September 10, 2008
49 per cent of U.S. companies cutting back on IT spending
Valleywag
Nicholas Carlson sheds some light on IT spending in the U.S. Will the same thing happen in Canada?
“In the U.S., where 49 per cent of the companies surveyed said they intended to slowdown their IT spending, 20 per cent indicated they actually meant to simply cut hardware, software and services spending right now. Blame the financial services sector, Forrester analyst John McCarthy told the New York Times: ‘I think the storm damage is very location-specific. There’s a schizophrenic U.S. economy, and the financial services guys are having a tough time.’”
Inspiron Mini will ship with secret 3G inside
Wired
Charlie Sorrel writes that Dell’s Mini Inspiron netbook will ship with a 3G card inside.
“It doesn’t look like buyers will simply be able to switch it on, however. Dell honcho John Thode told PC Magazine: ‘We’ll sell it with telco operator channels, so (customers) won’t have to make a decision about which operator to support.’”
Apple shakes up iPod line
ZDNet
Ed Burnette offers specs on Apple’s recently announced refresh of its iPod line.
“The iPod Touch got thinner, and now sports a speaker and integrated volume control. The 8GB model is $229, 16GB is $299, and 32GB is $399. Apple promises a battery life of 36 hours for the iPod Touch, 24 hours for the Nano. iPhone and iPod Touch users will get a software upgrade (firmware version 2.1) this Friday that ‘fixes lots of bugs,’ has fewer dropped calls, and ‘significantly’ improves battery life. The upgrade will be free to everybody except iPod Touch users who are still running version 1.x (it’ll be $9.95 for them).”