The Dodge Report

Taiwan-based OEM Compal said last week said it will be unable to fill 100,000 notebook computer orders in the fourth quarter due to DRAM and battery shortages. In the face of strong demand, that's bad news for  retailers, parts suppliers and consumers. Compal's 2007 projections call for shipping between 18 and 18.5 million units - better than 4 million more than 2006. In 2005, there was a serious Intel chipset shortage that constrained supplies of notebooks. For parts and component suppliers, strong demand is good news, but narrowing the manufacturing pipeline (and ...Read More

If you want to instantly turn blogging content into dishwater or largely propaganda, just follow the model the Chinese government is considering - bloggers using their real names. That's not to say you can't have a totally whacked blog name in China like 750 Volts-The Third Rail on the Left Side or 1/2deadstock. Rather, the Chinese blogger would have to register his or her blog using his or her real name so the government could act if said blogger was spreading hooliganish falsehoods (that's the Chinese government interpretation of falsehood, BTW...I would NOT want my name used if I saying nasties blogs must be sayin...Read More

It's too bad more semiconductor companies can't be like Baldor Electric. Of course, the Fort Smith, Arkansas, maker of industrial electric motors, drives and generators is vastly different from semiconductor companies that have to look east for survival and salvation. But I loved the company's pitch, which I heard today at an analyst meeting in Boston (I'm partial to mechancial stuff like motors). Baldor
has 15 plants, all in the U.S except one in the U.K. Want more? The company has not had a layoff since 1960 - most of people in the analyst meeting were born after Baldor's last layoff!

Ok, let's have a some fun. Who would you most like to be locked alone in a clean room with for 12 hours? And who would you least likely liked to be locked in a clean room with alone for 12 hours? I have been tempted to ask this question for some time which comes courtesy of EB senior editor Barb Jorgensen. She promises to respond....and I will too...in our comments section.

Ray Noorda, one of networking's foremost pioneers, died Monday at his home in Orem Utah.  He was 82.
I interviewed Ray many times in the late eighties and early nineties when Novell NetWare, which utterly dominated PC networking, had a full head of steam. Ray, as everyone called him, was a visionary and helped give rise to bustling tech community in the greater Salt Lake area. He was also a humble man who wanted to create jobs for people. And he did - 12,000 of them at Novell's zenith.

60 Minutes was the venue last night for former H-P chairwoman Patricia Dunn to protest her indictment and for former H-P CEO Carly Fiorino to shill her new book in which she says she was unceremoniously dumped by H-P's male run board. Both women charged that H-P was intolerant of women at the top and that former board members Tom Perkins (a very, very rich guy) and physicist George Keyworth (also a male and alleged information leaker that intially sparked this long-running feud) both waged a vindictive campaign against them. To make Perkins seem even more si...Read More

Score one for the California Attorney General for filing criminal charges against HP's beleaguered former chairwoman Patricia Dunn and her cohorts at a time when the Administration is routinely trammeling our rights to privacy, which by the way, are addressed in the 14th Amendment, in many state constitutions and in the most authoritative document of all -- Wikipedia! SOMEONE has got to defend the basic principals on which our country was founded. Read ...Read More

In our November issue, we have a feature running on Flexray, the advanced network protocol for cars. The Germans, namely Benz and BMW, will adopt it first in high end models. Interesting that the Flexray folks won't talk about the technology in any depth, nor will the car companies. In my November column, I interviewed my Mercedes mechanic (Before you say "Dodge is rich guy," mine is a 1999 E320 with 160k miles on it) and he related to me tales of how the car companies and sanctioned dealers make his life increasingly difficult when it comes to dissimenating information. He gets some "bits and pieces" about Flexray, but being an independent repair shop, he's at the end of the information food chain.   

The H-P leak/Dunn thing just won't quit. Now Former HP chairwoman Patricia is distancing herself from the active and illegal phone record investigation into who was leaking informnation from the HP Board.  This came to light in her written statement before she testifies before the House Energy and Commerce on Thursday. She's saying former interim CEO Bob Wayman played a role in the investigation which involved surrepititiously stealing phone records of reporters and even H-P employees. H-P has ...Read More

Friend and former colleague Charlie Cooper, for many years now a columnist at News.com, last night attended a bizarre event in San Francisco honoring H-P's embattled board member Patricia  Dunn for her business accomplishments. Actually, I should not say he attended, actually, but, rather viewed her induction into The Bay Area Hall of Sham, err, Shame, err, Fame. Yeah, that's the ticket - Hall of Fame!

Last week, I  blogged  about a once terrifc reporter named Mike Moeller who now is in the eye of the storm in the Paticia Dunn affair at H-P. He's one of H-P's lead spokesman in the unsavory mess. Now, it looks HP board got of hold of his phone records in its illegal jihad to track down a news leak. Isn't that tantamount to eating your own? And Patricia Dunn is will remains on the board!?

Out of respect for the thousands directly and deeply affected by 9/11 (and 300 million Americans affected but less directly), I've waited to re-post this article that appreared days after 9/11. I'm still trying to track down Roy just to see if he's okay. This is his chilling account of escaping from the 78th floor of One World Trade Center. I have no doubt, several of colleagues perished and should he not want to dredge up the memories with me, I would more than understand. I had forgotten about this story until a former colleague pinged me about it on Monday. 

HP announced this morning that Board chairwoman Patricia Dunn will resign as board chairman in January, but will remain on the board as a director. Did she get what she deserved? 

All the pundits are calling for Patricia Dunn's head on a platter and, indeed, she should go. The H-P board met yesterday and it's unclear whether Dunn is done. She is accused of ordering an investigation into a leak about a Jan. 23 strategy meeting in which board members and HP CEO Mark Hurd discussed everything from acquistions. The story contained had a few harmless nuggets, but nothing worth the crap storm HP finds itself in now. Overzealous investigators  use "pretexting" to deceptively gain the phone records of several reporters...Read More

In my garage sits a bag of old cell phones, power supplies, a really lousy HP multifunction printer (watch this video!) and a three-year-old defunct RCA TV I bought at Walmart. Disposal is becoming a bigger issue as consumer electronics refresh more frequently. The problem sort of takes takes the thrill out of buy the latest gadget, but I suspect my addiction to buying one or two electronics gadgets every month will not subside. Amazon makes it too damn easy. In the past 45 days, I've bought a Garmin GPS, a ...Read More