Daily Marauder

TECHNOLOGY

Apple has just released its second quarter financial results, and surprise, surprise: they’re very good. The company had revenues for the quarter of $8.16 billion and net profit of $1.21 billion — both easily beat Wall Street expectations. Both also beat the numbers the company posted a year ago, and actually represent the company’s best March quarter (which is Apple’s second quarter) results ever. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/22/economy-be-damned-apple-posts-its-best-second-quarter-earnings-ever/ 4/22)

Looking to gain market share in a tough economy, top-tier PC makers such as Dell and Hewlett-Packard increasingly are bringing out low-cost, no-frills models that are long on cost savings but, in some cases, short on features. The industry trend isn’t likely to stop anytime soon either, according to NPD analyst Stephen Baker, who said PC prices could drop another 10% by the end of the year. The Wall Street Journal (4/22)

The HP Pavilion dv2 (top) and the Dell Inspiron Mini 12 represent new lines of laptops aimed at frugal consumers. The models blur the lines between relatively cheap netbooks and traditional notebooks in terms of pricing, size and computing power.