Nvidia once renamed the GeForce 8800-series into 9800-series without improving it much and now the company wants to do that again, but change the name of the GeForce 9800 GTX+ and 9800 GT graphics cards to GeForce GTX 250 and GeForce GTX 240, respectively, according to a news-story by Expreview web-site that quotes an allegedly official message by Nvidia to its partners.

“GeForce GTS 250 carries over the same specs and features of 9800 GTX+, and hence the same GPU, memory, board, PCB, and thermal solution. AIC’s should be confident in purchasing GPU’s, PCB’s, and other materials, since the only change is a new VBIOS to implement the new branding,” the letter reads.

From the consumer perspective, the GeForce 9800 GTX is an overclocked version of the GeForce 8800 GTS 512 and performance wise those graphics cards are pretty close to each other. Moreover, the GeForce 9800 GT is even slower compared to the GeForce 8800 GT despite of generally similar specifications.

Since all the aforementioned graphics cards are based on the code-named G92/G92b graphics processing unit, which debuted under GeForce 8800 mark, this will be the second renaming, which greatly confuses customers who do not follow the market very often.

The G92 chip was made using 65nm process technology, whereas the G92b is produced using 55nm fabrication process and is cheaper to manufacture. Both chips have the same technical specs. Earlier Nvidia wanted to call the code-named G92-based chips as GeForce GTS 150.

Nvidia did not comment on the news-story.

The Constellation 2.5” hard drives are offered in capacities of 160GB and 500GB with both Serial ATA-300 and new SAS 2.0 interface running at 6Gb/s speeds. As the first SAS 2.0 nearline drive, the Constellation hard drive enables larger external storage topologies, 100% faster data throughput and higher signal strength over greater distances, according to Seagate. The Constellation family will begin shipping this quarter.

The 3.5” Constellation ES hard drives will be available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities with both Serial Attached SCSI interface as well as a Serial ATA interfaces. The Constellation ES hard drives will ship only in calendar Q3, four to six months later compared to Western Digital’s Caviar Green 2TB hard drives, which are available already. However, Seagate’s 2TB device will support 7200rpm spindle speed, whereas WD’s HDD features variable spindle speed of up to 7200rpm.

Both Constellation and Constellation ES hard drives include PowerChoice technology from Seagate, which decreases power consumption by up to 54% for record power savings in enterprise environments, the company said.

The Constellation breed of hard disk drives are offered with optional self-encrypting drive (SED) technology and provide government-grade data security through the drive’s life cycle.

Seagate Constellation family of drives are rated at a full 1.2 million hours meantime before failure (MTBF).

Half the redundancies are in Japan, with the rest of the cuts being made globally, a Panasonic spokeswoman told UK on Wednesday. The staff reductions are to be made by March 2010.

In addition, Panasonic announced that 27 factories are to close worldwide 13 in Japan and 14 around the world.

The spokeswoman was unable to confirm whether any of Panasonic's UK staff would be affected by the cuts. The company's UK headquarters are in Bracknell, Berkshire, while its European research and development facility is in Cardiff, where electronics products are also manufactured. Panasonic's UK fabs include a factory in Newport that employs 500. Panasonic has about 4,000 UK staff.

The redundancies were announced following Panasonic's third-quarter results, which showed consolidated group sales fall by 20 percent year-on-year. The company made 464.7bn (3.6bn) less this quarter, compared with the same period last year. Overall group sales this quarter were 1,879.9bn.

Panasonic said its business had suffered from a drop in consumer spending, combined with a surge in the yen.

"The current financial crisis [that] originated in the United States has spread across the world and the company's outlook [in] the business environment has been extremely uncertain," said Panasonic in a statement.

"The company's business conditions have worsened particularly since last October, due mainly to the rapid appreciation of the yen, sluggish consumer spending worldwide and ever-intensified price competition."

Operating profit in the third quarter was down 84 percent year on year, from 165.4bn last year to 26.4bn this year.

Panasonic joins other Japanese manufacturers that have been severely affected by the downturn. Hitachi, Sony and Toshiba have all warned of losses this year.

The factory, which will be run in partnership with Shanghai Media Group, is a 130 thousand square foot facility located in the Shanghai area that will employ 200 workers and will be able to produce up to 500 thousand Blu-ray discs per month, reports The Hollywood Reporter web-site. 

Currently Sony Pictures Home Entertainment offers 32 Blu-ray titles on the Chinese market and will expand that number to 100 by the end of the year, which will help Sony to push its high-definition video format onto the market flooded with pirated DVDs and Internet downloads.

It is noteworthy that Sony begins to produce Blu-ray movies in China ahead of the launch of competing CBHD high-definition media formats that is substantially based on Toshiba’s HD DVD technology.

The Shanghai facility is Sony's fourth Blu-ray production line in the world. The others are in Terre Haute, Indiana; Shizuoka, Japan and Salzburg, Austria. A fifth BD line is due to be added to the company's Pitman, New Jersey, facility by mid-2009, according to THR.

In a short statement on Wednesday, Intel said it is closing down two existing assembly and test facilities: one in Penang, Malaysia, and one in Cavite, in the Philippines. It also said it will also stop production at Fab 20, an older 200mm wafer fabrication facility in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Silicon-wafer production operations will also end at the D2 facility in Santa Clara, California.

The move will affect "between 5,000 and 6,000 employees worldwide" Intel said in the statement. The company added that "not all employees will leave Intel", and some may be offered positions at other facilities.

The actions will take place between now and the end of 2009, Intel said.

The news comes just over a week after Intel announced poor fourth-quarter results. The company had a 90 percent drop in profit from the previous quarter and an $8.2bn drop or 23 percent when compared to the same quarter in the previous year.