Retail

Japan's Pioneer plans to end production of plasma display panels as part of a restructuring program to return its operations to profit, it announced this week.

Flailing Bondi Junction-based Apple reseller, Academy Store, will be sold off, according to its receivers.

Toshiba plans to begin mass production of Direct Methanol Fuel Cells by March next year and to have a television based on the powerful Cell microprocessor on sale before the end of the same year, it said Thursday.

ASX-listed ISP, iiNet (ASX: IIN) has acquired Westnet for $81 million. The cash deal is expected to be completed by the end of May.

If the new products we've seen in the last few weeks are anything to go by, we're in for a great year gadget-wise.

When Craig Urizzola's company decided to make a seven-figure investment in a new ERP system, he contacted his local reseller to order hardware to run it on. "We told them exactly what we wanted and said, 'We don't need SANs or clustering or any of that,'" says Urizzola, CIO at Saladino's, a food service distributor in Fresno, Calif. "But their proposal came back with SANs and 10 more servers than we asked for. They just don't listen."

When the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program was first announced in 2005, media attention centered on two aspects: the US$100 price tag and the humanitarian nature of the project. Three years later, the environmental genius of these award-winning laptops still not only burns bright but even inspires copycats. Vendors such as Asustek and Via are working to bring their own low-cost, low-power computing devices to emerging markets and education.

Aggressive pricing and competition is going to make it a tough year for projector vendors and their channel partners, but rising demand in the consumer market and the promise of smaller and portable models means there's still plenty of opportunity out there.

A US woman whose lawsuit against the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) was thrown out by a federal judge last month plans to file an amended complaint in a move that could finally force the industry group to share details about its controversial techniques for investigating alleged file sharers.

You might think that measuring return on investment is one of those things that never changes. You'd be wrong.

In the final part of an in-depth interview with ARN's BRIAN CORRIGAN, local Kyocera Mita managing director, David Finn, assesses the role of resellers in managed print services.

In the second part of an in-depth interview with ARN's Brian Corrigan, local Kyocera Mita managing director, David Finn, talks about the printer-maker's green credentials.

In a surprise move, Paramount and DreamWorks Animation announced this week that they would align themselves exclusively with the HD DVD high-definition format. The controversial decision has attracted a lot of attention, and not just because it comes at a time when market indicators have been pointing to competitor Blu-ray Disc as having the lead (disc sales have been running 2-1 in Blu-ray's favour).

A new generation of high-definition TV and DVD technology heralds the arrival of the digital living room, according to the head of Taiwanese media software maker CyberLink, Alice Chang. Users love high-definition TV because it's like watching a football game from the sidelines, while HD-DVD and Blu-ray, the high-definition video disc formats, put the cinema in your house and offer fun new possibilities. For example, the HD-DVD version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen includes a shoot 'em up game users can play. Bad guys don't die when hit, but the game does keep the score. Tokyo Drift includes a function that puts the story cards used to make the movie in the top left corner of the corresponding scene, giving users a glimpse of the creative process. And that's just the beginning, Chang said. One function her company is working on could one day let users buy items they see in movies on the click of a mouse. So instead of wondering where 007 picked up that suave tuxedo, or Carrie Bradshaw got her new shoes, users can click on them and buy immediately at Amazon.com or eBay. Here's what else Chang had to say.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates's keynote this year at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) put the company's newest power broker at center stage: Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment and Devices division. Bach is the man behind Microsoft's Xbox, which at the time of its launch was a big risk and departure for the company. Xbox has gone on to become one of Microsoft's most successful consumer products, and Bach now is in charge of charting Microsoft's future strategy to give consumers real-time, always-available access to content over IP networks.

And then there was one: Blu-ray.

Well, that was quick. Last week, consumer electronics giant Toshiba announced it was pulling the plug on its high-definition video disc format, HD DVD. Within days, Toshiba's partners announced that they were now Blu-ray shops, and HD DVD players and movies were reduced to fire-sale prices.

Toshiba conceded the HD video disc battle this week and announced its HD-DVD formatted products were no longer going to be manufactured. It had little choice after a string of defeats, started by Warner choosing to go with Blu-Ray exclusively and concluding when the US's biggest retailer, Wal Mart, backed out of the HD DVD format.

Courtesy of Mac Rumours comes this memo from Steve Jobs on FairPlay, the Digital Rights Management (DRM) anti-piracy technology with which Apple encodes downloaded music. DRM limits where and how digital music can be played.

While the digital camera explosion has sparked rapid development and growth in other areas, such as storage and photo sharing sites, the photo editing tool space has lagged somewhat behind. There's the pricey Adobe Photoshop at the high end of the market, and each of the camera manufacturers bundles their cameras with basic editing suites, but there hasn't been much in the middle.

Few video producers have the budget for a custom musical score, or the time, equipment and musical skill to create one. With that in mind, so Sony has released Cinescore 1.0.

So far, DLP rear projection models we have reviewed were largely disappointing. We have seen future models that looked spectacular and the Toshiba 62CM9UA comes very close. In our tests, it passed everything with flying colours across all AV modes, possessing only a few viewing problems.

It's not often that a lower priced model can match or even exceed the features of its more expensive brethren - but this is just what the TomTom One achieves. We've reviewed - and loved - the Go 300 and Go 500. We found them easy to use, packed with useful features and, most importantly, they got us exactly where we wanted to go. The TomTom One retains many of these features but also includes some key improvements.

3G Phones have long been a hit and miss affair. Unlike their 2.5G counterparts, 3G handsets are generally regarded as big, bulky and slow - among many other issues. Only recently have we seen a change in this and Nokia has joined the party, this time offering the classy 6280. It's quite simply excellent in most areas.

We didn't hesitate to compare this to the iPod nano; arguably the flagship flash-based MP3 player on the market. Small, compact, light, thin and boasting a colour screen as well as a touchpad, the Samsung Z5 is the closest thing we've seen in terms of looks, features and functions. But does it stack up? We definitely think so.