Sanyo Electric has restarted chip production at a factory that automatically stopped when a powerful earthquake hit on Monday. Operations at the plant, which makes semiconductor chips for various consumer electronics devices, resumed on Tuesday, Sanyo said.

"...A 32 GB solid state drive added $450 compared to the more standard 60 GB hard drive but neither performance nor battery life showed a major improvement..."

But for all the enthusiasm about harvesting sunlight, some of the most ardent experts and investors say that moving this energy source from niche to mainstream--last year it provided less than 0.01 percent of the country's electricity supply--is unlikely without significant technological breakthroughs.

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"...Gartner said orders for new equipment are entering a lull, in large part because makers of memory chips...Next year capital expending expected to rise 4.8% but that is down from prior growth predictions for 2008 that started at 16.1% and were later trimmed to 10.7%... "

"...Hynix said it is slightly behind competitors but it's not a big problem...the company has retooled part of its production facilities to make more NAND in response to demand from products such as Apple's iPhone"

"...Micron is considering selling its image sensor segment to a private equity firm..to create an immediate cash infusion...it has been working on ways to regain its profitability in the weeks by enacting job cuts, tighter 2008 capex..."