Lenovo is the world’s fourth-biggest personal computer maker

One of the world’s largest computer manufacturers, Chinese-based Lenovo, says it is to cut about 2,500 jobs around the world.

Lenovo blamed the cuts, which amount to nearly 11% of its total workforce, on the global economic downturn and a fall in demand for PCs.

It said the cuts were part of efforts to save $300m (£200m) in the coming financial year.

They were, it argued, essential if the company was to remain competitive.

“As hard as this news is for all of our Lenovo employees, we believe the steps we are taking today are necessary for Lenovo to compete in today’s economy,” said chief executive William J Amelio.

The company also said it expected to see losses in the final quarter of the financial year.

The statement said Lenovo had been hit by “the unprecedented global economic challenges facing the world, resulting in a reducing demand for personal computers and related products”.

It also said that a reduction in demand from China, historically a major Lenovo market, had affected the company’s fortunes.

Lenovo’s net profits dropped 78% in the three months until the end of September.

written by TMP \\ tags: job losses, pc, workforce

Professor Hall works for gender equality in the technological arena

A professor who invented a forerunner of the world wide web has been made a dame in the New Year Honours.

Wendy Hall created the “open hypermedia system” Microcosm with colleagues after joining the University of Southampton computer science group in 1984.

And in 1994 she became the university’s first female professor of engineering.

Professor Hall, 56, was made a CBE in 2000 for services to science and technology and is considered one of the best computer scientists in the world.

She was president of the British Computer Society from 2003 to 2004, and in 2005 became the first woman to be appointed senior vice president of the Royal Academy of Engineering.

More recently, Professor Hall co-founded the world’s first interdisciplinary body to study the structure and sociology of the web, the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI), with internet inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Southampton professor Nigel Shadbolt and Daniel Weitzner, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Throughout her career Professor Hall has championed the role of her female colleagues in computing and the sciences and worked to ensure developments in technology benefit women as well as men.

“I am thrilled to have been honoured in this way,” she said.

“It is of course exciting for me personally and for my family, but it is also a tribute to all the people I have worked with in my career as a scientist and engineer both at Southampton and in the wider community.”

written by NewsFeeder \\ tags: Science & Environment

Trading Standards and Citizens Advice can help

We all get gifts at Christmas that we do not really like and even the odd one that is broken. But do you know when it’s actually worth fighting your way through the January sales to try to get an exchange or refund?

Your rights are based around two main points – why you want to take the item back and where it was bought.

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written by TMP \\ tags: shopping rights, unwanted gifts

The US military’s tradition of tracking Santa’s Christmas Eve progress continues, with new web-based tools.

written by NewsFeeder \\ tags: Technology