New and speed MacBooks from Apple

Apple on Tuesday updated its consumer MacBook computers adding faster processors, 1GB RAM and larger hard drives in all models.

The new MacBooks come in three models — a white 2.0GHz and 2.16GHz, and a black 2.16 GHz model. All of the MacBooks include a built-in iSight video camera and the latest generation of 802.11n wireless networking. The notebooks also come with iLife ‘06 and Mac OS X 10.4.9 Tiger.

As per the data from market research firm NPD, Apple now holds more than 10 percent of the U.S. notebook market.

The MacBook, which turns one year old tomorrow, has seen a significant speed boost since its introduction. The new models run between 24 percent and 37 percent faster than the original models.

The 2.0GHz 13-inch white MacBook costs $1,099 and comes with an 80GB hard drive and a slot-loading Combo drive; the $1,299 2.16GHz white MacBook comes with a 120GB hard drive and a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support; and the $1,499 2.16GHz 13-inch black MacBook has a 160GB drive and a slot-load 8x SuperDrive with double-layer support. There are also several build-to-order options available from the online Apple Store, including larger hard drives.

Apple explained that instead of moving to Intel’s new Santa Rosa chip for this update, the company decided to focus on the value of the MacBook line.

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Thermal numbers

Conventionally generated electricity ranges between 5 and 18 cents per kilowatt hour (the amount of money to get a kilowatt of power for an hour) but in most places it's below 10 cents, according to the Energy Information Agency. Solar thermal costs around 15 to 17 cents a kilowatt hour, according to statistics from Schott, a German company that makes solar thermal equipment.

A solar thermal plant would need a facility to store the heat harvested in the day by its sunlight-concentrating mirrors so that the heat could be used to generate electricity at night.

The plant, ideally, should be capable of generating about 300 megawatts of electricity. Those plants can churn out electricity at about 13 cents a kilowatt.

That's still a relatively high price, so utilities would need to group two, three or more 300-megawatt plants together to share operational resources. They could share control rooms or spare parts. That would knock the price closer to 11 cents a kilowatt hour.

The plants need to be around 500 megawatts in size. Most solar thermal plants right now aren't that big. The 22-year-old thermal plant in California's Mojave Desert is 354 megawatts. Utility company Southern California Edison is erecting a 500-megawatt plant scheduled to open in 2009.

By 2014, solar thermal plants located in the Southwest could crank out nearly 3 gigawatts of power, estimated Travis Bradford of the Prometheus Institute for Sustainable Development, a nonprofit based in Cambridge, Mass. That's enough for about 1 million homes.

Costs can then be reduced further by building the plants close to consumers. It costs about $1.5 million per mile for transmission lines, according to statistics from Acciona Solar Power, which owns solar thermal plants. Solar thermal plants work best in arid deserts that get little rainfall. Since some of the fastest-growing cities in the world are located in sun belts, that's less of a problem than it used to be.

But getting to that point isn't easy. Land-use hearings and permits can drag on for years while construction costs rise. The amount of land required can be an issue too: the 354-megawatt plant in California occupies 1,000 acres. Larger plants would need more land, while smaller plants result in higher costs per kilowatt hour.

Even if all of these factors could be completely optimized, solar thermal power plants would likely not produce electricity at a level that would compete with coal plants. Coal plants, however, will likely be hit with carbon taxes in the near future, which will make solar thermal more competitive. Still, at less than 10 cents a kilowatt, solar thermal would be competitive with electricity from gas-powered plants.

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Secret of Apple Design

Apple, Inc. has made an art of not talking about its products. Fans, journalists, and rumormongers who love it or love to hate it have long had to practice a sort of Kremlinology to gather the merest hints as to what is coming next out of Cupertino.

A case in point is this story, which was to be about the iPhone--about how an innovative and gorgeous piece of technology was conceived, designed, and produced by the vaunted industrial-design team at Apple. Along the way, it would address the larger question of how one company can so consistently excel at making products that become icons, win design awards, and inspire customers.

The full article is at http://www.technologyreview.com/Biztech/18621/

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Steve Jobs: Top paid CEO

Steve Jobs of Apple was the top-paid US chief executive last year in 2006, receiving some 646 million dollars, Forbes magazine said.

Even though Jobs was paid a nominal one-dollar salary, the value of his stock options and other benefits made him the highest compensated CEO, the magazine said.

Forbes, in releasing its survey late Thursday, said the CEOs of America's 500 biggest companies got a collective 38 percent pay raise last year, to 7.5 billion dollars, or an average 15.2 million dollars.

Exercised stock options accounted for the main component of pay, or about 48 percent, Forbes said.

Number two on the list was Occidental Petroleum's Ray Irani with 321.6 million dollars, followed by Barry Diller at InterActive Corp (295 million), Fidelity National's William Foley (179 million) and Terry Semel of Yahoo (174 million).

Michael Dell, who retook the reins at Dell Computer, was sixth with a compensation package worth 153 million dollars.

With an outcry growing over extravagant pay packages for US corporate executives, Forbes said the highest-paid CEOs were not always those that delivered the most to shareholders.

Forbes said by its analysis, Apple's Jobs was 36th. Topping the list was John Bucksbaum of General Growth Properties, a real-estate investment trust. Over the past six years, Bucksbaum was paid 723,000 dollars a year while delivering a 39 percent annual return to shareholders.

At the bottom of the performance/pay rankings was Richard Manoogian, CEO of housing products maker Masco, with a six-year annual return of five percent and a paycheck averaging 11 million dollars a year

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Thumb drives, portable storage devices : A security concern

A worker calls up a sensitive investor list and downloads it on her thumb drive, slips it into her pocket, and walks out, smiling and waving to her boss and the security officer stationed at the front door.

This is just one of the scenarios that security professionals and IT managers are increasingly worried about. According to one recent study, IT managers said portable storage devices, such as thumb drives and MP3 players, have surpassed even malware to become a top concern.
The study, which polled 370 IT professionals, showed that 38.4% of IT managers say portable storage devices are their top security concern. That's up from 25.7% in 2006.

To make matters worse, 80% of respondents admitted that their organizations don't currently have effective measures in place to combat the unauthorized use of portable devices. And 43.2% cited no control at all. Only 8.6% have a total ban on portable devices.

A worker easily could download corporate information -- sales figures, customer lists, marketing plans -- onto a small storage device, slip it into their bag or even a pocket, and just walk out the door with it. It makes stealing information much easier since it's not a matter of printing anything out or even walking out of the office with a laptop slung over a shoulder.
While IT managers fear what users might do with a portable storage device, they also really like them for themselves.

The study showed that 65% of IT managers use a USB flash drive on a daily basis.
"Portable devices do have a function in the workplace," said Piwonka. "They are an easy way to share, transfer, and store information. Managers need to create an acceptable use policy and share it with their employees to further control the handling of sensitive data."

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Students set sights on a job at Google

Up-and-comers are dying to get jobs at Google. But now it's official.

The Mountain View-based search giant was ranked the No. 1 place MBA students want to work at, according to Universum's annual Ideal Employer Survey, which was released last week. Google toppled McKinsey's 12-year reign as the most desirable place for newly minted MBAers to hang their diplomas.

Universum, a global employer branding consultancy, asked 5,451 MBA students from 43 prominent business schools to list the top five companies they'd like to work for. They could chose from a list of 186 companies that had been selected by students over the years as well as write in their own candidates. The write-in votes catapulted Google from No. 129 in 2005 to No. 2 in 2006.

This year's results show IT companies gained ground overall. Google was preferred by 20.58 percent of respondents, which is 6 percent more than last year. Apple was applauded with 10.78 percent, inching up to No. 6 from last year's No. 7 spot. Microsoft garnered 7.82 percent, propelling it to No. 7 from No. 16. And Yahoo snagged 4.80 percent, moving up to No. 22 from No. 26.

Other local companies lagged behind last year's spots. EBay slid to No. 42 from No. 37. And Intel sunk to No. 44 from No. 25.

The surveyed MBAs cited "industry leadership," "attractive locations," and "innovation" as the top three factors they considered in picking their ideal employer.

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Microsoft thinking of buying Yahoo!

Microsoft Corp. has stepped up its pursuit of a deal to buy Yahoo Inc., two newspapers reported on Friday, as the two companies reenter talks to strike a deal amid huge growth from rival Google Inc.

Yahoo shares jumped 14.6 percent to $32.20 in electronic trading on Friday, while Microsoft shares fell 1.4 percent to $30.53.

The two companies have held informal deal talks over the years. But the latest approach comes as Microsoft seeks to ink a deal in the wake of Google's expansion.

The New York Post reported early on Friday that Microsoft made an offer to buy Yahoo a few months ago, but Yahoo spurned the advances. The paper, putting a price tag of $50 billion on a Yahoo takeover, said that deal discussions continue between the two companies. Investment bank Goldman Sachs is advising on the process, the paper said. The bank declined to comment.
The Wall Street Journal followed with its own story, saying that the two companies are in early-stage talks about a merger or some kind of link-up.

The renewed talks are a sign of Google's power, the Journal said, and are also a sign of problems over the past year with in-house efforts at Yahoo and Microsoft. A deal could help Microsoft attract advertisers to its online businesses.

Google agreed to buy DoubleClick Inc. last month for $3.1 billion, accelerating a push into the graphic ad market. Google beat out Microsoft and Yahoo to win the deal, sources said.

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Navigation in Cell Phones

After hitting alarm clock makers and camera manufacturers, the cell phone industry has a new target--personal-navigation device makers.

Handset makers see navigation as one of the next major value-adding offerings and even at this very early stage, analysts say the annual market for phone navigation is worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The world's top handset maker, Nokia, started to sell its first navigation phone, the N95, a month ago, and other top vendors are expected to follow shortly, hoping to make 2007 the breakthrough year for cell phone navigation.

The N95, with a $950 price tag, is not within reach of the masses despite early reports of strong sales, but the Finnish firm aims to bring GPS-positioning chips to a wide array of its products.

The GPS technology enables handset makers to bypass mobile phone network operators and at least some of the navigation phones can be used for routing when not connected to operators' networks.

Operators would get a share of the business when real-time data traffic starts to grow. The handset makers hope that people will use phones to find restaurants nearby, although car-navigation firms have already started to offer road data.

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Dell to offer Ubuntu Linux on PCs, laptops

Only 10 weeks after asking customers what products they'd like to see, Dell Inc. today announced that its upcoming Linux desktop PCs and laptops will be preloaded with Ubuntu Linux. They are slated to be avilable by the end of this month.

In postings on Dell's IdeaStorm and Dell2Dell Web sites today, the company said it moved quickly to offer the Linux-based hardware because of customer interest. In February, Dell had set up an "IdeaStorm" Web site to get feedback from customers about what products they wanted. In late March, after hearing from more than 100,000 users who filled out surveys on Linux preferences, Dell said it would start preloading Linux on some of its laptops and desktop PCs.

"The reason we're going with Ubuntu is because by far and away Ubuntu was the most requested distribution" by users who registered their preferences on the IdeaStorm site, said Jeremy Bolen, a Dell spokesman. "It was overwhelming, the response we got to the survey."
Bolen said that the models, configurations and prices of the Ubuntu-loaded hardware have not been announced. They will run Version 7.04 of Ubuntu Linux and will be available through a dedicated Linux Web page on the Dell.com site where buyers will be able to configure and price their machines.

Asked if the new machines will be cheaper than comparable machines loaded with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Vista operating system, Bolen said, "I don't have a solid answer for that."
He also left open the possibility that other Linux distributions such as Red Hat Inc. or Novell Inc.'s SUSE Linux could later be added to Dell's Linux line. The company will "continue to take feedback from our customers and implement meaningful offerings that meet their needs," Bolen said.

Details are also being worked out regarding suport for the new Ubuntu Linux-equipped machines, he said. Hardware support will be provided by Dell, but operating system support could be provided through the open-source Ubuntu and Linux communities -- which survey respondents said they preferred -- or through a paid support contract with Canonical Ltd., the Isle of Man-based company that is the commercial sponsor of Ubuntu Linux.

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