Bowes Consulting

The long-awaited restart of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been postponed until the winter of 2009. CERN attributed the delay to a number of technical difficulties, including vacuum leaks in two sectors of the LHC that had been cooled down to 80 K.

Source:End of the world postponed until Christmas

If you can’t wait for Windows 7 until October 22 and if you are among a
select list of Microsoft customers you may be able to download the
operating system RTM as early as August 6. The company also confirmed
that it will be offering a family pack version of Windows 7, which will
allow users to install the software on up to three computers.

Source:Microsoft Windows 7 family pack confirmed, RTM available on August 6

Microsoft has announced plans to create a series of anime short films based on the Halo universe. Halo Legends will be produced by Microsoft’s 343 Industries and is expected to feature “creative direction” from anime pioneer Shinji Aramaki of Appleseed EX Machina fame and Mamoru Oshii, director of the Ghost in the Shell movies.

Source:Microsoft unleashes Halo Legends on Xbox Live

Intel has adopted a “more advanced” 34-nanometer (nm) manufacturing process for its NAND flash-based Solid State Drive (SSD) product line. The move to 34nm is expected to lower SSD prices by up to 60 percent due to a reduced die size and advanced engineering design.

Source:Intel lowers SSD prices with 34nm manufacturing process

Analyst Opinion – It can be entertaining to watch companies that have
learned to manage expectations. They set low bars, generally fail at
what they attempt, and yet the folks in charge of the programs often
get bonuses and rewards as if they had successfully executed. I believe
the Windows Vista mess was mainly caused by Microsoft’s behavior.
Similar behavior effectively killed a long line of companies starting
with DEC and running all the way to Sun. Google’s new Chrome OS looks
to be another example of…

Source:Google Chrome OS: Gcrap reveals the next Netscape

Apple has announced financial results for its fiscal 2009 third quarter ended June 27, 2009. The company posted revenue of $8.34 billion and a net quarterly profit of $1.23 billion, or $1.35 per diluted share. These results compare to revenue of $7.46 billion and net quarterly profit of $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share, in the year-ago quarter.

Source:Apple revenue defies global economic recession

Samsung today announced the first commercially available mobile
Internet device (MID) with WiMax connectivity in the U.S. Conceivably,
this is much closer to the type of device we would have imagined
Microsoft Origami concept and the UMPC to look like, even if it does
not take much to predict that Samsung’s new MID is dead right out of
the gate.

Source:UMPC, take 2: Samsung touts first WiMax MID

Seagate reported a loss of $81 million on revenue of $2.35 billion for
the second quarter of this year. However, the company said that it is
seeing signs that the storage market is improving and it is making
progress “toward the goal of returning to sustained GAAP profitability
as soon as possible.”

Source:Seagate ships 40.6 million HDDs in Q2, loses $81 million

Toshiba may finally concede in the high-def disc format war if we
believe a media report claiming that the company may roll out its first
Blu-ray player before the end of the year. Of course, if true, this was
not so much a technology issue as the company has had access to Blu-ray
products since early 2006, but a strategic and certainly emotional
decision to give in to the format it so hard tried to beat.

Source:Toshiba may surrender to Blu-ray, finally

Yahoo reported revenues of of $1.573 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2009, a decrease of 13 percent from the second quarter of 2008. Net income per diluted share for the second quarter of 2009 was $0.10, compared to $0.09 for the second quarter of 2008.

Source:Yahoo confirms decline in revenue