The specs of the CPU are as follows:

Produced: 2008 Manufacturer: Intel Max CPU clock: 800 MHZ to 1.87 GHZ 1.9 GHZ on EEE pc 1000 FSB speeds: 400 MT/s to 533 MT/s Min feature size: 0.045 um Instruction set: x86, x86-64 Cores: 1, 2 Package: 441-ball uFCBGA Core names:

• Silverthorne
  
• Diamondville

The Atom processor is about the size of an American Penny. It iss on a 45 nm process and packs 47 millions transistors. At the end of 2009 Intel hopes to have a dual core version and have a hyper threading in the dual core version so you can have a virtual quad core. The atom in the aspire and eee pc use about 4 watts of power.

There have been tests done on the eee pc that shows it faster than the Celeron processor that is clocked higher. The most ram currently the atom can use it only 2 GB of ram since the atom is only single channel ram since it only has one ram slot in the system and laptop ram tops out at 2 GB. The intel atom is really the only mobility CPU. I have been using the atom in my EEE pc and I found that it can run games very well for a laptop. The downside is that it uses Intel Graphics 945 or 950 which is not that good for gaming.

 

 

 

Screen:

The screen is an 11.1 inch wide clear bright LCD. The maximum resolution is 1366*768 pixels. It's a wide screen LCD. The brightness is also good. The display is clearly visible even in sunlight. Also, this screen is one the thinnest screens in the world.

Keyboard:

The keys are soft, and easily accessible, and typing is also comfortable. It also has the “Windows key”, which many other laptops lack.

DVD Player feature:

This laptop has a unique feature of DVD-PLAYER. This feature enables you to use this device as a DVD player, without starting up windows. To enable this feature, simply press the AV MODE button when the device is switched off.

Battery:

A complete charge of the battery provides with up to 12 hours of power. The reasons accountable for this high capacity of the battery can be the small screen, and the 1.2 GHZ processor.

Weight:

This laptop is once again, amongst the lightest weight laptops available in the market. The body is made up of CARBON-FIBRE, and the total weight of this device is 1.25 Kgs.

Biometric sensor:

This device has a built-in finger print sensor, to ensure that no one else can gain access to it. The “My Safe” feature allows you to store your private files, and keep them finger-print secured.

SD/Memory card and memory stick reader:

This vaio has built-in SD/Memory Card Reader, and also a Memory Stick Reader.

Other than these, it has a iLink port which can be used to connect Sony Cameras directly to the computer.

Technical specifications:

• 1.2 Ghz Intel Core Solo Processor U1400
• 1 GB 533 MHz RAM
• CD/DVD, CD/DVD-RW, DVD-DL-R Drive
• Mobile Intel 945 Express Chipset Family with 128 MB onboard memory
• Windows XP Professional(Windows Vista capable)
• 2x USB 2.0 High speed ports
• 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz Wireless LAN
• Bluetooth
• Internal Modem (56KBPS)
• Built in LAN Card

With this configuration, the SONY VAIO TX VGN-TX37GP/B is one of the best laptops available in the market. Go and get one today to get the vaio experience.

Engineers have for example been attributing many of the “unexplainable” errors, flaws and imperfections of technology directly to the presence of bugs. So what is a computer bug and what can we do about it?

Figure 1: Computer Bugs

Bug

In computer circles a computer bug (including bugs of both hardware and/or software origin) is an unplanned error, flaw, failure or other (usually undocumented) aspect that prevents the machine from behaving as intended.

The cause of the production of these incorrect answers/results and unwanted behaviors by computers can often be directly attributable to computer bugs of one type or another.

Buggy

The term “Buggy” refers to software and hardware components containing large numbers of bugs. Their performance, reliability and trustworthiness are thus not 100% guaranteed are all times.

Bug Reports

Names given to reports dealing with bug related issues vary depending on your current locale and include bug report(s), fault report(s), trouble report(s) and change request(s).

Issues not Bugs

It is a question of semantics. The term “bug” has been in common usage by engineers for quite some time now but many organizations and developers deliberately avoid using the term.

One reason recently cited for this is as a direct result of the negative baggage that accompanies the term. Microsoft for example uses the term “issues” in replacement of “bugs”.

Computer Bug Origins

The origins of the term “computer bugs” stretch back a long way. Some of the events, circumstances and people put forward as being the source of the term “bug/bugs” differ considerably.

One popular tale that does have some basis in fact concerns an early computer pioneer named Grace Hopper, who back in 1947, was working on a system called the Mark II (an early electromechanical computer).

She is supposed to have found a moth trapped in a relay among the computer's vacuum tubes. Hopper readily concedes that she was not the one who actually found the moth.

She was however, the one who publicized the event. It would seem that the operators who did find the moth were familiar with the use of the engineering term “bug” and thought it amusing to tape the moth to their report of the incident with the following notation "First actual case of bug being found." See Fig. 2.

Figure 2: “First actual case of bug being found.”

We know that the term “bug” was used during World War II to refer to faults and issues with the development of radar electronics. In fact, engineers were using the term “bug” in relation to defects long before the Hopper event. For example, early 1890s editions of the Oxford English Dictionary included the following quotation from an 1889 edition of the Pall Mall Gazette:

“Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering "a bug" in his phonograph-an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble”.

Figure 3: Thomas Edison

The Mr. Edison (Fig. 3) referred to here is none other than Thomas Alva Edison. Edison was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production to the process of invention. He is therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory.

Human Error

Bugs generally result from human error somewhere along the way. The design, product development and production implementation stages of all forms of computer technologies are the major areas in which bugs tend to creep into the system. They also happen to be the areas in which human involvement is maximal.

Hardware Bugs

While a larger percentage of computer bugs have their basis in software, there are still many instances where hardware is at fault. As with any other piece of hardware a computer's hardware can components can fail, thereby producing erroneous results.

Events from the past show that it is also possible for the computer hardware to have bugs built into them (we must assume not deliberately). A classical case of this was the Pentium FDIV bug.

Back in the early 1990s, a number of Intel Pentium processors contained hardware errors that resulted in erratic performance and unreliable computation of floating point division operations. The result was that Intel had to recall a considerable number of the faulty Pentium processors.

Impact

The consequences resultant from bugs varies considerably in terms of the severity of impact. They also vary in terms of frequency and in their potential to produce far-flung collateral damage.

Some bugs are innocuous due directly to their minimal impact or rarity. Others are quite noticeable as a direct result of their capacity to interfere with a system's functionality and responsiveness.

Then we have that most critical group of bugs that render systems inoperable or contribute directly to fatalities. One such event occurred during the 1980s when a bug in the code controlling the Therac-25 radiation therapy machine was directly responsible for some patient deaths.

Another more disconcerting incident in 1983 nearly caused World War III. This incident was a direct result of software bugs in the Soviet Union's early warning system.

The early warning system falsely reported that the US had launched five Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) armed with nuclear warheads and their current course and trajectory indicated that they were heading towards targets in the Soviet Union.

Fortunately, the system duty officer at the time, Lt Col Stanislav Petrov, questioned the warning by reasoning that if the US were in deed launching a pre-emptive strike they would most certainly be sending more than five ICBMs.

The cause of the fault was faulty software, ironically meant to filter out false positive missile detections caused by satellites detecting sunlight reflections off cloud-tops.

Figure 4: Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Launch

In June 1994, a Royal Air Force Chinook crashed into the Mull of Kintyre, killing 29 people. On closer investigation, the accident, originally attributed to pilot error, proved to be due to a software bug in the aircraft's engine control computer.

Then in 1996, a bug in the on-board guidance computer program of the European Space Agency's unmanned US$1 billion prototype Ariane 5 satellite-launching rocket saw the rocket self-destruct less than a minute into its maiden flight. The rocket launch site was Kourou, French Guiana.

On board were four scientific satellites designed and purpose built to study the interactions between the Earth's magnetic fields and Solar Winds. The four satellites cost over US$500 million. This particular computer bug cost in excess of US$1.5 billion on top of the US$8 billion already spent in developing the Ariane 5 rocket.

The European Space Agency had now invested over US$9.5 billion and was yet to see any return.

Leading up to the year 2000 we saw quite a stir concerning the Millennium Bug. This one was due to using a two-digit year naming system. While acceptable for early machines that had very limited memory and storage capacities this bug/issue should have seen full resolution long before the year 2000 when there was no alternative. You cannot stop time.

Today

Today we find that the term bug in respect to computers has taken on a completely new meaning. If you were to contract the influence virus or a stomach upset, you might say to your doctor, employer, colleagues, friends or family “I seem to have caught a bug” or “I have come down with a tummy bug”.

Computers can also catch bugs, which usually come in the form of a computer virus. Just as there are numerous “strains” of the influenza virus so too are there many different species of computer viruses.

Here is a list of some of them. I have compiled this list alphabetically and not upon such criteria as damage done, prevalence, epidemiology, persistence, dollars and frequency and geographical distribution.

Application and File Viruses (e.g. email, document, embedded etc.), Boot Sector Viruses, Combination Viruses, Hoax Viruses, Operating System (OS) Viruses, Polymorphic Viruses, Rootkits, Spyware, Trojan Horses and Worms

Performance and trade-offs are evaluated using software programs called Benchmarks. Some of the Industry standard benchmarks include BAPCo, EEMBC, SPEC and the TPC. Although Processors are operated at clock speeds specified by the manufacturer, performance enthusiasts operate it at higher clock speeds than those designated by the manufacturer (Overclocking).

Latest trends in Processor technology include Hyper-threading, Multi-core Processors and Virtualization Technology. Typical PC user prefers a standard P4 processor, where as a Performance enthusiast would opt for a Dual core or a Core-2 Duo processor. Manufacturing giants like Intel, AMD, Cyrix and Transmeta enclose a constantly updated Knowledge Base to assist the buyers. IDC predicts an increasing growth rate as compared to the statistics in 2007 which showed a 12.6% growth in shipments and 1.7% growth in revenue, the revenue reaching a whopping $31 billion.

Faster, more economical, cheaper…

Intels Conroe 65nm Core2Duo processors have been ruling the hardware market for long time. Now it's time for something new: the E8000 Wolfdale 45nm Core2Duo series. These are available in different versions: E8200, E8300, E8400 and E8500.

This new series is produced using a 45nm-process. This new technique makes it more economical than the proceeding Core2Duo processors based on the 65nm-process, and the extra spaces that opens up by scale reducing gives Intel the possibility to equip the processor itself with a lager L2 cache.

The new technology also reduces the heat production, making Intel capable of using a higher clock rate. The Intel E8500 finally reaches 3,0Ghz with a clock rate of 3,16Ghz, making it the best high-end processor of the series. The E8000 series is equipped with a faster 6mb L2 cache an works at a FBS frequency of 1333Mhz. Intel has been able to lower the power use a lot, making the new Core2Duo E8500 using only 65Watt, also lowering the pressure on the power supply and cooler. The 45nm-process also has a lower production cost. The last new feature that was added, is the SSE 4.1 instruction set, that helps increasing the speed of tasks such as video encoding. All standard properties of the proceeding Intel Core2Duo processors are also available in the new E8000 series: Socket 775, virtualization acceleration, execute disable bit (xD), 64-bit processing support and SSE-2/3 support.

The Intel E8500 has many advantages over its predecessors, the higher L2 cache ensures extra prestation in games, which should sound perfect for every gamer.

AMD CrossFire X

AMD's CrossFire has recently been renamed: CrossFire X. The changement of name also introduced some technical innovations, for example it should be possible to connect and combine up to four CrossFire X compatible video cards.

At the beginning of March, the drivers have been made available for users: the Catalyst 8.3 drivers can be used by XP and Vista users. AMD's CrossFire X enables the user to combine multiple video cards, but they have to be related: for example you can connect an AMD HD3870 X2 with a standard HD3870 or a HD3870 with a HD3850. The speed of the fastest video card will be adapted to that of the slower card in the formation, only the memory of the video cards will remain unchanged.

The difference in memory will cause the fastest video card to work more slowly, sometimes making it wait for the slower CrossFire video cards, but the user shouldn't notice this. AMD uses its CrossFire X to go ahead a step than nVidia, which currently only offers up to three video cards in SLi setting.

Intel Atom

Extremely small, very economical and still very considerable performance, that's the description for Intel's new Atom processor series. The Atom processor was developed for simple and cheap computers. The processor is also meant to be used in many different appliances. The Intel Atom is equipped with a new micro architecture, which causes it to have a lower power usage and also making it extremely small. The processors are compatible with the Core2Duo instruction set, making the CPU support multi-threading. This enables the processor to do multiple tasks at the same time, increasing its performance and speed.

All this is fitted on a chip of 25mm², making it Intel's smallest and most economical processor. The new chips use 2,5 to 6Watt, which is almost nothing compared to the 60Watt a standard Core2Duo processor uses. It's also capable of reaching a clock rate of 1,8Ghz, where the lowest Intel Atom processor has a clock rate of 500Mhz. The first Atom processor to be produced is the Intel Atom 230. It will be equipped with a clock rate of 1,6 Ghz, 512kb L2 cache and a FBS of 533 Mhz. With this new Intel Atom series, Intel tries to compete with VIA.

The Need for a Transmission Medium

The first recognised computer network medium was known as sneaker-net. This was because way back when in the early days of computing those users who wanted to transfer or share data with other users would make a copy onto floppy disk and get up and go to the intended recipient and hand it to them.

The sneaker-net came into being as observers; usually other university types noted that the majority of these young computer types wore sneakers and since they used their sneakers as the primary means of transporting the data the term sneaker-net came into use. It was probably not meant in a complimentary way. The term “geek” hadn't even been thought of at the time or else the term may have been “geek-net” but we will never know.

Oh! And by the way the floppy disks that I am referring to here are the original floppy disks which were large, flat, round, non-rigid, discs of magnetic medium and not the small 3 1/2 “ types that were and are still used by some people today.

The capacity of these disks; which was considered to be quite large at the time, was around 320 Kilobytes. The more modern varieties have a larger capacity with the high density varieties that can still be brought today having a standard capacity of 1.44 Megabytes.

Today most new machines do not even have a legacy floppy drive included which is probably just as well. They were not the most reliable of devices and by today's standards their storage capacity was miniscule. Today we might wonder just what use; if any, could a floppy disk be? Well back then computers were primarily code-oriented and the output of human "friendly" text was a considerable and notable achievement. Then we started to see a new and wonderful device being attached to the computer. It was called a keyboard.

Up until then input had been in the form of punch cards and tape. Except for the multi-mega resource endowed who were able to afford magnetic tape reels. But for the average enthusiast they keyboard and floppy disk drives were the rage. Then we saw another new device come into being; the monitor. Well; now things were really getting up to speed, we could read text (in monochrome of course) on a television type device. The world was really becoming a truly wondrous place.

Things only got better as hard disk drives that were “affordable” and compact enough for the smaller computer were mass produced. With capacities ranging up to 60 Megabytes these storage giants and they were big and heavy and most definitely not portable as we know the term today. Now we could load a program into the computer and store it on the internal hard drive and then whenever we wanted to start the machine would had the option to start the program stored on the hard drive and run with that.

As more programs were developed and the hard drive became larger we saw the introduction into mainstream; although still enthusiast computers the need to manage these programs and this need resulted in the creation of what I will loosely call the early disk operating systems. They were refined and added to as time progressed and the term for them became the abbreviation DOS which many of you may have heard of. It stands for Disk Operating System.

Initially this was either pre-installed or factory upgraded but later it became possible to install this disk operating system from floppy disk which had also evolved into larger than 360 Kilobyte capacity disks by then. In fact 720 Kilobyte disks were very popular by now. Well is it has a habit of doing time did not stand still and software progressed in its capabilities and size so that multiple disks were required to install the disk operating system and most other programs as well.

Fortunately manufacturers were introducing larger capacity hard drive and floppies were evolving into the 1.44 MB capacity disks we know today and all was well in the world. Software evolved further and became ever larger with ever increasing storage requirements.

Major corporations were using mainframes with large capacity magnetic reel storage which was wonderful from a storage capacity point of view but the manner in which it operated was linear which meant that much turning of tape was required to access various data when required. The answer of course was to schedule access to increase the efficiency of use but that had its limitations.

In the mean time some bright spark in the computer department was talking to the mother via long distance telephone when the thought occurred to them that if they could converse over such a long distance surely machines could do the same. Okay maybe not over long distance but across the room would be handy. So it's off to the communications department that our hero goes. Upon arrival he asked the guys down there the big question. The reply he got nearly made him wet his pants in excitement.

Machines have in fact been communicating quite well over long and short distances for quite some time now. “Go down to Wall Street and check it out for yourself” was the com guy's reply. No need; our hero knows that if he goes to executive accounts and finance there are machines there that are always in touch with the money men down-town. So it's off to finance that our hero goes.

Once there; merely observing the ticker tape machines was inspiration enough. Using the telephone lines was the inspiration that he had. So off to the lab and sometime later our hero has rigged-up a contraption using readily available parts; cheap was a prime motive here. And so the first basic modem came into being. At least we don't need to take disks out of one machine and transfer them to the machine next to it by hand any more.

With the passage of time this novelty become a storm and the military decided to get in on the act an established a special research project known as ARPA. The network they created was called ARPANET (not much in the way of imagination here). The important thing however; was that they created the protocols that permitted machines to communicate over very long distances with reasonable reliability.

The core of this set of protocols was the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) which was responsible for getting the message through. With more devices joining the conversation it became obvious that some way of identifying each machine was needed. The identification of each machine on a machine to machine level had as with all electronic communications devices been achieved using a hardware address which we know as the Media Access Control address or MAC address and worked well for awhile.

As the factors of scaling-up the size of the networked computers became of more important it was soon realised that purely using MAC addresses for machines that were permanently connected in a smallish local network was not a problem. The troubles began when trying to connect each of these small networks on a sporadic periodic basis (only when needed).

So the idea of letting the machines on the smaller local network sort out their MAC addresses and using a different addressing structure to identify remote networks gained impetus. This was the beginnings of a logical addressing structure. Well as the years went by and more and more machines were being networked and more and more networks were being interconnected on a global scale this logical addressing structure evolved considerably.

The best part of it all was that the smart guys who created TCP did such a fine job that it has been used ever since and when the time came that the number of interconnected networks was getting to be humanly unmanageable manually some way to overcome this had to be found. We were also seeing a number of different architectures being developed by different groups more or less independently and in competition with one another. The result was that not all networks could connect with all of the other networks.

At around this point in time the number of home computers being sold was beginning to skyrocket and many who used networked computers at work desired the same for their home computers. Having already developed the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) academics and researchers could now confer with each other and here a greater degree of collaboration between these groups of individuals developed. Admittedly this may have at times been a little constrained and secretive but non-the-less it happened.

The military were also in the processes of extending and evolving their networks. Cutting the story short it became obvious that something had to be done to make everything capable of talking to everything else. It was at around this point that the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) really came to the fore.

The IAB took responsibility for overseeing and formulating standards relating to the development of the Internet. The IEEE met in February of 1980 to discuss what needed to be done to produce uniformity if the Internet was going to truly develop.

They came to the realization that there were a number of different competing and incompatible network technologies and decided that due to the various different possible media available it was all too much for just one group to deal with and so they created a number of subcommittees each charged with the responsibility for the production of a set of standards covering a smaller area of technology that could be used by one and all. I guess they must have heard what the little general said “Divide and conquer”.

Thus we saw the formation of the 802 DOT committees and the standards that were produced by them have all evolved over time. Some are still widely in use today, some aren't, some have gone to better pastures and others are only just beginning to become mainstream while a few are yet to “arrive”. For example the network system originally developed by the Digital Corporation®, Intel® and the Xerox® Corporation was called Ethernet and the committee formed to deal with the standards for this type of network architecture was the 802.3 subcommittee.

Another was formed to handle wireless networking communications. This was the 802.11 subcommittee and just to illustrate the manner in which the number of changes that have occurred as these architectures have evolved over the years the 802.11 subcommittee has appended the 802.11 with a letter to distinguish one set of wireless networking technology standards from the others. The first was called 802.11a and we are currently seeing the finalisation and market implementations of the 802.11n standard today. That makes a total of 14 major standards of wireless networking technologies in less than 28 years.

Well now we get to the point where we have all sorts of networks and a variety of transmission media what is what and which do I use? These are the questions that we will begin to answer now.

Transmission Media

The cables used in cabled networks are usually either copper-based or fiber-optic transmission medium, the architecture, topology, protocol(s), and size of the network will determine which is chosen and what variety of each is preferential.

I would be amiss not to mention that there could be a mix and match of cabling and other transmission media such as wireless. Different segments of a network may consist of different transmission media. Generally it is easier to separate out segments with different transmission so as that each type of media and each category within that type of medium are contiguous for that local section of the network. There are many reasons as to why this is a good idea and I will be discussing them as we progress.

An obvious example would be when mixing copper-based cable networks with wireless or even fiber-optic cable network sections. It is not too difficult to understand how each of these different transmission media will propagate a signal in different ways and hence will have different specifications and physical and electronic requirements that need to be satisfied for an effective transmission to take place.

With respect to the various different varieties (or flavours if you will) of each type of media for now let us just accept that the same holds true and consider it to be fact. I will explain the reasons in greater detail later.

In Part three of the Network Cabling Guide we will dive into copper cabling technologies so see you soon.

The biggest advantages are the increase amount of instructions it can get per clock cycle, the wider pipeline that executes commands faster and the reduced fan noise thanks to the four pin connector that decreases fan speed when the CPU is not so hot.

The features of this new CPU are the 2.4 GHZ clock speed, 8 mb of cache size, 1044 mhz bus speed.

If you want to have the fastest processor in the world in your hands then I recommend you this one absolutely!

Intel is still the best processor manufacturer in the world and I bet AMD will never be able to catch up Intel.

Intel spends in Research and Development the same amount AMD get in revenues!

You can see that AMD has a very long way to run before dreaming of being the number one processor manufacturer.

Have you been noticing how in fliers from like Best Buy and Circuit City they no longer mention things like megahertz speed or microprocessor speed? And it occurred to me they have stopped making computers faster and have just made them able to do more things at once. So for example if I wanted to open Word 07', Excel 07', and Publisher 07' you could get them all to open at about the same time it would take you to load up just one on my old computer. But is this fast?

No. Fast is not how many programs you can open and use opened up. Because after all how many programs can you use at the same time? It is how fast I can get my computers to start up and how fast it can understand the graphics coming off of the internet or a game I am playing. I basically use the one I am writing this article on for word processing so it doesn't have to do much but relay my words to the disk I use to then transfer them to the internet. But it just seems like it is some kind of secret.

Yes you could go with brand y but x will be just as slow. Sure more processing power but the same speed and I think there should be a disclaimer. This product goes as fast as your old computer but won't crash as often. That's really what they need. I mean I was In the computer store the other day and two guys who were in line In front of me, came up to the counter, and started complaining about a computer they previously purchased. That even though it had two processors it ran at the same speed as his previous computer and he wanted to return it and get a faster computer. So where did the faster computers go?

I'll tell you what happened, the material used to make the microprocessors shrank and shrank until it became too small and a lot of electrical heat leakage happened. There were many processor designs down the road that were trying to circumvent this problem by building bigger cooling fans to get rid of the heat but it became to big a problem. So then the big wigs at Intel decided we can't get the chips to run faster without a total over hall of the chip material lets put more then one microprocessor on a chip. That should make the speed double because more then one brain will work on the problem.

The problem is that the software has to be written to make use of this second brain in the computer and unless it is done the processor still has the speed of a single chip since only one is really working the problem. So recently IBM came out with a new material that could be used to make faster chips again so there is the dilemma. Until the new material can be used to make a faster processor should they continue with putting more and more brains on a chip and designing software to take advantage of this and make the programs super fast or should they just build faster processors and continue using the software they have now?

It is a big dilemma and it may only be solved with a mixture of new software and new faster processors. For now it seems it will be a mixture of the two with more and more brains put on a chip until a new architecture using the new more efficient material for electrical processors is found. But I think the only way we will know if a computer is fast is if we take it home and use it or we go to a website that tells you their true speed. You can look them up through goggling.

In the late 1970's and early 1980's, the computer hardware and software industry was in its nascence. The industry was comprised of four main firms: Microsoft, Apple, Intel, and IBM. With far less competition than in today's burgeoning global market, these firms were able to slowly develop their supply chains from private garages into transnational operations (Yost 166-178). With no inter-industry models to imitate, the early PC pioneers developed their supply chains based on those of well-established leaders in the appliance and automotive industries, such as Ford and General Electric (Yost 178). Following these models, IBM used vertical integration in order to structure its supply chain operations. (Yost 178).

IBM set the standard as a “box maker” by mass-assembling the hardware and using software provided by Microsoft or Intel to complete their PCs (Yost 194). IBM's supply chain philosophy encouraged mass production and a reliance on brick and mortar sales outlets (Taylor). The disadvantages to this system were that IBM amassed a vast amount of inventory and was unable to offer its customers an array of options in order to personalize their PCs (Taylor).

In 1983, Michael Dell proved to be the catalyst that would forever change the computer industry and redefine the way supply chains are viewed. Dell's innovations were spurred by the tremendous value-added activities in the industry. The average IBM PC was selling for $2,880; whereas its total hardware and software costs averaged a mere $600 (Yost 194). Thus, IBM averaged $2,280 in value-added activities per PC. Dell revolutionized the supply chain in order to produce competitively priced PCs while still reaping high industry profits. Dell was able to compete with the already well established firms because it effectively used a direct sales strategy, adopted just-in-time production, and mastered the process of mass-customization (Taylor).

In short, Dell's corporate strategy focused on a buyer-driven industry. Dell's success hinged on its ability to bypass warehouses and stores in order to sell its PCs and have them delivered to customers in a timely manner. Thus, Dell became the first firm to sell computers to customers by direct mail (Yost 194). In order to achieve its long term goals, Dell established a quasi-corporate campus for its assembly facility and the production facilities of its suppliers (Taylor). The result was Dell's ability to minimize its inventory and risk by utilizing just-in-time production. In all, Dell's revolutionary steps in clustering its production processes and bypassing traditional retail outlets (as seen in Appendix A) established its comparative advantage over other pre-existing and well-established PC firms.

Even though Dell's act was hard to follow, other firms soon attempted to streamline and consolidate their operations in similar fashion. In 1997, Apple Computer was losing more than a billion dollars annually due mostly to supply chain inefficiencies (Taylor). In order to ameliorate its supply chain and transform its losses into profits, Apple reduced its product line from nineteen to four products (Taylor); thereby simplifying the production and, in turn, the supply chain. Within two fiscal years, Apple's simplified and consolidated supply chain reduced inventory by 94% and increased gross margins by 40% (Taylor). Thus, Apple was successful in imitating the Dell model's consolidated just-in-time production.

A new millennium also means new challenges for the PC industry. Even though firms have been continually refining their supply chains, they must also react to the inherent “demand-driven innovation” of the industry (O'Marah). The new information age means that firms have access to more information than ever as to what potential consumers want and how much they are willing to pay for specific products and services (O'Marah).

The new name of the game is not simply who can produce the cheapest goods, but which firms are flexible enough to produce customized products the fastest. In the last decade, there has been an increased demand for faster and smaller computers and electronics. Thus, the supply chains must be flexible and ever evolving in order to answer these demands. Since the computer industry is constantly in flux, there is the opportunity for new firms to specialize and further hone the supply chain. However, there is little room to compete with the already established production firms on the global level due to the tremendous capital barriers to entry.

Although American firms still control a vast amount of the global market share in PC sales, other nations are making great headway in challenging American dominance. The top three PC vendors are all American: Dell (18%), HP (16%), and IBM/Lenovo (7.7%) (Standard & Poor's).

In recent years, American PC sales have begun to slow, whereas demand in Europe, Middle East, and Africa has increased greatly (Standard & Poor's). This does not bode well for American PC firms because it will difficult for them to maintain their market share in foreign markets due to domestic loyalties to local suppliers (Standard & Poor's). China is perhaps the greatest threat to the American firms' market share advantage.

In 2002, China surpassed Japan as the world's second leading producer of PC hardware, second only to the United States (ViewsWire). Experts predict that China will continue to increase its market share to nearly 20% of the world total by capitalizing on its advantages in skilled labor, capital, tax breaks, high local demand, and its recent admittance into the WTO (ViewsWire).

China has chosen to focus on the PC industry because the Chinese government wishes to maximize their value-added activities, and they believe that their best opportunity lies in this industry (ViewsWire). The Chinese government wants its computer industry to position itself as a world leader by “moving up the value chain” by focusing on telecommunications, software, and semiconductors (ViewsWire).

Despite China's intensive local investment in the computer industry and its emergence as a research and development center, it currently lacks an adequate infrastructure to accomplish its ambitious goals (ViewsWire). However, China has proven to be a successful competitor in the Asian and global markets. China illustrated its emerging dominance in 2005, when a Chinese firm, Lenovo, purchased IBM's PC hardware division (Cottrill). This acquisition proves that China can and will challenge the top American firms in the world arena.

The value chains for these competing firms in the conception and production of PC software and hardware as well as semiconductors all carry a theme common to the computer component industry and that is, again, the importance of innovation. Research and development is thus one of the most integral stages of the computer components' value chain. The highly technical process that is semiconductor design and creation, for example, is highly capital- and skill- intensive in regards to its research and development stage (Dicken).

In addition to research and development, the creation of semiconductors is also highly specialized in the wafer-fabrication stage of the value chain (Dicken). The highest value-added activities of the semiconductor value chain are in these highly technical stages of development. The absolute, environmental purity needed for the wafer fabrication stage again is highly capital-intensive, yet results in high value added as the refined silicon is prepared for chip assembly (Dicken). While notably specific to the semiconductor value chain, the wafer fabrication stage joins the design stages and the research and developments so integral to the high risk, high volatility value chains of the computer industry as a whole.

While the innovations and engineering necessary to the completion of the highly technical stages of semiconductor production promote value-adding through capital rich concepts and results, the highest value-added stages are not necessarily the most profitable. While adding the most value to the end product, the intermediary capital consumed in the execution of the high value-adding stages trims the relative profitability of these stages.

On the other hand, the ability to offshore the final assembly of the product to low-skill, low-wage geographical areas, coupled with the simple transportability of the material in question is where cost-cutting is most possible and therefore plays most directly to the increased profit margins of the firm (Dicken).

The constantly and rapidly evolving products and processes of computer component value chains can act as drivers for the several new significant technologies motivating changes in the computer industry. For example, miniaturization of gadgets and cutting edge communication devices are revolutionizing the world of computer and electronics innovation (Young). Doug Young of The Washington Post highlights these changes in his article, “Technology Convergence Makes a Comeback in 2006.” Doug comments on this reality as he says, “Advances in miniaturization have yielded a bumper crop of newfangled multi-purpose gadgets in the last two years” (Young). By categorizing miniaturization as a new trend in technology development, Young touches on the nature of the consumer to participate in the producer-driven commodity chain.

Another new significant advancement driving changes in the computer and electronics industry is the marriage of television and computers. The company controlling this novelty, Intel Corporation, creates the chips used for this dual-featured device.

Intel said it is working with more than 40 companies around the world in the movie, music, television, gaming and photo-editing fields to deliver content to computers using the technology called Viiv (rhymes with five). (Levingston)

Steven Levingston of The Washington Post believes that Viiv equipped computers will improve the overall entertainment experience, as what was once simply a television screen can now perform any computer task. Not only is the Viiv technology efficient, Intel insists the Viiv platform computers will be easier to use. (Levingston)

Yet, while radical innovation is a necessary component of the liberal model of corporate governance, not all participants reap the benefits at all times. For example, there are several losers in the computer chip industry. In Asia computer chip makers such as “Chartered Semi Conductors, Elpida, and Samsung Electronics will talk about the challenges they face from wannabes trying to cash in on the latest chip trends and the wild gyrations their markets often face” (Young).

The imitation devices created by companies trying to keep up with the technological trends combine multifunctional products with low-cost advantages (Young). Thus the losers would be the companies who refuse to or are unable to reinvent multifunctional products at the pace of the leading firms in the industry.

Converging technological devices such as Apple's video iPod, Motorola's Palm Pilot cell phone, and Comcast's internet/phone-service/cable-television, are some of the latest trends in this industry. Aloysius Choong, an analyst at International Data Corporation believes convergence is the wave of future in this industry.

Convergence has been happening in mobile phones for the longest time. First it was voice, then SMS, then it become your alarm clock, and your camera. These days, it's become a bit of your TV as well and mp3 player. (Young)

Hence, the path of new technology in the computer and electronics industry is paved by converging companies, as the globalizing market demands more interconnectedness in every aspect of production and consumption.

Problems with labor standards in the semiconductor industry fall into two general categories: the lack of representation and protection for the workers and the lack of regulation of labor standards.

The central complaint of the medical community against the industry is the toxicity of the chemicals used in production; while environment protocol establishes the rules for dealing with such, these are insufficient in response to the effects on workers. Chemicals used in the manufacturing of chips allegedly cause cancer, neurological, vision, respiratory, and reproductive damage to workers (Fordfound). To this, there are few protections for the workers in the plants-the protective suits workers must wear in clean rooms are to protect the chips from contamination rather than people from carcinogens (Mazurek).

Furthermore, there is a decided lack of regulation for this problem. Labor-intensive production of chips has been widely off-shored to export processing zones (EPZs)-conditions in EPZs vary greatly, but governments generally lower labor standards to attract foreign investment. Workers are furthered disadvantaged as unionization is also discouraged by governments in EPZs (Krumsiek).

Workers in the semiconductor industry are historically non-unionized. In the case of low skilled production workers, layoffs are common during a market downturn. Though engineers are generally well protected from market forces, the same cannot be said for the average worker in the production line (Angel). Globalization has put upward pressure on wages for engineers and downward pressure on wages for workers (Brown).

Facilitated by demands to cut cost and wages consequently, firms hire women to the labor force almost exclusively as female workers are paid less than male counterparts. Producers hire immigrant women for production in the United States and young single women are hired for production abroad (Fordfound). Women are hired because corporations perceive women to be a more passive and controllable workforce-and, thereby, less inclined to join unions.

Managers encourage this idea by presenting the idea of unionization as adverse to the relationship between workers and management-managers themselves are rendered as a father figure and promote a patriarchal family view for the workers in relation to the firm (Grossman). Unsurprisingly, women are grossly underrepresented in supervisory or managerial levels. Employers seek to hire young women both to perpetuate this situation as well as to avoid problems of older employees who demand higher wages are less inclined to work overtime (Krumsiek). Poverty and government encouragement keep young women flocking to jobs in these firms despite health risks and exploitation.

The general attitude in the early 80s on the behavior of the semiconductor industry in terms of labor protocol was favorable; the firms in the industry were believed to enact good if not best policies for the treatment of the workforce. It was not until complaints surfaced about the chemicals used in production causing cancer in workers that there was more scrutiny placed on firms' labor standards. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) found that OSHA standards were inadequate to provide for worker health and safety (Watterson).

While scathing reports were presented to regulatory bodies, there has been little progress in regulating semiconductor producers domestically or abroad. Even the Semiconductor Industry Association commissioned a study on the occupational hazards in chip production plants in 1989. The study concluded by recommending the elimination of certain chemicals in the production process, but was largely ignored and caused resistance to further studies (Krumsiek).

There are several ways firms in the semiconductor industry can circumvent the pressure of lobbyists and their call for regulatory measures. They state that the health risks of the chemicals used in production have inconclusive test results (Mazurek).

Additionally, because health problems in workers occur many years after initial exposure, firms dodge the blame. Data on chemical exposure is scarce globally and unavailable to the public, if not absent altogether. Governments also seek to protect the firms at the expense of labor standards to maximize profits and minimize costs (Watterson). Should regulation ever be passed for international standards for chip production, enforcement would remain problematic.

Within governments alone: there would be a lack of transparency and resources, an abundance of patronage and corruption, and disincentive to follow profit-compromising rules. Presently, international organizations such as the ILO and WHO can only play watchdog to labor issues in the semiconductor industry.

But probably the most interesting fact about this little laptop wonder is that it houses an Intel processor. Surprising? Think again. It’s no wonder Apple went with the latest series of Intel processors – the Intel Core 2 Duo. This new match brings 64-bit execution to the MacBook and offers performance that’s up to 25% percent greater than previous models.

The future for Apple looks bright, by blending different technologies and making high-tech laptops like the MacBook affordable, I would say they are on the right track. Not to mention the implementation of Mac OS X as their new operating system – but that’s a whole different story.