Kevin Turner, Microsoft's COO, told partners during his Worldwide Partner Conference keynote about how Apple's lawyers wanted Microsoft to take down their Laptop Hunter ads.

One should not waste a crisis' opportunity to innovate. "Toward the tail end of the oil shock of the early 1970s the first cell phone emerged, produced by Motorola. The second oil crisis in the 1980s eventually led to IBM's PC," said Anand Chandrasekher, manager of Intel's ultra mobility group.

The 1.8-inch hard disk market appears to be dying. Already, the market is down to two manufacturers, Toshiba and Samsung, and when the latter announced its new 250GB, US$200 1.8-inch HDD last week, the announcement had a rather stunning omission: IDE and SATA.

While the headlines on Mosaid Technologies are about the patent-infringement suit it launched against IBM, the case won't be resolved for years. Of more pressing concern is whether Mosaid can renew its patent-license agreement with Samsung Electronics.

Back-to-school spending is set to slip 7.7% in 2009, according to a survey. Families say they'll spend less than they did last year to get kids ready for the fall, relying heavily on sales and coupons.

Intel has eased its restrictions on netbook specifications, and will now allow screen sizes of 10-inch with a resolution of 1366x768, up from 10-inch and 1280x600.

Fresh rumors from sources claiming to be inside Apple's supply chain suggest that an US$800 tablet-like "netbook" will launch this October.

China has been a champ exporter, but the country's growth depends on developing other avenues of business too.

3Com has reported fourth-quarter and full-year results that indicated the networking supplier has settled down. The firm said it recorded a net income of US$20.2 million on sales of US$295.1 million.

Apple has touted new HTTP Live Streaming features of the iPhone OS 3.0 and the upcoming Snow Leopard version of Mac OS X—and it has submitted the spec to the IETF. Will it be enough to supplant Flash as the de facto standard for delivering live or on-demand streaming online?

Nokia's strategic relationship with Intel, announced last month, may be very forward-looking and not about to worry any incumbent wireless chipset suppliers, but it is nonetheless threatening to Europe's local hero, ARM Holdings.