollar in the past one year. Higher profits would mean higher tax collections for the government.

A similar debate is now raging in the US on whether the capital market regulator, Securities and Exchange Commission, should suspend mark-to-market accounting rule that has forced banks to report billions of dollars in asset writedowns . Nacas’ recommendations are usually accepted by the government. Nacas chairman YH Malegam declined to comment on whether the body, which was constituted by the ministry of corporate affairs, had asked for the suspension of AS-11 until April 2011.

The ministry of corporate affairs , which gives statutory force to Nacas’ suggestions through notifications , also declined to comment . Nacas consists of representatives from the ministry of corporate affairs, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) and various chambers of commerce.

The decision to hold off implementing AS-11 , which would have forced companies to mandatorily account their foreign exchange losses, was taken at a Nacas meeting held in Mumbai on Tuesday.

FOREX-Dollar off lows hit on Geithner remarks, yen slips

OKYO, March 26 (Reuters) - The dollar rose against the yen on Thursday, rebounding from lows hit after U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said he was open to expanding the use of the International Monetary Fund's special drawing rights.

Investors initially interpreted Geithner's remarks on Wednesday as an endorsement of China's proposal this week to eventually replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency with the IMF's SDRs. [ID:nPEK184558]

Geithner's comments pushed the dollar lower against the euro and the yen on Wednesday, although it regained ground after he said the dollar would keep its status as the top reserve currency for a long time. [ID:nN25425979]

Geithner was probably commenting on China's call for expanding use of the IMF's SDRs rather than about the notion that the SDR may eventually replace the dollar as the world's reserve currency, said Masafumi Yamamoto, head of foreign exchange strategy Japan at Royal Bank of Scotland.

"The remarks probably were not made from the standpoint of foreign exchange policy," Yamamoto said, adding that the Treasury secretary probably did not mean to affect moves in the dollar with his comments.

"It is hard for the United States to seek a stronger dollar, but at the same time, if they call for a weaker dollar that could make it hard for them to finance their (current account) deficit, as investors may shy away from buying Treasuries," Yamamoto said, adding that a higher dollar would hurt the trade competitiveness of U.S. goods.

The dollar rose 0.3 percent from late U.S. trading on Wednesday to 97.80 yen . That was up from Wednesday's low of 96.90 yen and last week's one-month low of 93.55 yen hit on trading platform EBS.

The euro dipped 0.2 percent to $1.3552 , having pulled back from Wednesday's high of $1.3653 and last week 2-½ month high of $1.3739.

Against the yen, the euro was steady at 132.53 yen , having pulled back from a five-month high of 134.50 yen hit earlier this week.

Market players said the yen was pressured by selling by a Japanese brokerage. A trader for a European bank said the reasons behind the flows were unclear, although they might be related to overseas investment by Japanese investors.

With the end of Japan's fiscal year coming up next week, this is a time when special seasonal flows can appear, he added.

shares came after U.S. stocks rose on Wednesday as unexpectedly strong housing and durable goods data fuelled hopes the economy is finally on the mend.

The New Zealand dollar rose 0.8 percent to 55.66 yen and the Australian dollar was 0.4 percent higher at 68.38 yen. The Australian dollar hit a 4-½ month high of 69.60 yen earlier this week.

The New Zealand dollar gained some support after the country's fourth-quarter current account deficit was in line with market expectations, allaying fears of a large blowout of the deficit that could hurt New Zealand's currency and credit rating. [ID:nWEL487349]

Earlier, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand denied a market rumour that an emergency meeting was being held to discuss a spike in five-year yields, which have climbed around 80 basis points in the past two days. [ID:nWLF001287] (Editing by Kazunori Takada)

SEBI doubles forex future limit

In a bid to encourage non-banking trading brokers and small traders, the market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) Tuesday doubled the position limits - predetermined level set by regulatory bodies for a specific contract or option - in exchange-traded currency derivatives.

According to the market watchdog, the gross outstanding limit for non-banking brokers has now extended to $50-million from earlier $25-million, while for small traders the prescribed margin has been extended to $10-million as against $5-million previously.

For the banks, SEBI has made no changes and they can trade up to their earlier prescribed limit of $100-million. However, banks are not active in this sort of forex trading as they have more efficient option of accessing over-the-counter (OTC) forex market.

This move by the regulator has come in the wake of market participants’ repeated plea to enhance the existing position limits, as the small limits were inadequate to effectively hedge their foreign currency exposure risks.

Now, after doubling the exposure, the volume of trading would further increase because of higher exposure and it would also encourage market participants.

However, SEBI has also clarified that the position limits would be specific to an exchange and not to the exchange-traded currency derivatives market as a whole. Presently, the National Stock Exchange (NSE), Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the Multi-Commodity Exchange (MCX) are the three entities that offer currency derivatives.

Forex: IT cos rejig hedging plan

As the fiscal fourth quarter comes to a close amidst high currency volatility, Indian IT

companies hope their hedging strategies could like
ly help them protect revenues and
profitability. While some of them have maintained strategies, others have adopted different routes to beat the fluctuation in the forex market.

Infosys, the country’s second biggest IT exporter, is playing it safe by taking a short term view on the dollar-rupee variation, while top exporter TCS and the third biggest Wipro have chosen to hedge their receivables for more than a year.

Infosys has decided to consider a horizon of not more than two quarters as the company expects the rupee would only depreciate over the short term. “Rising fiscal deficit, falling economic growth, widening trade deficit and political uncertainty in view of the elections are likely to keep the rupee weaker,” says Infosys CFO V Balakrishnan.

KN Dey, a director with foreign exchange brokerage Basix Forex, agrees. Although the rupee is likely to strengthen following the latest US bailout announcement, it might close at over 52, by March 2008 end, he said. “The rise in the rupee is more a temporary phenomenon with traders moving their idle funds from currency markets to the local money markets (short-term debt market) because of higher yields,” he added.
Infosys has hedged over $530 million in rolling contracts. The company deals only in range forward options. Under such an arrangement, exposure of an exporter is limited to the range of the option. For instance, if the range is 1.3-1.6 for a dollar-euro contract, then the exporter will get the spot exchange rate as long as it falls in the range. If on the settlement day, the spot rate falls below 1.3, the exporter gets the lower rate of 1.3 and if it moves above 1.6, he gets a higher rate.

Wipro has continued to take longer-term bets in the forex market. “We normally cover 50-100% of net inflows (foreign currency revenue sans foreign currency expenses) for the next four quarters,” said Wipro corporate treasurer Rajendra Kumar Shreemal. Currently, Wipro has $1.8 billion in currency hedges spread over four years until FY 13.

Mid-tier IT company MindTree, which nearly wiped out its net profit in the December 2008 quarter, on account of forex losses, has decided to focus only on plain forward and option contracts. Company CFO Rostow Ravanan says, “Basic hedging philosophy has not changed for us. But, we now have only plain vanilla contracts and have hedged 50% of our recievables.” In the earlier quarters, the company had taken leveraged option contracts, which were riskier in nature.

WNS, the second-largest BPO firm in the country, has changed its hedging policy since the last two quarters from 18 to 24 months due to higher forex fluctuations. “Every month, we reassess our position for next 24 months. We have hedged over 90-95% of our future revenue,” says Alok Misra, CFO of WNS. He adds that the procedure helps to smoothen out the sharp volatility in currency market. The company’s hedging position stands at just over $500 million, which completely covers FY 10 revenue and partially for FY 11.

WORLD FOREX:Euro Recovers Tad Vs Yen,Dlr, But Upside Limited

The euro rose against the yen and dollar in Asia Wednesday as players bought back the common currency amid a continued bullish outlook for the European unit after it retreated from recent highs overnight.

Some players were also buying the euro, which tends to trade up on higher stocks, as Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average retraced earlier losses and briefly crossed into positive territory in the afternoon, dealers said.

At 0450 GMT, the euro stood at Y131.80 compared to Y131.60 late Tuesday in New York. Against the greenback, the common currency was at $1.3443.

"The key for the euro in the near-term is how stock prices will fare," said Osao Iizuka, head of foreign exchange trading at Sumitomo Trust & Banking.

If share prices picked up, this would lead to further gains for the euro, particularly against the yen, Iizuka said. "The euro has climbed about 10 yen over the past couple weeks," as investors' willingness to buy the higher yielding but riskier unit has rebounded with recovering share prices, he added.

But dealers said growing speculation that the European Central Bank may cut interest rates by as much as 50 basis points at its meeting next week would keep players from pushing it up much higher.

Against the dollar, the euro may hover around $1.3450, as "the ECB concerns limit its topside, but there are still no reasons to actively buy the dollar," said Sumitomo Trust & Banking's Iizuka.

For the rest of the week, the common currency may trade in a Y131-Y133 band against the yen, said Yuji Saito, vice president of foreign exchange at Societe Generale.

Meanwhile, the dollar was essentially unchanged against the yen, standing at Y97.80 at 0450 GMT compared with Y97.88 late Tuesday in New York.

While the greenback dipped slightly against the yen after Japanese trade data released in the morning showed Japan logged its first trade surplus in five months, the record drop in exports tempered any short-term players' enthusiasm for buying the yen, dealers said.

The yen could benefit from the trade data in the near term because they may assuage concerns that Japan could develop a chronic current account deficit, after logging its first such deficit in 13 years in January, said Masayuki Kichikawa, chief economist for Merrill Lynch. "Some people had been thinking that Japan might have a current account deficit this year, but the data should reduce those expectations," he said.

Fall in forex reserves mainly on revaluation

Nearly two-thirds of the $61-billion decline in India’s foreign exchange reserves was on account of valuation losses, indicating that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had now lowered its market intervention to check volatility of the rupee against overseas currencies.

According to market sources, the central bank has largely been absent from the foreign exchange market in recent weeks despite the rupee touching an all-time low of 52.18 against the US dollar on March 3. Foreign exchange dealers said that the RBI did not want to intervene heavily as it wanted to avoid sucking out rupee resources by selling dollars.

o far in 2009, the rupee has dropped by 3.46 per cent against the dollar as foreign institutional investors (FIIs) have continued to sell their investments in India, partly on account of the demands in their home markets.

According to the latest data released last Friday, the country’s foreign exchange reserves were estimated at $248.72 billion as on March 13, as against $309.71 billion at the end of March 2008. As on February 27 2009, the foreign exchange reserves were estimated at $249.28 billion.

A bulk of the decrease in the reserves has been on account of lower foreign currency assets. At the end of February, foreign currency assets had dropped by $60.52 billion, which also indicates that the fall was on account of revaluation.

In recent weeks, the dollar had gained against most currencies globally, till the US Federal Reserve’s announcement to buy long-dated debt. On Thursday, following the proposed move, the US currency fell the most in 25 years.

Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile Processor Review - T7600

A month ago we showed you exclusive testing results (here) of the new Intel Core 2 Duo T7400 “Merom� CPU . While those initial results showed good improvements in floating point operation, a quick test revealed that battery life (here) showed that our testing platform was still not ready for prime time as the T7400 should have battery performance by design.The Core 2 Duo T7600 we are looking at today is a production sample (read: very likely the same quality and performance you will get at a retailer) clocked at 2.33 GHz, slightly faster than the 2.16 GHz on the T7400 sample we tested a month ago. And what a difference a month makes! Intel has made the improvements where it counts -- lower power consumption which translates into better battery life!Intel has done it! While in our early look at the T7400 showed rather poor battery performance the T7600 we have tested today, which is heading into production, has made drastic improvements. We can now say without a doubt that Intel's latest mobile CPU has nailed the holy grail in mobile computing - it performs faster, consumes less power, and generates less heat. What else is there to say besides that?Now with power and heat issues all sorted out, there's no reason why you shouldn't consider the Core 2 Duo in your next laptop. With price points as low as $209 for the T5500 up to the T7600 at $637, there’s a Core 2 Duo mobile CPU to suit all budgets and designs. It really looks like Intel has another hit CPU on their hands and with all the design innovations from laptop vendors, it's hard not to be a little excited when looking forward. It's definitely a good time to be looking into a notebook computer and Intel has given us many reasons to with their Core 2 Duo CPUs! So in the end, we're giving this CPU an Editor's Choice Award. The latest Core 2 Duo mobile CPU is cooler, faster, and runs longer than the older Core Duo. Not only that, it has technology improvements under the hood like a larger level 2 cache (4MB) and 64-bit extensions to support 64-bit OSes like the upcoming Windows Vista. If you've had reservations before about getting a laptop, the Core 2 Duo should have you convinced. Intel's track record in this arena is strong, and their latest CPU just solidifies their lead.

Managing Data Storage by Support Services

Data Storage exponential data growth, you need to find efficient, cost-effective ways to make the most of your critical storage infrastructure. And with the complexity of today's storage technology and the ever-mounting demands on your internal resources, it's tougher than ever to do it alone. With the technology storage industry at the cusp of strong growth, as never before, data storage environment poses multiple challenges that directly impacts bottom-line business results.More data is captured and stored by businesses now than ever before. A typical business today stores 10 times more data than in 2000. Gartner report estimates that storage requirements will have increased by a factor of 30 by 2012. Challenges like soaring storage costs. Tighter regulations governing data retention, access and privacy. Data center power, cooling and space limitations. Scarce technical expertise. The constant threat of natural and manmade disasters. The complexities of managing multivendor storage solutions are present. This can be addressed by end-to-end support services, Multivendor hardware/software support, Integrated remote support technologies, Comprehensive installation and implementation support lastly a full suite of flexible, scalable services to boost ongoing storage performance and availability. Companies are moving from Direct Attached Storage (DAS) to networked storage with the adoption of Fiber Channel (FC) Storage Area Network (SAN) technologies. The major benefits associated with this move are: higher availability, scalability, minimal interference with LAN traffic, increased management efficiency and utilization levels of about 90%, resulting in lower Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and higher Return on Investment (ROI). As the economy improved from the recession of 2000, and the demand for storing increasingly large volumes of data, companies are beginning to spend on IT infrastructure and storage. In this way, businesses need to start rethinking the way they go about storing their data in order to enhance analytics, improve business processes and give themselves the best possible competitive advantage.

AMD Intros GPU

AMD has introduced the ATI Radeon E2400, a high-performance graphic processing unit to deliver the latest 2D, 3D and multimedia graphics performance.The new graphics technology is backed by a planned five-year availability and long-term support offering reliability for a variety of applications on operating systems featuring Microsoft DirectX 10 and OpenGL 2.0. "With the input of major original equipment manufacturers and platform developers, we have designed the ATI Radeon E2400 from the start to deliver high graphics performance while meeting the unique requirements of the embedded market," said Richard Jaenicke, director of embedded graphics for AMD. Built on 65nm process technology, the ATI Radeon E2400 includes AMD's Unified Shader Architecture with support for Microsoft DirectX 10, allowing customers to develop advanced content for many applications. The device package incorporates 128MB of on-chip GDDR3 memory for graphic-intensive applications, eliminating the space, effort, and cost of external memory designs. For designs that require a low profile solution in space-constrained environments, AMD offers the ATI Radeon E2400 MXM-II module based on the open standard MXM-II specifications. The ATI Radeon E2400 is scheduled to ship this month in production quantities. AMD will showcase the product both at Embedded World 2008 (February 26-28, 2008) in Nuremberg, Germany, and at Embedded Systems Conference Silicon (April 14-18, 2008) in San Jose, California.

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 Preview

The entire Conroe line-up is built on a 65nm process, with the mainstream products offering 4MB of L2 cache. Improved over the previous Pentium 4/Pentium D line-up was better power efficiency resulting in a lower TDP and better overall temperatures. This is appreciated, as two cores under the same IHS can potentially create an unwanted room heater.
All but the lowest end Core 2 Duos take advantage of a 1066FSB. This is where this refreshed line-up comes into play, as it ushers in 1333FSB computing. This noticeable speed bump is all done while retaining the same TDP.
All Conroe 1333FSB processors are identified by by a 50 at the end of the product name, hence E6750, which is effectively taking over the spot of the E6700. Nothing has changed except for the FSB and speeds, except the ratio of course, which had to be altered in order to compliment the upgraded frequency.
One thing that should be cleared up is that most overclocking enthusiasts have already accomplished the same speeds we are seeing today, with most being exceeded. In fact, there is nothing stopping anyone from popping in an E6600 and overclocking using a 333FSB and 8 multiplier. That would effectively give you the exact same speed as the E6750 we are taking a look at today.
You might be wondering where the benefit is, with this official speed bump. Primarily it will benefit those non-overclockers most. There is no comparison to equal processor speed at 1066FSB and 1333FSB. That added FSB frequency should make a much more noticeable performance difference than the CPU frequency boost itself.

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (Kentsfield Quad Core)

Core 2 Duo has been one of the most important launches for Intel in quite some time, really taking back the Desktop market by storm. Yet, even when I was in Germany at a pre-launch briefing of Conroe/Core 2 Duo, Intel suggested that quad core wasn't far off either. In fact, the computer being used for the PowerPoint presentation, was in fact Kentsfield – Intel's code name for its quad core processor. Not particuarly good use of resources, but an excellent demonstration of the state of play.November has come around, and true to Intel's word, quad-core is here. It seems like only yesterday we were marvelling at the first dual-core solutions, so to have a “quad-core” processor in front of me, seems almost surreal. However, in actuality, this isn't as much of a technological feat as you might think. Eighty cores, as demonstrated at IDFIntel has basically taken two Core 2 Duo dies and just put them in to one package. I think Intel realises that this is cheating a little and that's why the product name is Core 2 Extreme QX6700, which apart from the subtle “Q”, doesn't mention quad anywhere in the name. This is an Extreme Edition processor, so is naturally expensive, initially priced at $999. This isn't far off the current price of an Core 2 Extreme X6800 (£643), so in comparison, it's pretty good value.Technically speaking, the fact the cores are in the same package is irrelevant. In order for data to be communicated between the two dies, the data needs to go through the North Bridge, via the Front Side Bus. Essentially, it means the performance will be identical to having two separate processors in two separate sockets.Intel's approach does have its benefits though. For one, by having all four cores in the same package, there is only one heatsink. Any boards that currently support Core 2 Duo, will support Kentsfield as well. In saying that, we had to update the BIOS on our Gigabyte 965P motherboard, in order to get it to boot. It also makes designing a decent motherboard a lot easier and means we can expect to see quad-core hitting the MicroATX platform

Intel Core 2 Duo ‘Merom’ Notebooks

Every few months computer technology moves forward. Usually it’s only a small jump, such as a latest iteration of a graphics architecture, but sometimes it’s a significant one, such as the recent introduction of Intel’s Core 2 Duo desktop processor, known internally by Intel as Conroe.Conroe’s arrival was very important as it represented the first time that Intel had brought the fruits of its new ‘Performance per Watt’ architecture direction to the desktop. Intel has been moving in this direction for some time, ever since it realised that even as its ‘NetBurst’ Pentium 4 architecture was running out of steam, its Pentium M ‘Banias’ mobile chip was going great guns.As such it turned to the Banias design team, based in Haifa, Israel, to create an architecture that was efficient and able to scale, qualities that Pentium 4 did not possess. Last year, I was lucky enough to be taken on a press tour of Intel in Israel, and met some of the team responsible for Banias, Dothan and Yonah. It was clear then that all of these were leading up to the processor released today, known then only as Merom. Though it was the last to appear on the market, Merom is actually the processor on which its desktop and workstation counterparts, Conroe (Core 2 Duo) and Woodcrest (Xeon) are based.This design architecture, which Spode talked about here is known as the Core architecture. Rather confusingly though, Core Duo, which is Yonah, is not actually Core architecture – it’s was essentially a dual-core version of Pentium M.Core architecture, with its various improvements and enhancements, actually begins with the Core 2 Duo, which in Conroe guise, has already appeared on the desktop.The reason for this is that Intel previous mobile chip, Yonah or Core Duo was so good that it didn’t need to rush it to market. However, Intel definitely needed to bring Conroe to the market as for a long time been lagging behind AMD.So how does the mobile version of Core 2 Duo (Merom) actually differ from the desktop version (Conroe)? Actually, the differences are relatively minor – though as it’s essentially the same chip that’s not really surprising. This means that it sports all the excellent features that made Conroe so powerful. This includes the Wide Dynamic Execution consisting of an increase in pipelines from three to four and the use of the Macro-Fusion technique that combines common pairs of instructions into a single instruction. Perhaps most crucially Merom employs all of the power management saving tricks that the Core architecture is designed for, such as putting many parts of the CPU to sleep when they’re not required. This enables it to have a lower Thermal Design Power (TDP) figure of 34W, compared to 65W for Conroe, which is the essential figure for a mobile CPU. Other differences are that Merom runs at a lower Front Side Bus of 667MHz, (versus 1,066MHz).

ntel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 - Quad-Core Power for Desktops

ntel's Core 2 Duo processor family bearing the new Core microarchitecture broke new grounds when it was launched a scant four months ago, catapulting Intel back into the driver's seat of the microprocessor industry, a 'show hand' that arch-rival AMD has yet to deliver a response till date. Despite the rave journalistic buzz however, the Core 2 Duo is still a dual-core processor and dual-core processors themselves aren't anything new (Intel's Pentium D and AMD's Athlon 64 X2 have been around since early 2005), not to mention that three and a half months is hardly enough time for the Core 2 Duo to really penetrate the retail channels.
The news that have been most anticipated within tech circles however, has been the talk of Intel's upcoming quad-core part, codenamed Kentsfield. During the recent IDF Fall 2006, Intel confirmed the launch and we were even given the opportunity for a hands-on performance preview, which you can check out here . Today, Kentsfield becomes official. Quad-core processing has indeed arrived in the consumer space as Intel increases its leadership position even more.
The official name of the Kentsfield series will be Core 2 Quad in the mainstream segment and the Core 2 Extreme in the enthusiast segment. The first Kentsfield processor to be available at launch will start with the top-end 2.66GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700 priced at US$999, which is the same as the 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme X6800 during its launch. The QX6700 will be followed by the mainstream 2.4GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600, tentatively set to be released first quarter of 2007 and rumored to be priced around US$851. Whether the corresponding Core 2 Duo processors will receive price cuts remain to be seen as nothing has been announced yet.
This naming convention is based on the fact that the Kentsfield processors are in the same generation as the dual-core Conroe and Allendale - hence, 'Core 2' designates the processor series and the 'Duo' or 'Quad' suffix designating the number of cores. What may be initially confusing however is that both Conroe and Kentsfield enthusiast parts will be named Core 2 Extreme. For these processors, the CPU model numbers give away its pedigree. Those with a 'Q' prefix are quad-core models, eg. Core 2 Extreme QX6700

IBM Notebook: IBM thinking smart on stimulus money

As Washington policymakers brainstorm on how to invest billions of dollars to stimulate America's economy, IBM has launched a "Smart Planet" ad campaign.
The sleek productions feature Big Blue employees touting smart traffic, smart food, smart health care, smart energy, smart water management.
"Think smart," urges IBM, which last week also introduced a new consulting service to help governments.
Since Day One, IBM CEO Sam Palmisano has been urging the president to invest in "smart infrastructure" projects, from utility grids to food distribution systems. At the request of Obama's transition team, IBM produced a study showing those smart projects could put almost a million Americans to work.
That study was conducted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a self-described non-partisan think tank that has Christopher Caine, IBM vice president of governmental programs, serving on its board of directors.
The ITIF, which is funded by tech giants like IBM and the big phone and cable companies, lobbied Congress for tax credits on investments in broadband and other technologies, including smart-grid — brimming with Big Blue expertise.
The broadband tax breaks were cut from the stimulus bill, but the smart-grid incentives remained.
That means if IBM is awarded these projects, it will not only get stimulus money, but tax breaks on the stimulus money.
For Big Blue, that's smart thinking.
Christine Young covers IBM. She can be reached at 346-3140 or cyoung@th-record.com. IBM Notebook appears Mondays.

NetApp dumps Filerview for new model

NetApp's FilerView management product is going to be replaced by NetApp System Manager, a Windows application built as a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) 3.0 snap-in, and available in a few months.
The concept behind it is to provide management of one or many NetApp arrays through a simple and easy to use GUI. FilerView is HTTP-based and has been around in NetApp for a long time. According to NetApp company bloggers, customers deserve a more modern interface.
The new NSM product will be included with all FAS arrays, starting with FAS2000 and 3000s, and has a Windows Server 2008 look and feel. It supports "discovery, setup, FCP, iSCSI, CIFS, NFS, deduplication, provisioning, thin provisioning, snapshot and configuration management of multiple NetApp storage systems from a single pane of glass".
It's reckoned that a FAS array can be set up for the first time in around five minutes, with initial system configuration only needing two screen window pages. Subsequently FAS arrays can be set up in two minutes. It's said that there is auto-discovery for Active Directory, LDAP, DNS and DHCP. Add a host name to NSM and "you're up and running with all licensed protocols".
NSM is integrated with the Windows System Tray and will alert a sysadmin to monitored NetApp system problems.
NetApp best practise settings for its arrays come with the product. Sysadmins will be able to use wizards to create LUNs, volumes and aggregates, with only three clicks needed for aggregate creation. We're told that "all disks in the aggregate are balanced across multiple back-end loops".
There is a specific wizard to support provisioning for VMware systems. When creating an NFS datastore in a VMware environment, "the process is similar to creating a volume, however, the wizard will also ask for the VMkernel IP address of the ESX host(s) so the NFS volume gets exported. The dedup option is also there."
IBM N-Series system users will get NSM too, and beta NSM builds will soon be available on the NetApp online Beta Community.

NetApp gives MetroCluster a good going-over

NetApp has updated its MetroCluster software to support storage array failover to remote site storage in VMware environments.
MetroCluster is software that, using replication, synchronously mirrors data writes from a primary NetApp FAS array to one in a remote site, across a campus or metro area, up to 100km away. It runs in the NetApp array controller and will failover user access to the remote site if a component in the array, below the controller, fails. The NetApp arrays in the primary and secondary sites form a high-availability cluster and are seen as a single resource by accessing servers.
NetApp says that, as a result of integration testing with VMware, the MetroCluster product now offers continuous data availability in VMware environments with failover accomplished in seconds. No update to NetApp's Data ONTAP operating system is involved.
It also facilitates transparent (to the users) software and hardware upgrades of a NetApp storage array with user data accesses re-directed to the remote site during the upgrade process and then returned to the primary array. Additionally the MetroCluster software has been integrated with NetApp's ASIS deduplication to reduce the amount of stored data.
The software works with VMware's ESX server and any storage array failover is transparent to ESX except in the situation where the array controller itself fails. In that case it cannot carry out its failover duties which have to be performed manually.
NetApp's SnapMirror software can be used to extend data availability across distances longer than 100km by using asynchronous mirroring.

What's next for NetApp hardware?

NetApp has confirmed it is working on new hardware platforms.
Rich Clifton, a senior VP at NetApp, provided a glimpse of NetApp's hardware direction this week at VMworld, as The Register sought to determine what storage OEMS would want with a PCIe switch.
Clifton said there would be phased ONTAP G announcements, suggesting that functionality could be delivered in stages. ONTAP 8 delivers clustering to the NetApp world and is the merger of the existing 7G and GX ONTAP variants, ONTAP being the operating system for the bulk of NetApp's storage products.
The senior VP said he knew nothing about PCIe use by NetApp but did say that any interconnect is chosen first on three parameters: bandwidth, latency, and cost. He said that current FAS 6000 clustered pair products use an InfiniBand point-to-point link between the two storage processors. In fact, NetApp is a significant shipper of InfiniBand links because of this.
Virtensys, another operation we spoke to at VMWorld, makes a VMX-5000 switch that connects to X86/PCIe servers by external PCIe cables. This lets them share network adapters (such as FC, IB, and Ethernet) as well as storage mounted in the switch. The attached servers each see virtual adapters and virtual direct-attached storage and think it's all local.
Marek Piekarski, chief technical officer for VirtenSys, says it's talking to potential server and storage OEMs. It's understood one server OEM has provisionally signed up. After NetApp was introduced into the conversation, he said that we could think of a scheme of storage processors in a matrix connected by PCIe. He didn't actually say they were talking to NetApp though, so what follows is supposition.
There's no need for a VirtensSys switch product in this environment unless the storage processors connect to the switch and share the I/O cards in it and/or use the switch to simplify a mess of point-to-point links, meaning more than two storage processors, Perhaps much more than two, heading towards five or more.
Piekarski said they were working on a second generation of the switch technology to add inter-processor communications capability so it would have InfiniBand-like low latency.
This nets out to a possible high-end NetApp FAS-bigger-than-6000 box which has a cluster of five or more storage processors linked by a low-latency PCIe cloud. All would talk to the outside world via a VirtenSys gen 2 switch providing the IPC capability, and there would be shared adapter use so that the box could talk FC, FCoE, iSCSI, or NAS to connected servers.
Each storage processor would, logically, have its own storage enclosures with, potentially, fast disk, slow disk, and perhaps solid state drives in them. Some storage processors might, though, be doing storage management things and not actually manage their own local storage.How about that for an ONTAP 8 box?
If NetApp were to vary the HW specs of the storage processors, it has an obvious way to have faster/slower versions.
Getting back to VMworld, such a new box would have VMware vStorage API interface code added to it, so that it could play well in VMware's shiny new vSphere data centre environment.
The net net of this mental Lego construction exercise is that a FAS 7000 or 8000 with clustered storage processors could be announced in the 2009/2010 timeframe. It would be modular storage but go way beyond the classic dual-controller arrays we have gotten used to and take NetApp up into the Symmetrix area and/or into the Data Direct/Isilon product area of very fast clustered storage.
Take this with a pinch of salt though. VirtenSys could be talking to other storage OEMs instead of or as well as NetApp.

Sectors - The feud continues: NetApp slams EMC's dedupe plans

The brawling has moved the Ruptured Monkey blog to assign wrestler-stye names for some of the loudest bloggers, as you can read here.
If you are tired of the feuding and fighting and want some actual information about EMC, check out this post about RecoverPoint objectives from virtualtacit.
Another post comes from a blogger we have wanted to feature for a while: the Lone Sysadmin. We imagine this blogger high in the saddle, rounding up lost servers out on the prairie. Or maybe not: this post sees him explore the murky world of file deletion.
If you feel that HP is the new IBM – colossal, competent, charmless – its storage blogs won't change your mind. Check out this mild effort on storage virtualisation.
We wanted to finish this week with some HDS blogs, but something is badly borked with its site: posts that appear in our RSS reader die once we hit Hitachi's site. Sigh .... we need to point to a press release instead to tell you about the executive reshuffle there and straight to the IDC document about replicated storage being a bigger problem than new unstructured data that is the subject of a Hu Yoshida post. Actually, we may not need to bother with that one: the analysts told us about this one a couple of years back.

Apple beats Intel to Nehalem-EP chip launch

Ponder this: Is an Intel product launch still a launch, if the product debuts very publicly in an Apple computer?
I won't presume to answer that question. But the fact is that Intel will launch Nehalem-EP server processors later this month, despite their manifestation Tuesday in the new Mac Pro under their official model names: the Xeon 3500 and 5500.
The chips--in their desktop variant known as the Core i7--are being offered in eight-core or four-core configurations and, like all Nehalam-architecture processors, come with an integrated memory controller for (theoretically) better performance. (Intel's Core architecture does not integrate the memory controller.)
Other Nehalem-architecture features include: Hyper-Threading for, according to Apple, "up to 16 virtual cores" (which improves multitasking), and Turbo Boost Technology, which dynamically increases the processor's frequency, as needed.
The Mac Pro also offers high-end Nvidia and ATI graphics. Systems can be configured with either Nvidia GeForce GT 120 or ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics chips.

Intel’s domination continues

Intel, the 2007 channel champion in the processor category, widened its lead over AMD to emerge a winner.

Intel revamped its channel strategy in the second quarter by introducing a second tier to distribute its products. The vendor also launched Atom processors, creating a new market of computing devices—netbooks and nettops. In contrast, AMD had another dismal year. Within the first five months of 2008, AMD’s Director of Channels and Managing Director put in their papers. Meanwhile, AMD’s Phenom processors and Opteron processors (code named Barcelona) received a luke-warm response from both partners and customers.

There was just one silver lining for AMD: there are still some very staunch partners who swear by its products and technologies.

Price-performancePrice, performance and features are important criteria for processors. Both Intel and AMD raised the stakes with several new platform launches in 2009 with the former launching two new platforms, Nehalem and Atom, and the later launching its ambitious Shanghai platform to take on Nehalem. Intel positioned its Pentium Dual Core and Core2Duo processors in the mainstream PC market, maintaining a price range of Rs 2,600-Rs 7,000 throughout the year. AMD offered its Athlon 64, Athlon X2 and Phenom X3 processors at prices approximately 10-30 percent lower than comparable Intel chips, system makers feel that the final difference on the assembled product was less than Rs 1,000, a premium most customers were willing to cough up. AMD was successfully positioning its low-cost, low-energy Semperon processors for entry-level markets.By Q3 2008, Intel started offering Atom processors bundled with motherboards at prices less than a typical Semperon CPU-motherboard combo. In the high-end PC market, Intel Quad Core processors more than matched AMD’s Phenom X4 and even low-end Opterons.

In the server class of processors, system builders felt that Xeons scored over Opterons. Though AMD seems to have bridged the gap in terms of perceived price-performance by launching Phenom II and the third generation of Opterons (Shanghai), system makers feel that Intel’s new Core i7 (Nehalem) will take technology leadership away again.

The Yeomen of the Guard, Oxford University G&S Society, OFS Studio

The Yeomen of the Guard is the odd one out in the Savoy canon; it was the nearest Sullivan came to writing grand opera (something he later achieved without Gilbert, with limited success) and the only tragedy. The Oxford University G&S Society’s artistic director Sally Outen has opted for a traditional approach, with an emphasis on the opera’s dark, brutal nature. The result is a pleasingly sympathetic and uncomplicated production, which, despite the ever-present sense of foreboding, still allows Gilbert’s irrepressible humour to burst through.

The most memorable performance comes from Zosia Kuczyñska, who sings strongly and beautifully as Phoebe Meryll, and captures the fun, mischievous side of the character to perfection. I also liked Robert Hazle’s finger-twisting, nail-biting Wilfred Shadbolt, and he wrings every ounce of humour from the shambling, self-deluded Jailer. Some of the best moments of the night came from the interplay between these two, particularly the ‘wooing’ scene, in which Phoebe uses all her charms on her loathsome admirer so that she can steal the keys to Fairfax’s cell.

David Jones is fleet of both foot and tongue as Jack Point, delivering the patter songs with admirable ease, while Alexandra Coghlan sings sweetly, though not strongly, as Elsie Maynard. But, with my pedant’s hat on, I must take issue with the phrasing of their opening duet. The correct phrasing in the verses is ‘…Who fled from the mocking throng, O!/It’s a song of a merryman…’ etc – NOT ‘…Who fled from the mocking throng/O, it’s a song of a merryman…’. The punctuation in the libretto makes it clear how this should be sung, yet this incorrect phrasing is repeated throughout. Why?

Among the rest of the cast, Katherine Fairhurst’s strongly-sung Dame Carruthers stands out, and there are pleasing performances from Thomas Wade as Fairfax, Michael Peyton-Jones as the Lieutenant and Stephen Smith as Sergeant Meryll. The chorus sings and acts throughout with great energy and conviction. What lets the production down, unfortunately, is the orchestra. I can forgive a few fluffed notes, but on the opening night the overture was riddled with them, and it was taken at a rather pedestrian tempo. There also needed to be greater cohesion between orchestra and singers, who parted company on several occasions.

But there is much to enjoy in this production – it is beautifully costumed, full of fun and the company’s enthusiasm is unquestionable.

Oxford University Press Has Its Own Super Pfund

Niko Pfund, the 43-year-old publisher of Oxford University Press’ academic and trade division, has had one occasion after another during the past few weeks to squeal with delight.

First: two Oxford Daily Show appearances, with The Least Worst Place author Karen Greenberg on Feb. 4 and Two Billion Cars author Daniel Sperling a week later. Then: a Lincoln Prize for Craig Symonds’ new book Lincoln and His Admirals, and separately, a full-page rave in the Feb. 22 The New York Times Book Review for Beverly Gage’s The Day Wall Street Exploded, which gave Mr. Pfund such a thrill that he felt compelled, shortly after reading it, to apologize for his “completely insufferable happiness.”

On Monday night, Mr. Pfund, a handsome, blue-eyed fellow who has been with Oxford for almost 10 years, really went flying, having just flipped through a copy of the new Thomas Ricks book on Iraq and discovered that one of Oxford’s authors—David Kilcullen, whose book on the surge comes out this month—is cited multiple times in its pages and designated with admiration as an extremely influential figure in counterinsurgency policy.

“Check it,” Mr. Pfund wrote in an email to five of his colleagues, before quoting all the parts in Mr. Ricks’ book where Mr. Kilcullen is mentioned and concluding that the “extremely influential figure” bit would be a valuable thing to secure for the back panel of the book’s next printing. “Very, very nice,” Mr. Pfund wrote.

But literary laurels aren’t everything. Oxford’s New York office laid off 60 people last month, reducing its workforce by almost 10 percent, and library and university budgets will likely be slashed this summer when they get recalculated for the first time since the recession started in earnest, a development that will send a delayed shudder through the university presses.

“We are struggling, so I don’t want to paint anything like a rosy picture!” Mr. Pfund admits. But he also argues that Oxford’s culture of controlled print runs, restrained advances, diverse online offerings and a commitment to print-on-demand technology will keep him above water.

“In order to be a good publisher, you do have to succumb sometimes to hopefulness over experience,” Mr. Pfund said by phone on Monday. “You have to say, ‘O.K., this time is different,’ or, ‘This book is so good that it’s going to overcome all these obstacles.’ But I just think that we allow ourselves to do that way, way too often.”

He recalled a vaguely morbid game he and his friend Tim Bartlett (now an editor at Random House) used to play at the London Book Fair when the two of them were colleagues at New York University Press: visiting the wholesalers who sold remaindered books and looking through their titles in search of those that had been remaindered in the largest quantities.

“The dealers would write in pencil on the first page of each book the number of copies they were selling,” Mr. Pfund said. “One year Tim found one, and it was the autobiography of—shit, what was her name? Who was the sexpot on Taxi? Marilu Henner. It was the autobiography of Marilu Henner, and there were like 32,000 copies all being remaindered. And Tim looked at me and said, ‘You know, it’s a sobering thought that three or four years ago, some editor hung up the phone in New York and pumped his fist in the air and said, ‘Yes! I got the Marilu Henner autobiography!’”

At Oxford, even the books that are intended to reach a broad, general audience usually don’t see initial print runs above 7,500, while the really specialized stuff—see The Squid Giant Synapse: A Model for Chemical Transmission—hovers around 250. When something works, Oxford goes back to press again and again until demand tapers off, as it did with Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion, which saw almost a dozen reprints in its first year.

According to Mr. Pfund, the team responsible for monitoring inventory and working with the sales staff at Oxford to figure out print runs is “reordering in ever smaller and more frequent increments” in hopes of keeping returns low, and as a result, books like Marshall Goldman’s Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia and Joseph Nye’s The Power to Lead continue to sell instead of coming back in boxes.

In a “previous day,” Mr. Pfund said, those were books that might have been shipped in batches of eight or ten thousand right out of the gate, and more often than not, they’d sit in stores for nine months or so, at which point anywhere from 25 percent to 40 percent of them would come back.

These days, that doesn’t happen at Oxford, and between that and the fact that a couple of titles—namely Massacre at Mountain Meadows and 1994’s Defiance, which was turned into a movie last year by Ed Zwick—broke out head and shoulders above the rest, the house’s trade sales at the end of January were up almost 10 percent for the year.

Big print runs are tempting, though, as they guarantee that a book that experiences an unexpected uptick in demand will be in stock. If Barack Obama is photographed reading a book you’ve published and suddenly everyone wants to read it, you’re basically forfeiting the opportunity if you don’t make sure the thing is widely available.

Only relatively recently, Mr. Pfund said, did print-on-demand technology become sophisticated and cost-effective enough to avoid the big print runs, and today, something like 10,000 previously out-of-print titles from Oxford are available to anyone who wants them.

“When I started out, we had between six and eight thousand books for which we had some demand and that were just in this purgatory of ‘out of stock indefinitely,’” Mr. Pfund said. “Basically readers and booksellers would ask, ‘Hey, can you guys sell us this book?’ And we would reply, ‘No, sorry, can’t do it! Can’t reprint it! Economies of scale! Our bad! Off you go.”

Mr. Pfund said that the print-on-demand business has grown to the point where it brings in “several million dollars a year,” though he would not give a precise figure.

“It is inexcusable to be sitting on this content and not to liberate it somehow if people want it. Especially if you’re a university press, for God’s sake! That’s your job. That’s why you exist.”

Mr. Pfund said that Oxford’s expansive online offerings--including numerous subject-based reference databases and dynamic subscription packages like Oxford Scholarship Online--give users access to scholarly monographs and academic journals, and are part of the house's “raison d’être” as well.

As he put it in an email: “OUP’s challenge is going to be how to transition to an online world where we’re providing the same kind of authoritative service for people as we did when we weren’t all choking on the firehose of data that keeps coming at us faster and faster. We’ve gone from an environment of information scarcity to one of complete overload in just under a generation, and so it’s not a question of more data but of better data.”

Over lunch last Friday at a vegan noodle bar around the corner from Oxford’s offices on 35th and Madison, Mr. Pfund talked about big advances, and why the editors who work for him never offer the sort of exorbitant sums so common in auctions involving big commercial houses.

“You can make all these arguments, as all of us do when we overpay for books, but you’ve gotta attach some parameters of rationality and reason around those numbers!” he said. “I’m just completely unsympathetic when people say, ‘Oh my God, times are so tough.’ But times are so tough because we make them so tough, you know?”

The fact that Oxford has no corporate owners to answer to—the fact that Mr. Pfund’s bosses, as he put it, are academics, and don’t expect anything like 15 percent annual growth—means that Oxford does plenty by just surviving. Paging through Oxford’s 2008 catalog, Mr. Pfund said he saw only a few books that had “completely bombed.”

“People conflate intellectual capital with financial capital,” he said later. “[Laurence Tribe’s new book, The Invisible Constitution] is gonna be one of the most important books we publish this year, but it’s not going to make anybody rich, you know?”

lneyfakh@observer.com