Business Industry

eBay is cutting 1,600 jobs, representing around 10% of its work force. The announcement shortly after the company announced it would spend more than a billion dollars purchasing an online payment service and several overseas classifieds sites. The ... job cuts, the biggest in the firm's history, should save around $150 million a year. The layoffs, covering 1,000 permanent employees and 600 temps, will be spread across the company and will include staff at PayPal (which eBay owns). Chief Executive John Donahoe says the savings will fund greater investment in the firm's services, which may include ... (view more)

Hewlett-Packard (HP) will reportedly release a laptop next month boasting a high-capacity battery that lasts up to 24 hours without charge -- provided it runs Microsoft's Windows XP operating system rather than Windows Vista. HP's EliteBook 6930p ... 14in. laptop, targeted at businesses, will need a 12-cell Ultra-Capacity Battery which sells for $189 and lasts about 10 hours longer than the regular-capacity one. The Ultra-Capacity Battery weighs 1.77lb/0.8kg compared to a weight of 0.7lb/0.3kg for the standard battery. Despite Microsoft's increasingly desperate attempts to push Windows Vista, HP ... (view more)

Approximately 440,000 Sony Vaio TZ series laptops have been reportedly recalled worldwide to avert potential wiring problems that involve overheating and short circuiting. Approximately 74,000 of the recalled laptops were sold in the United States. ... Sony's recall involves VGN-TZ100, VGN-TZ200, VGN-TZ300 and VGN-TZ2000 series laptops involving 19 models manufactured between May 2007 and July 2008. Improperly placed wires near the hinge connecting the body of the laptop and its display could wear quickly which could cause the computer to short circuit or overheat. The recall also involves a flaw ... (view more)

At least 51 separate civil antitrust actions against Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices/ATI Technologies (AMD/ATI) alleging price-fixing in the graphics processing unit (GPU) market received a major boost when emails from competing executives ... suggesting how to keep prices high were read during a recent hearing. The cases assert price-fixing in various types of computer chips, flat panel screens and cathode ray tubes. U.S. District Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California (in San Francisco) berated defense lawyers for trying to keep what they consider trade secret documents ... (view more)

After months of speculation and board room wrangling, the fate of Yahoo! is officially decided. Earlier in the week, Carl Icahn and the Yahoo! board came to an agreement over the future of the beleaguered Internet portal. Under the terms of the ... deal, eight members of the board will stay on including Chairman Roy Bostock, Ronald Burkle, Eric Hippeau, Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern, Mary Agnes Wilderotter, Gary Wilson and CEO Jerry Yang. Robert Kotick will step down from the board and be replaced by Icahn. The board will also enlarge to include two more members for a total of 11, and both spots ... (view more)

Now that iPhone mania is sweeping the globe, LG has launched the Chocolate 3. It's not coincidental that the new Chocolate was released alongside the iPhone; if anything, it's a sneaky move on LG's part to ride the media and advertising wave set in ... motion by Apple. With all the hubub about the pros and cons of the new 3G, the Chocolate 3 is poised to get some of the limelight. The mp3 Chocolate phone is offered exclusively with Verizon wireless and connects to Rhapsody's subscription music service. Complete with a 2- megapixel camera, the Chocolate 3 will be priced at $179.99, with a two-year ... (view more)

People are not only organizing their lives online these days, but also their deaths and Monster.com founder Jeff Taylor wants a piece of the action. With partial backing from The Dow Jones Co., Taylor is banking on the idea that the funeral market ... needs a centralized location for people across the country and other parts of the globe to come together to share their grief. Called Tributes.com, the new site functions like a social network; users can create profiles and then post tributes via text, photos and video, receive customized email alerts, make a donation in someone's name, send flowers ... (view more)

Get a load of this one, PC fans: Computer World reports that more than ever before enterprises are turning to Macs. Yankee Group research firm recently conducted a survey of more than 700 senior IT administrators, and found that nearly 80% of ... businesses have Macs in-house, almost doubling the percentage from users surveyed two years ago. Laura Didio from Yankee Group Research Inc. conducted the survey. Didio reports that a number of the businesses surveyed said they had 50 or 100 or even several thousand Macs deployed. Two years ago, 47% of those polled said they had Apple Inc. hardware in ... (view more)

Adobe is taking on the likes of Microsoft and Google by making it easier to use its software online, meaning colleagues in different locations can create and work on documents together much more easily. The move coincides with the launch of Adobe ... Acrobat 9, the latest edition of their PDF software. That's a format that allows users to share documents (which can include images as well as text) without having to both use the same software. It's often used to reproduce hard-copy documents such as magazine pages. The biggest development with Acrobat 9 is that users can now include animations and ... (view more)

Computers, cell phones and the like are the ultimate luxuries. They make our lives easier and, lets face it, we love them to death. But we all know how frustrating it can be when something goes wrong. Either it's way more expensive than we thought, ... impossible to repair, or the warranty doesn't cover what's broken. That's how some deceived Dell customers felt about financing, warranties, and repair services promised by the company. Clients who were "left on hold for hours...pressured to take apart their computers themselves, and subjected to numerous other negligent and abusive practices." ( ... (view more)