'Tremendous' response to iPod shuffle, Apple says

Apple is buoyant about its sales for the Christmas shopping season, following the first shipments of the new, tiny iPod shuffle and yesterday's unveiling of Core2Duo MacBooks. Philip Schiller, Apple's head of worldwide product marketing, said that the matchbook-sized shuffle is proving highly popular. 'Response to it has been tremendous,' he said. ...more

A new Xeon in the Intel server stable

Intel has announced a new top-of-the-range Xeon processor for 32-bit server systems. Previously, a 3.06GHz model had 512KB of L3 cache. ...more

Yahoo! chief takes $1 salary

The Chairman and CEO of Yahoo!, Terry Semel is taking a leaf out of Steve Jobs' book and taking an annual salary of $1. The boss of the Internet giant will, however - just like Jobs - bolster his meagre salary with millions of dollar's worth of share options. A new deal taking him up to 2008 sees Semel eligible for an annual bonus involving up to one million shares and further stock options, reports the BBC. ...more

Analysts suggest Skype's price tag may be too high

Following the news that eBay is to buy Internet voice startup Skype for $2.6bn, analysts have warned that the auction giant may have shelled out more than it should. 'I can see some of the rationale, but I have difficulty justifying the price,' said Maribel Lopez, VP, devices, media and marketing at Forrester Research. ...more

AMD ups the ante for 64-bit laptop power

AMD has upped the ante for the desktop replacement market with a new 64-bit processor for laptops. The AMD Athlon 64 processor 3700+ is dubbed a 'desktop replacement' chip. It is as powerful as the processors traditionally found in desktop PCs and laptops using it can run a full range of demanding applications. ...more