From CNET News.com: Nvidia, the world's largest graphics chip supplier, on Thursday announced a workforce reduction of 6.5 percent "to allow for continued investment in strategic growth areas," the company said in a statement. "As a result, Nvidia expects to eliminate approximately 360 positions worldwide, or about 6.5 percent of the company's global workforce."

The company expects to record restructuring-related charges of approximately $7 million to $10 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2009 in connection with the reduction. These pre-tax charges are comprised of severance and related expenses and are expected to be charged primarily against NVIDIA's operating expenses, the company said.

Derek Perez, an Nvidia spokesman, said this is related to a discussion in its second quarter 2008 earnings conference call "about how the business outlook has changed dramatically from what we thought it was going to be at the beginning of the year."

"Our action today is difficult, but necessary considering current business realities. Despite our reduction, we will continue to invest in selective high-growth opportunities like our revolutionary CUDA parallel computing technology and our Tegra mobile single-chip computer," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and CEO of Nvidia in a statement.

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From DailyTech: Lenovo has made official two new lightweight business notebooks. The systems are the ThinkPad X200s and the X200t. The two notebooks offer some nice feature upgrades compared to the models they are replacing.

Lenovo has set its systems apart from the competition's thin notebooks with several storage options for the machines including up to a 160GB 7200 RPM drive. Specifications for the X200s notebook include a choice of Intel Core 2 Duo processors including -- the SL9400, SL9300, and SU9300. The machine will run Windows Vista Home Basic, Business, Ultimate, or Home Premium.

Hard drive options on the X200s include 80 to 320GB 5400 RPM units, 100 and 160GB 7200 RPM units, a full encryption 200GB 7200 RPM unit and 64 or 128GB SSDs. You can bet the quoted battery run times require the miserly SSD option. The notebook supports up to 4GB of RAM and connectivity options include Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Lenovo says that WiMAX will be an option later in 2008.

Weight for the X200s with the stock 4-cell battery is 2.43 pounds, the 6-cell is 2.71 pounds, and the 8-cell is 3.05 pounds. Display options are a 12.1-inch WXGA CCFL with a 1280 x 800 resolution and a 12.1-inch WXGA+ LED backlit display at 1440 x 900. No optical drive is built-in on the system. Lenovo promises that the X200s has a run time of 13.2 hours with the optional 8-cell battery.

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From InfoWorld: A hacker has released attack code that exploits an unpatched vulnerability in Apple's QuickTime, just a week after the company updated the media player to plug nine other serious vulnerabilities, a security researcher said Wednesday.

The exploit, which was published on the milw0rm.com site Tuesday, takes advantage of a flaw in the "<? quicktime type= ?>" parameter in QuickTime, which is not prepared to handle excessively-long strings, said Aaron Adams, a researcher with Symantec's DeepSight threat notification network.

"Symantec is currently investigating this flaw further to determine the underlying technical details," said Adams in a research note Wednesday.

In its present form, the exploit triggers a QuickTime crash, but it may be more serious. "The exploit suggests that code execution may be possible," Adams added, "[and] if this flaw were to allow arbitrary code to run, it may pose a significant risk, because attackers may be able to exploit the issue by embedding a malicious file into a site."

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From CNET News.com: The next ad in Microsoft's massive Windows campaign won't feature Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, but the move is part of a planned shift, Microsoft insisted on Wednesday

"That was always the plan," a Microsoft spokesperson said late Wednesday. That followed a report on Valleywag that Seinfeld and Gates were getting the boot.

Microsoft had indicated even before the second ad debuted last week that a shift was coming.

In any case, Wednesday's coverage is more bad news for Microsoft, which is banking on this $300 million ad push to help restore Microsoft's image after years of bad press for Windows Vista and relentless attacks from rival Apple.

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From DailyTech: Samsung sent a letter to SanDisk’s Board of Directors this week that sought to reiterate its willingness to acquire SanDisk for $26 per share in cash. SanDisk notified Samsung that its Board of Directors had unanimously turned the purchase offer down.

In a letter, Samsung said that it was deeply disappointed in SanDisk’s rejection. Samsung said that over the four months of discussions in both Seoul and San Francisco, SanDisk continued to cling to its unrealistic expectations.

Samsung reiterated in its letter than it still wants to purchase SanDisk for $26 per share amounting to $5.8 billion in cash. SanDisk for its part maintains that the Samsung offer grossly undervalues the company and represents a discount of 55% when viewed against the 52-week high trading price for SanDisk stock.

Samsung, on the other hand, maintains that its $26 offer, representing a 93% premium over SanDisk's closing price on September 4, is more than fair. SanDisk's letter to Samsung stated that when talks first began with Samsung on May 22, Samsung had said it might be willing to pay a significant premium to the 52-week high trading price.

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From DailyTech: In what must a record for price meltdowns on brand new technology, OCZ's Core Series SSDs have taken yet another nose dive in pricing.

Last week, DailyTech reported that the 32GB OCZ Core SSD dropped down to an unheard of $99 after a $60 mail-in rebate. This week, it looks as though it's the 64GB version's turn to take a price cut.

Newegg is now listing the 64GB Core Series SSD at $99 after a $70 mail-in rebate. In roughly a week, the customers can now get twice the space at the same price -- that's quite incredible considering the drives retailed for $259 when they were introduced just over two months ago.

Although it's unknown which controller the new Super Talent MasterDrive OX SSDs are using, they are ringing up at $149, $259, and $419 for 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB models respectively for comparison.

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From X-bit Labs: Shuttle, a leading producer of personal computers barebones, this week initiated shipments of its first nettop powered by Intel Atom processor. The novelty offers everything one would expect from a nettop: small form-factor, low power consumption, performance that is enough only for basic tasks; but the novelty appears to be rather expensive.

Shuttle X27 is based on Intel Atom N270 (1.60GHz) single-core processor with Hyper-Threading technology and Intel 945GC chipset with Intel GMA 950 graphics core. The barebone comes with integrated with 5.1-channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet controller as well as usual input/output ports, including DVI-I as well as D-Sub to connect monitor. The Shuttle X27 supports 2.5” hard disk drives as well as slimline optical drives that should be acquired separately. The novelty also comes without DDR2 memory pre-installed.

“The X27 lays the foundation for a new product generation, the nettops: power-saving and affordable mini-PCs. The internet is a constant companion in everyday life and provides information, contents and applications. The Gigabit LAN interface delivers the necessary bandwidth,” said Tom Seiffert, head of marketing and PR at Shuttle Computer in Germany.

Shuttle X27 is just 7cm in height and its volume is just 3 litres, which makes it one of the smallest personal computers on the market. Still, positioning of X27 is completely unclear: it is hardly suitable for consumers since they demand high-performance from desktops, it is also hardly an interesting option for businesses, who are not interested in building computers themselves.

To make the matters worse for Shuttle X27, with €205 ($297) price-tag (without value added tax, which means that the actual cost can be about €240/$348) its affordability is also not obvious: end users will also have to find 2.5” hard drive as well as slim optical drive, which are pretty hard to find and are not really inexpensive. Moreover, if an end-user decides to install Windows operating system, he or she will either have to acquire a basic version of Windows Vista, which will run very slowly on such computer, or get Windows Vista Business that allows downgrading to Windows XP, which should run properly on Intel Atom.

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From X-bit Labs: Toshiba Corp., the world’s second largest producer of flash memory, may acquire SanDisk Corp., a leading supplier of flash-based products and also one of Toshiba’s largest customers. The Japanese electronic conglomerate may be the third company, after Samsung Electronics and Seagate Technologies, who may be interested in assets of SanDisk.

“We need to take preventive steps, if (SanDisk) looks like it will be acquired,” said Shozo Saito, corporate senior vice president on the sidelines of the Industry Strategy and Technology Forum on Tuesday, reports Reuters news-agency. Mr. Saito said that although Toshiba was interested in a combination with SanDisk, there were no concrete negotiations between the two companies.

Earlier on Tuesday SanDisk rejected hostile bid of Samsung Electronics, which proposed to take over the flash products vendor for $5.85 billion.

Samsung and Toshiba are the world’s largest makers of flash memory, who command over one half of the market. Samsung commands roughly 30%, whereas Toshiba has about 20% based on figures by iSuppli market research firm. Late in 2007 the two companies agreed to license packaging and interface technologies for flash products of each other. The pact allows them to support their largest customers in terms of supply when needed to maintain dominant positions on the market.

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