$44.6 Billion is not a Fare Deal for Yahoo

Jerry Yang, the CEO and the co-founder of Yahoo revealed the reason for rejecting Microsoft’s offer to takeover Yahoo @ $44.6 Billion. According to him, this amount is too low, he also wrote that Yahoo has emerged as an independent player in Internet market, they are expecting a growth of almost 75 % till 2010. By then, Yahoo would be a $ 75 Billion company.









Yahoo is a recognized brand, said Jerry! They have about 500 million users accessing its free service across the globe every day. He also disclosed his partnership with some of the top players like Comcast and eBay

According to me, this is very good news for Google as they have already planned to oppose this bid on legal grounds. As internet is a free bird which Microsoft is trying to make a licensed availability. But no worry as both Microsoft & Yahoo even when together cannot defeat Google.

Microsoft to bid $44.6 billion to take over Yahoo

Microsoft in its ever made boldest bid of $ 44.6 Billion is aiming for Yahoo to beat their competitor Google. As I have mentioned earlier Google has attracted around 58% of the total search market in US, whereas both Microsoft and Yahoo could'nt go more than 40%.




Yahoo is the most visited site on the World Wide Web. Founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo began as a hobby and has evolved into a leading global brand. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with a presence in more than 20 markets and regions around the globe. Even Yahoo has acquired many companies starting from Four 11 to recent Right Media's acquisition. There are also speculations that they are aiming at popular social networking site MySpace. The Q4 2007 results state that there was a 20% growth in marketing sector this fiscal year.

Yahoo in its official statement disclosed that they would take quiet a bit of time to review Microsoft’s agreement in which they would look Yahoo as an individual company.

Sony Vaoi X 505 or Apple MacBookAir

Yes, that’s the question which everyone is asking since the recent release of Apple's MacBook Air. Both are quality laptops, but hear is my view about them.

Sony claims that the battery life is 2.5 to 4 hrs, however Mobile tech review of Sony’s X 505 laptop reveals that the battery life is only 2.5 hrs on charge when using the built in power management. Sony X505 has 10 inch LCD display, where as MacBook Air has 13 inch LED display is the largest display in a 3 pound laptop and is just bright as the MacBook Pro’s 15 inch LED display. The processor used in X505 is Pentium M Processor with 1.1 GHz clock speed, where as Apple has a special kind of processor designed by Intel for its thinnest notebook computer, It is a Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 1.6 (upgradable to 1.8 GHz at an additional $ 300). This is 64 percent smaller than the normal Core 2 Duo processors. The most interesting feature about MacBook Air lies in its touchpad, which has a pinch of the feature of a Surface Computer, apart from pointer functionality, it also allows you to rotate, enlarge your photos. I know you all have something in your mind, that’s about the touchscreen feature, however the touch feature is limited only to the touchpad and not to the screen, if touchscreen feature is included, it would be a ground breaking news same as that of the IPhone news. Sony offers 512 MB DDR RAM however the Apple MacBook Air comes with 2GB DDR RAM. The hard disk in Sony’s X 505 notebook is 20 GB, however Air has 80 GB Hard disk with 4200 RPM (a bit slower than the normal hard disks used).

All the above features, definitely reveals that Air is the most affordable thinnest laptop. The only reason you will go for Sony’s X 505 is the price, if it is less than that of Air, you would go for Sony. If any of you are willing for, here’s one @ $1,000. I see one more advantage of going with Sony is the way of replacing the battery, its user-friendly process however you have to take you MacBook Air to Apple’s service center for the surgery.

Check the Crunch Gear for detailed comparison between X 505 and Air.

Apple MacBook Air

Apple has released its much awaited laptop earlier this week, which is named as MacBook Air. Yes you got it right, I am talking about the second thinnest laptop of the world after Sony's X505 which was launched in December 2003. Earlier this week, Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs have surprised everybody at MacWorld Expo by taking a laptop out of an interoffice mailing envelope. Air is all set to come in market within two weeks and the estimated price of this thinnest notebook will be $ 1,799. Presently it is launched only in Silver color, but Apple would definitely have plans to launch this product in other different colors as Dell did a few months ago. It is just 0.16 inches at its thinnest point and weighs about 3 pounds. Considering the design, this notebook is outfitted with 80GB hard disk.

Other features like a flip down door on side with connectors like, USB 2.0, Micro-DVI for external display, head phone jack and MagSafe connector for power which comes with 45 watt power adaptor existed on other MacBook laptops. It also has an 802.11n based wireless network support and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Apple estimates that the battery life of MacBook Air with Bluetooth enabled is 5hrs.


Perhaps the thinnest MacBook ever, it is encased in a 0.16 to 0.76 inch of aluminum case. At just 3.0 pounds, MacBook Air becomes the most conveniently portable notebook computer. A 13.3 inch widescreen LED display is same as the other MacBook laptops. The 1280 X 800 resolution give you a polished display with rich colors. A full sized keyboard is just like the one used in MacBook, the additional feature in MacBook Air is the backlit key illumination making it easy to work even at the time to power failures in your place. The track pad is much bigger than the other models.


Compromises

Apart from all the above stunning features, there are few things where Apple had to compromise with space, I will mention few of them here. There is no internal optical drives (CD or DVD drives), a USB based add-on SuperDrive will be supplied on extra $99 cost. But as always, Apple had come up with a new software for the users who do no opt to get that extra optical add-on SuperDrive. They have developed “Remote Disk” which enables you to use the optical drive of another Mac or PC which is on the same network as MacBook Air. The battery is so compact and tightly placed, that a novice user will not be able to replace it with a new one. You have to take the laptop to the service center to get the battery replaced. There is no RJ-45 port, that’s again a $29 for additional USB based RJ-45 port.




Processor

There is a special Core 2 Duo processor designed by Intel for this product, it is based on Merom technology with clock speed ranging from 1.6GHz to 2.2 GHz. It is a Low Voltage Merom based Core 2 Duo instead of the traditional Ultra Low Voltage Merom. The only reason why Apple went with Low Voltage against Ultra Low Voltage is because of the lower clock speed ranges of Ultra Low voltage, however the advantage of Ultra Low voltage Merom based processors is that they operate on even less voltage when compared with their Low voltage competitors. The present processor is the older version of the current Intel’s processor. Apple used a 65nm Merom based processor whereas Intel has just launched its much smaller 45nm Hafnium based processor Apple would definitely have a plan to use the current 45nm Hafnium based Core 2 Duo Intel processor in its MacBook Air. Check more about the processor used in MacBook Air. Let me also mention about the processors which MacBook has been using in past. The MacBook Pro first used Intel’s Core Duo processor, which were replaced with Intel Core 2 Duo processors in mid 2006. The Core 2 Duo was a 64 bit processor designed by Intel corp. for laptop computers. This was developed under the code name “Merom”, it had a FSB speed of 667 MHz and supports the Virtual interrupt technology called as “Vanderpool Virtualization Technology”. This processor was upgraded last year with a FSB speed of 800 MHz






Eco Friendly

There were lots of speculations about the Apple’s strategy towards the ecosystem. Infact last year, Apple was in crosshairs of the environment group Greenpeace. But MacBook Air is truly eco friendly, it has fully recyclable aluminum case, and is the first to have a mercury-free display, the display is LED but not LCD. Even while packaging, the retail packaging of MacBook Air uses 56 percent less material than other MacBook packaging.


Specifications

In the end, lets see the specifications once again.

3 lbs
0.16” - 0.76” x 12.8” x 8.94” (H x W x D)
Full Size keyboard from the MacBook
13.3” 1280 x 800 LED backlit screen
2GB DDR2-667
Intel Core 2 Duo 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz, 800MHz FSB, 4MB shared L2
80GB 1.8” 4200RPM HDD or optional 64GB SSD
802.11n/Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Starting at $1799


My next post will be a true comparison between the Sony X505 Ultraslim and MacBook Air Ultraportal notebooks.

Editor’s Note: For Our Readers

For next few weeks, I would be writing about the future of today’s high profiled companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo etc.., Truly speaking this would be my research about these companies, in which I would be answering few questions like How did they started? What are they doing?and What will they be in future? Offcourse, to make it more interesting, I would truly cover the technology part of these companies rather than their history, economics and blah blah blah….

We had a internal discussion about, Which company to start with? and after thorough study, we decided to start with the powerful search engine and the high profiled advertising company which is Google. So lets start off, I am sure, you would be loving this idea. However we would also continue to post the technology news and latest happennig in the world of internet.