We’d agree that the Mac Mini has a more pleasing design than any of its Windows competitors, and you may prefer Apple’s OS X to Vista, in which case your decision is already made. We’re less sure about the new Mac Mini’s value proposition, which was a challenge for earlier models. Hopefully we can run [...]

Google, of course, is different. As a general rule, Google embraces openness. Perhaps the browser is just a different beast, given its critical importance to Google’s services. Entrusting the gateway to Google’s Web to third parties may simply not be viable.

While Google’s one-download assortment of Google code and third-party applications–the Google Pack–used to install the [...]

And at first blush, the theory makes a lot of sense. Apple acquired P.A. Semi earlier this year to put CEO Don Dobberpuhl and his team of designers to work on developing new chips for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which currently use chips manufactured by Samsung, Marvell, and NXP based on the ARM [...]

Samsung reportedly is taking a look at SanDisk as a means to reduce its NAND flash memory costs, given that it pays the chipmaker roughly $354 million in annual licensing fees, according to the report. SanDisk is a strong player in the market for NAND flash memory, which is found in a variety of digital [...]

HD DVD players fared even worse–player unit sales dropped 13 percent from January to February, and 65 percent from February to March–which was expected. Toshiba stopped production of HD DVD units in February, and the format’s promotional group disbanded in March.

So what does this mean for Blu-ray player vendors? Why haven’t sales experienced any [...]

“The up and down currency is too crazy. We have to buy chips (for our product) from Texas Instruments. It’s harder to buy when currency is not stable,” she said. Plus, the U.S. is a major market for SBNTech’s products, and a depressed economy in there could lead to fewer sales for them.

“I am not [...]

Public-private line
In discussing policy and technology, Immelt and Schmidt said that the clean-energy field has been underserved.

Last year, its Google.org philanthropic arm launched a program called RE<C (for renewable energy less than coal) to make clean energy more cost-competitive.

In the area of geothermal, GE and Google will create visualization software and power conversion technology. Google [...]

The e-mail to customers also advises that they have the right to obtain a police report and may also request a security freeze on their credit report file.
LendingTree’s internal security uncovered the security breach and the company quickly reported it to authorities and made several security system changes. A LendingTree spokeswoman declined [...]

Although the final rules aren’t out, there are some intriguing hints about what they might include. One SEC statement says that “information appearing on company Web sites does not need to satisfy a printer-friendly standard or be in a format comparable to paper-based information, unless the commission’s rules explicitly require it.” Translated: that could mean [...]

Illinois Sen. Everett Dirksen is remembered for the quip, “A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon, you’re talking real money.” (Truth be told, it’s unclear whether those were his exact words, but he’s got that tagline for posterity.)

I was thinking of the former senator after listening to Microsoft’s chief financial officer [...]