Articles by Keith Regan

In a bid to win customers from market leader and now fierce rival Apple, RealNetworks said Tuesday it would offer 49-cent music downloads, a price-slashing move that the company admitted would cut into its profits Real said it would cut its prices in half, offering single-song downloads for 49 cents and full albums for US$4.99. Real said the promot...

Coming off a rough week that saw it badly miss earnings goals and fire three top executives, Hewlett-Packard is trying to turn attention to the future, highlighting several new product releases at its HPWorld conference In the spotlight for the annual conference are products aimed at inducing new and existing customers to migrate to HP's 64-bit, It...

Hewlett-Packard announced the firing of three top executives after reporting a dismal quarter and acknowledging that the company's failure to execute on its own internal computing initiatives left it vulnerable to competitors HP, which released earnings a week before they were expected, fell far short of targets and lowered its profit outlook going...

Hewlett-Packard announced the firing of three top executives after reporting a dismal quarter and acknowledging that the company's failure to execute on its own internal computing initiatives left it vulnerable to competitors HP, which released earnings a week before they were expected, fell far short of targets and lowered its profit outlook going...

The long wait for Google's IPO may be drawing to an end Google said yesterday that it would terminate bidder registration for its Dutch-auction style offering at 5 p.m. EDT today. That sets the stage for those registered to place their bids, a process that could take between a day and a week or more and one that should result in the actual price of...

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) scored modest gains against rival Intel in the tug-of-war for personal computer market share, using its edge in the low-end processor market to make up some ground The shift toward lower-end PC sales may be a seasonal fluctuation, one that may be reversed by more spending on higher-end machines in the U.S. and elsewhere...

While eager to take advantage of the enhanced security features of Microsoft's long-awaited SP2 update, many corporate users of Windows XP will be cautious in activating it Microsoft did extensive compatibility testing aimed at ensuring SP2 would work with as many third-party applications as possible, but many network administrators plan to run the...

Google might be forced to delay its long-anticipated initial public offering (IPO), which had been rumored to be heading for Wall Street as soon as this week Ironically, the company that built its reputation on having the best search technology in the world might have its IPO stalled in part by technical or logistical glitches in the Dutch auction-...

An attorney has sued Yahoo, charging the portal didn't do enough to help him stop personal attacks against him on its message boards. He hopes to make the suit a class action Stephen Galton, a corporate lawyer in Los Angeles, California, filedsuit on Wednesday. Galton claims the Internet company hasprotected people who have posted potentially defam...

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will try to forge a compromise on rules under which local phone companies lease their telephone lines to competitors. FCC Chairman Michael Powell said that he asked other members of the commission to work on finding a compromise that would allow changes to existing rules. One proposed change would once a...

IBM has won the right to build a powerful Linux-based supercomputer for the Department of Defense (DOD) that will be used to design and test weapons systems, the company announced Tuesday Nicknamed "Stryker," the machine will run at a speed of 10 trillion calculations per second, placing it among the 20 fastest computers in the world. It will also ...

Hoping to keep its edge in software in part by producing a torrent of technological innovations, Microsoft is planning to push hard to secure more patents in the coming year Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates told analysts at thecompany's annual meeting yesterday that Microsoft plans to file up to3,000 patent applications before next ...

Interactive advertising firm DoubleClick became the latest high-profile Internet company to be hit by hackers as a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack knocked out the company's advertising servers for several hours, slowing many of the most popular Web sites as a result The attack hit DoubleClick's domain name system (DNS) servers with a ba...

Microsoft said Windows Server and XP upgrades, including 64-bit versions of its most popular software platform that it planned to have available this fall, won't be ready until early next year. Promised 64-bit versions of Windows Server and Windows XP and the Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1, which includes a number of security enhancements, wil...

Looking to keep its hold on the top rung among supercomputer makers, IBM landed a contract to build what will likely be one of the five most powerful computers in the world for the U.S. Navy Known as Kraken, the machine will have a theoretical peak performance of 20 trillion calculations per second (teraflops), making it the fastest computer under ...

Investors who want to own a piece of Google likely will have to dig deep into their pockets considering the share-price range of US$108 to $135 the company set today for its upcoming initial public offering At the expected prices and with some 24.6 million shares up for grabs, the offering would be worth between $2.6 and $3.3 billion, more than mos...

Microsoft became the latest company to be hurt by high expectations as the software goliath posted an 81 percent increase in net profit and a15 percent sales growth, but fell short of forecast targets and took it on the chin on Wall Street as a result. In a report rife with recurring themes from this earnings season, Microsoft said revenue in its ...

Dampening the enthusiasm sparked by its successful initial public offering, hosted software pioneer Salesforce.com has issued a growth forecast that falls short of analysts' expectations On Wednesday, Salesforce held its first-ever analysts' meeting since going public and, while many of the presentations focused on long-range growth, the company's ...

Microsoft pulled the wraps of its plans to return as much as US$75 billion worth of cash reserves it has amassed to shareholders, possibly signaling the software giant won't pursue any major acquisitions in the near future Microsoft said its board of directors has approved a plan to provide a one-time $3 per share dividend payout, as well as a regu...

European regulators have approved the merger between Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group, leaving only U.S. approval before the two companies can come together to create the world's second-largest music business. Financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed and the merger excludes some activities. For instance, each company will continue...