Aug 12, 2010

Nvidia’s Q2 Financial Phone-a-thon

Pretty much what you expected… and more

With the bowl of punch nearly gone, miscellaneous party favors littering the floor, and S|A writers stumbling about in various states of sobriety, it is time to settle down and discuss the results of Nvidia’s recently concluded Q2, FY 2011 earnings conference call.  Much of the information we already knew or surmised after the lowered revenue guidance bombshell they dropped on us in late July, but half the fun of these kinds of calls are the molehills-turned-mountain that companies create to keep investor’s wallets open.  Let’s start hiking.
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Aug 7, 2010

HTC makes more money than you

Four straight months of record sales and straight on til morning

HTC, the “quietly brilliant” company from Taoyuan City Taiwan has briefly cast aside its purported persona to let the world know just how awesome it is.  Between pointed bursts of Tarzan noises and chest thumping we were informed of HTC’s four-month  hot streak of successive sales records, as well as  gross-profits-after-tax amounting to a cool NT$ 8.64B (approx. $273M USD) for their most recent quarter.
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Aug 5, 2010

Asus Rampage III Formula outed

Looks like a good contended for the enthusiast market

ASUS’ R.O.G. SERIES of motherboards have always been out of reach in terms of cost for your average consumer, but have been hugely popular with the enthusiast and high-end gamer market. The latest addition to the series has just made an appearance online and it’s yet another X58 model, although this time a somewhat more affordable board than Asus’ Rampage III Extreme which is a $380 board.
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Aug 2, 2010

HP settles with U.S. DOJ over 2007 fraud suit

Mark Hurd hands over his lunch money

After over 3 years of running around the legal jungle gym, the United Stated Department of Justice has finally caught up with Hewlett-Packard, the world’s current leading provider of technological stuff, and reached a settlement after rubbing HP’s face in the sand a couple of times [ DOJ -1 | HP -0 ].  The settlement lays to rest 2007 allegations of kickbacks and fraud related to government contracts negotiated by technology contractor Accenture over the past decade.
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Jul 24, 2010

Storage-n-Harddrives. Where are we and where are we going?

Grab a fifth or your favorite 70 proof or higher beverage and read on

Recently hard drives and the storage industry in general has been a tough thing to write about, because frankly, nobody really cares!  It’s much more fun and exciting to get caught up in the hype surrounding the latest multi-core CPUs running at orgasmic clock speeds, or exotic video cards that need their own power reactors but have enough FLOPs under the hood to calculate the single precision meaning of life.  In fact the only time we give our trusty storage things a second thought (and exhaust our dictionaries of naughty words) is when they die and take our data along with them.  Well, to help remedy this journalistic conundrum, we’ve developed a drinking game to aid in your consumption of this article.  Every time you see a storage related suffix (MB, GB, TB, etc.) you take a shot.  Ready?  Good, because you’re up to three already.
UPDATED
 
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Jul 12, 2010

GTX 460, Cash Cow or Market Share Tourniquet?

Component Price Breakdown

What a difference a “4” makes.  The NDA on Nvidia’s new midrange GTX 460 (GF104) cards was lifted last night to a general reception of “right performance at the right price”.  No doubt, after reading over many different reviews this card appears to be the real deal at the $200 price point (for now). Despite the glowing reviews however one nagging question remained; considering that GF104 has an estimated die size of 320mm2  (which is nearly 96% of AMD’s high end Cypress part at 334mm2), can Nvidia actually make money on this part, or is it simply designed to put pressure on the market share laceration that’s been bleeding out lately.
 
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