AMD

Advanced Micro Devices executives made relatively upbeat statements about tablets and seemed to go beyond previous comments by former CEO Dirk Meyer, who was ousted earlier this month.

AMD posted fourth-quarter earnings today of 14 cents a share (non-GAAP basis), higher than the 11 cents per share that analysts had expected. Net income fell to $375 million, or 50 cents a share, from a year earlier when it reported net income of $1.18 billion, or $1.52 a share. Revenue was $1.65 billion, flat compared with the previous year.

A sore point for AMD was servers. Interim CEO … Read more

AMD's former CEO Dirk Meyer reportedly lost his job over his failure to carve out a niche for the chipmaker in the growing mobile market.

Citing people familiar with the matter, a story in today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required) said that AMD's board had been concerned for the past year over Meyer's seeming lack of motivation and interest in expanding the company's reach into mobile devices. Following a meeting in November, the board grew more impatient, eventually forcing Meyer to resign on Monday.

The Journal was unable to reach Meyer for comment yesterday.

Meyer … Read more

Advanced Micro Devices' chip strategy over the past several years had some flaws that if not fatal, at least cast doubt on how the chipmaker would fare in a quickly changing competitive landscape.

Though no one outside of AMD's board may ever fully know why CEO Dirk Meyer was fired today, there were important markets the chipmaker had essentially abdicated. The most salient being tablets and high-end smartphones.

In 2008, AMD appeared well situated to make a foray into smartphones and later tablets (and seemed ahead of Intel and Nvidia in this market segment). But AMD sold that technology, … Read more

AMD CEO Dirk Meyer will step down after reaching an agreement with the company's board over his departure, AMD said today.

Thomas Siefert, AMD's CFO, will fill Meyer's spot on a temporary basis as the company searches for a new CEO. It doesn't sound like the decision was entirely Meyer's.

"...the board believes we have the opportunity to create increased shareholder value over time. This will require the company to have significant growth, establish market leadership and generate superior financial returns. We believe a change in leadership at this time will accelerate the company'… Read more

It's often said that CES isn't really a huge show for laptops and desktops, but every year we seem to find a lot of very interesting stuff floating around the halls. This year was no exception, although the most interesting things were more likely to be prototypes of potential future products than actual retail-ready systems.

On top of that, we saw the official kickoff of new platforms from the two biggest CPU-makers, with Intel's Sandy Bridge CPUs and AMD's Fusion line, both of which aim to combine decent on-board graphics with faster processors. In fact, Sandy … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Sony's Vaio line adds several new models, including a high-end 3D gaming laptop and a slim 11-incher that is clearly aimed at replacing less expensive Netbooks in the company's lineup. Here are the new models, rounded up for easy viewing.

>> Sony's 13-inch Vaio S Series aims up the middle The Vaio S series aims to offer a stylish 13-inch Vaio at much more competitive prices.

>>Sony trades Netbooks for the 11-inch Vaio Y series In the space of 12 months, Netbooks, though still popular, have lost some of their sheen, and we'… Read more

LAS VEGAS-As always, HP has a solid line of new laptops to show off at CES. We've reported on each one individually, but below is a handy guide to finding the new systems. Our favorite at the moment is probably the Pavilion dm1, an 11-inch laptop with AMD's new Fusion processor/graphics combo.

>> HP debuts AMD Fusion in 11-inch Pavilion dm1 Continuing the march toward 11.6-inch laptops, HP is making the new Pavilion dm1 its CES 2011 showpiece. At slightly less than 1 inch thick and 3.5 pounds, the dm1 is one of the … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Not exactly new to CES, Acer's inventive Iconia laptop is making another appearance here. Back in November 2010, the dual touch-screen system was shown off in New York, along with a few Acer tablets, but little has been heard of it since.

Walking the line between tablet and laptop, the Iconia has two 14-inch screens, both of which are multitouch-enabled. The bottom screen can display content, a traditional QWERTY keyboard, or a variety of other control surfaces.

When we first saw it (and snagged a demo unit for a hands-on video tour), we said, "Iconia is, at its heart, a Core i5 laptop with familiar specs: up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, integrated Intel graphics, a hard drive up to 750GB, and Windows 7 Home Premium. Ports are also typical for a high-end laptop: two USB 2.0, one USB 3.0, HDMI, and VGA."

In hands-on use, it seemed fast and responsive, and the onscreen typing function was usable, though awkward at first. It's similar to the Toshiba Libretto W100, which also had a dual touch-screen design, but crammed into two 7-inch screens. On the larger 14-inch screens, it feels much more natural, but as with iPad typing, there's sure to be a learning curve. We haven't spent enough hands-on time with the Iconia to tell if it'll be more than a gimmick, or if it will ever be as easy to use as a traditional keyboard. … Read more

LAS VEGAS--There's one high-end laptop hiding in Acer's CES 2011 lineup, and that's the 18.4-inch Aspire AS8950G. The system packs in Intel's new upper-tier Core i7-2630QM processor, ATI's new Mobility Radeon 6850 graphics processor, 8GB of DDR RAM, and a 750GB hard drive. A Blu-ray drive is also standard, as we'd expect in a high-end multimedia laptop these days.

The company says, "The new Acer Aspire AS8950G is the ultimate portable entertainment center," and it certainly seems well-outfitted for media consumption. The 18.4-inch display has a 1,920x1080 native resolution (exactly what we'd look for in a laptop like this), and the screen's edge-to-edge glass gives it a polished home theater look and feel. Audio isn't left out, either, and the Acer CineSurround sound system includes five built-in speakers and a dedicated subwoofer. … Read more