PC and Components: Interviews

After a crazy year for HP that included a failed tablet, a hasty decision to abandon the PC business (a decision now abandoned), and a CEO shakeup, the company seems eager to get back to business as usual.

In April of 1995, Steve Jobs, then head of NeXT Computer, was interviewed as part of the Computerworld Honors Program Oral History project. The wide-ranging interview was conducted by Daniel Morrow, executive director of the awards program.

Intel’s Phil Cronin is a passionate believer in technology’s influence on society as connectivity pervades all corners of the globe. He speaks to NADIA CAMERON about his industry heritage and experiences, channel evolution and why ICT is so important.

Earlier this year, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak accepted the position of chief scientist at start-up solid state drive company Fusion-io. It's the first time since 1972, when he worked in Hewlett-Packard Co's calculator division, that he's held a technologist's position for a company that wasn't his own.

Mark Hennessy speaks candidly on transforming the IT organization at IBM, fostering a culture of innovation, managing IT during the financial crisis, maximizing the value of social networking tools, and taking advantage of an imminent technological game-changer.

Craig Barrett spent decades using his business skills to make Intel the world's most powerful semiconductor company. He has now turned his attention to an even bigger challenge -- spreading computers and education throughout the developing world.

Can you tell us about MPA?

This time last year HP was the toast of the hardware vendor town. In 2007, it had become the world’s leading PC vendor and was rewarded for its channel consistency with the ARN Hardware Vendor of the Year award.

After spending most of his career in large multinational organisations, Raj Sharma decided to start-up his own small computer services business, Pentaq, 15 years ago. He’d already been general manager of distribution organisation, Tech Pacific, in Hong Kong as well as the director of its Asia-based offices, and spent some time with NEC Corporation in the 1980s. Pentaq has since expanded into PC assembly, technical services and software development. Sharma spoke to ARN about the advantages and challenges of running your own business, adapting to change and moving into the Indian market.

Lenovo Group Chairman Yang Yuanqing wants to challenge perceptions of Chinese companies as mainly producers of cheap, low-end products.

Microsoft co-founder and Chairman Bill Gates has been giving keynote speeches at Las Vegas conventions, including the Consumer Electronics Show and the now-defunct Comdex, for decades. Before his last CES keynote speech as a full-time company employee, he talked with the IDG News Service about his legacy as an innovator, the background behind some of the deals announced at CES this week and directions for Microsoft.

For much of his 34 years at Intel, Justin R. Rattner has been a pioneer in parallel and distributed processing. His early ideas didn't catch on in the market, but the time has come for them now, he recently told Computerworld's Gary Anthes.

Why would a business that focussed on technology recovery, refurbishing and resale, want to re-brand itself? Ask TechTurn, once called Newmarket IT, who felt that its service - diverting potential IT scrap from e-waste to usable technology, or IT salvage - was an idea whose time had come.

In his famous paper published in April 1965, in the journal Electronics, Gordon Moore wrote: "Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers -- or at least terminals connected to a central computer -- automatic controls for automobiles, and personal portable communications equipment." Analyzing the future of the industry, he predicted that, "reduced costs is one of the big attractions of integrated electronics, and the cost advantage continues to increase as the technology evolves toward the production of larger and larger circuit functions on a single semiconductor substrate. For simple circuits, the cost per component is nearly inversely proportional to the number of components." This became known as Moore's Law. Forth-two years later, it is still valid. But will it be the same in, say, 10 years from now? Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer, answers that question in this interview.

In the final part of an in-depth interview with ARN's Brian Corrigan, local Lenovo managing director, talks about environmental and social responsibility.

In the second part of an in-depth interview with ARN's BRIAN CORRIGAN, local Lenovo managing director, Alan Munro, talks about vendor consolidation and SMB strategies.

In the first part of an in-depth interview with ARN's BRIAN CORRIGAN, local Lenovo managing director, Alan Munro, talks about life after Big Blue and changing behaviour in the education market.

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is getting ready to launch Barcelona, its first quad-core server chip.

Lexmark's Carmel Mosser talks to ARN

Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) last week unveiled a performance upgrade for its Athlon 64 X2 dual-core high performance processor, the 6000+, with a clock speed of 3 GHz and 2 MB L2 cache. AMD has also disclosed plans to release desktop chips later this year based on the quad core design code-named Barcelona. Division marketing manager for desktop at AMD, David Schwarzbach, discussed the moves in an interview with Patrick Thibodeau.