Wall Street Economics

By Robert Johnson

March 6th, 2009 - 3:08pm ET


Young Chuck, moved to Texas and bought a donkey from a farmer for $100.

The farmer agreed to deliver the donkey the next day. The next day he drove up and said, "Sorry son, but I have some bad news. The donkey died."

Chuck replied, "Well, then just give me my money back."

The farmer said, "Can't do that. I went and spent it already."

Chuck said, "Ok, then, just bring me the dead donkey."

The farmer asked, "What ya gonna do with him?"

Chuck said, "I'm going to raffle him off."

The farmer said, "You can't raffle off a dead donkey!"

Chuck said, "Sure I can. Watch me. I just won't tell anybody he's dead."

A month later, the farmer met up with Chuck and asked, "What happened with that dead donkey?"

Chuck said, "I raffled him off. I sold 500 tickets at two dollars a piece and made a profit of $898.00."

The farmer said, "Didn't anyone complain?"

Chuck said, "Just the guy who won. So I gave him his two dollars back."

Chuck now works for Morgan Stanley in their OTC Default Derivative Department.

Holiday Savings from WestCoastComputerProducts

WestCoastComputer announces the start of its 10th annual Holiday savings offers. Year end deals on all office and computer supplies.





FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

PR Log (Press Release) – Dec 02, 2009 – WestCoastComputerProducts,the well know Woodland Hills,California based distributor of office and computer supplies announces the start of its annual Holiday Sale .

For over 10 years now,WestCoastComputer has delivered over 1000 orders per day,from a network of 18 nationwide warehouse locations. With a seasoned staff of professionals to assist in all IT related questions,WestCoastComputer is dedicated to keeping prices low.

With our economy facing unprecedented challenges, we understand
how important it is to have value-based business relationships. You will
find that WestCoastComputer offers much more than just great pricing!

Items that will be of interest for year end office managers are toner & ink supplies, as well as magnetic media backup tapes. WestCoastComputer is well known for its rock bottom prices on optical discs .

WestCoastComputer maintains a close relationship with all major brands,including HP,Xerox,Verbatim,Sony and Imation .

The annual Sale continues thru December 31 2009 .

Visitors may access savings at the corporate website at www.WestCoastComputer.com

# # #

Based in Southern California, West Coast Computer Products has been providing a full line of over 75,000 Office products, including Data Storage, Imaging & Ink products and Janitorial supplies since 1996 .

Thanks for shopping with us today !

Analyst sees upside for chip makers in HP results

Analyst sees upside for chip makers in HP results


Dylan McGrath
Page 1 of 2
EE Times
(08/19/2009 11:43 AM EDT)

SAN FRANCISCO — Hewlett-Packard Co.'s net profit fell considerably in the company's fiscal third quarter, but a financial analyst said the results—including a 2 percent year-to-year increase in PC sales and possibly record inventory lows—bode well for semiconductor suppliers.

HP (Palo Alto, Calif.) saw its GAAP net profit for the quarter ended July 31 fall 19 percent as a record $1.3 billion profit from services and double-digit sales growth in China were not enough to offset revenue declines in PC, software and servers, the company said Tuesday (Aug. 19).

"The PC supply chain has reached the leanest levels of inventory ever, in our opinion," wrote FBR Capital Markets analyst Craig Berger in a research noted circulated Wednesday. Any seasonal uptick in demand should lead to a healthy chip pull through in the third and fourth quarters of calendar 2009, Berger wrote.

Companies such as Marvell, International Rectifier, LSI Corp., Fairchild Semiconductor and ON Semiconductor "should benefit from improving PC demand in 3Q and grow that portion of business in the high-single-to-low double digits sequentially," Berger wrote.

PC hardware and storage days of inventory (excluding Dell) fell by one day in the calendar second quarter and are now slightly below all-time trough levels set in the third quarter of 2004 and the third quarter of 2007, according to Berger.

Berger also said that analog chip stocks should benefit from stronger-than-expected quarterly results reported by Analog Devices Inc. Tuesday.

HP said its quarterly net revenue fell to $27.5 billion, down 2 percent from the year-ago period. Revenue was up 4 percent when adjusted for the effects of currency fluctuations, according to the company.

HP posted net earnings of $1.6 billion, or 67 cents per share, in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), down from $2 billion, or 80 cents per share, in the year-ago quarter, the company said.

Non-GAAP operating profit was $3 billion, or 91 cents per share, up from 86 cents per share in the prior-year period, HP said.. Non-GAAP financial information excludes $568 million of adjustments on an after-tax basis, or $0.24 per diluted share, related primarily to amortization of purchased intangible assets, restructuring charges and acquisition-related charges, HP said.



CEO says business stabilizing
"Business is stabilizing, and we are confident that HP will be an early beneficiary of an economic turnaround and will continue to outperform when conditions improve," said Mark Hurd, HP chairman and CEO, in a statement.

Revenue grew 8 percent year-to-year in the Americas to $12.6 billion, HP said. Revenue in China grew by double-digit percentage, HP said, but declined in other regions of the world. Revenue from outside of the U.S. accounted for 62 percent of total revenue, HP said.

Services revenue increased 93% to $8.5 billion due primarily to last year's acquisition of Electronic Data Systems Inc. (EDS), HP said. Services perating profit was $1.3 billion, or 15.2 percent of revenue, up from $567 million, or 12.9 percent of revenue, in the prior-year period, HP said. The EDS integration is tracking ahead of plan, the company said.

HP's Enterprise Storage and Servers business reported total revenue of $3.7 billion, down 23 percent year-to-year, the company said. Software revenue declined 22 percent to $847 million, HP said, while revenue from its Personal Systems Group fell 18 percent to $8.4 billion. HP remains the No. 1 supplier of PCs worldwide.

Imaging and Printing Group revenue declined 20 percent to $5.7 billion, HP said.

HP projected revenue for the current quarter to be about $29.7 billion, which would be an increase of 8 percent sequentially.

Apple working on software fix for MacBook Pro hard drives

Owners of Apple MacBook Pro notebooks with 7200rpm 500GB hard drives have been complaining for months of clicking sounds followed by temporary stalling. According to Apple, a fix is in the works.


"We are aware of the issue and are working on a software update," Apple representative Bill Evans, told CNET News on Monday. He gave no time frame for the release of the software update.

People have been reporting that they hear a beep from the computer shortly before the hard drive clicks and then the computer stops responding. The computer is unresponsive for 10 seconds or so and then begins to work normally again.

The hard drive issue does not require the user to force-reboot the computer, which would cause any unsaved work to be lost. Simply waiting out the unresponsive system apparently works every time.

There doesn't appear to be any specific task that triggers the hard drive to enter its unresponsive state. Users on Apple's support forums are reporting that it seems to be completely random and doesn't matter where they are or what they are doing when it happens.

It does appear that the issue only affects the 500GB hard drives that run at 7200rpm.



Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. A guitar player for 20 years, Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to write and record songs on a Macintosh with Logic Pro and Pro Tools. Jim is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET.

Acronis launches Backup & Recovery 10

Staff Writers | Jul 8, 2009
The disaster recovery solution combines data deduplication, support for virtual environments, and centralised management features.


Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 is the next generation of the Acronis True Image solutions and supports virtual environments from VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix Xensource and Parallels.

The product includes a host-based Virtual Machine (VM) backup agent, enabling backup and restore of live VMs through VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V APIs without installing a client in each VM.

"Acronis Backup & Recovery 10 is introduced as a comprehensive, feature-rich enterprise-level solution but priced for SMBs, which fits nicely in the A/NZ market where majority of the businesses are SMBs," said Bill Taylor-Mountford, general manager Acronis A/NZ (pictured).

"They can now take advantage of an enterprise-class service, an affordable price point and significant cost savings in an easy-to-use package."

Taylor-Mountford said some of his regional customers were involved in the beta testing process.

"The feedback was exceptionally positive. We are very confident our partners will have an even stronger second half of the year with this new offering," he said.

The solution can scale thousands of machines, enabling an IT administrator to design and execute a backup strategy to match the growth of a business.

SanDisk, Samsung renew semiconductor agreements

SanDisk, Samsung sign agreements on chip cross-licensing and flash memory

* The Associated Press
* On Wednesday May 27, 2009, 11:09 am EDT

SanDisk Corp. and Samsung Electronics Co. said Wednesday that they renewed their semiconductor cross-licensing agreement and struck a deal guaranteeing SanDisk a portion of Samsung's flash memory output.

The deal replaces an agreement that expires August 14 and runs for seven years.

The announcement sent shares of SanDisk, based in Milpitas, Calif., up $2.15, or 15.8 percent, to $15.72 in morning trading.

The companies did not disclose financial details of the arrangement.

South Korea-based Samsung is the world's largest supplier of NAND, a type of flash memory used in cell phones and digital cameras. The company offered last year to buy SanDisk for $26 a share. SanDisk rebuffed the offer and Samsung pulled out of its bid in October, after months of negotiations.