Lenovo founder shares slogans, tells tales of 1980s China

The chairman of Lenovo, the world's number four PC maker, shared Chinese revolution-spirited slogans and the unlikely story of his company's growth out of a government-managed economy in a motivational speech to Chinese small business owners on Friday. Lenovo faced tough odds even though its founders were from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Chinese state-controlled institute for national research projects. Liu Chuanzhi, one of 11 former government researchers who founded the predecessor to Lenovo in 1984, recalled how the company fought through trade barriers, high component prices and domination by foreign brands in a talk that highlighted how fast China's economy has grown in the last three decades. "In 1993 almost the whole market was foreign-branded computers," Liu said at the forum for small and medium businesses in Hangzhou, a scenic city in eastern China.

The academy gave the company founding capital of 200,000 yuan, or about US$30,000 today. Things only grew worse when the company was scammed out of two-thirds of the money, he said. "When we came out, we not only lacked funds but also had no idea what to do," Liu said. That sum, far from enough, would not have been enough to buy three computers in China in the 1980s, Liu said. Lenovo, formerly called Legend Group, was founded early in China's process of market economic reforms and had to work in a tightly regulated environment. The low quality of components such as hard drives in China also hindered the company, he said. China tried to protect domestic PC makers in the 1980s by charging a massive 200 percent tariff on foreign computers, said Liu. "The result of this protection was that foreign computers were very difficult to get into China and could only be smuggled, but China also could not make its own computers very well," he said.

Lenovo's first PC did not reach the market until 1990. Lenovo struggled with low margins even as it built market share against foreign brands like IBM and Compaq in the 1990s. Government regulation also continued to slow the industry's growth. Lenovo's global presence gained a huge boost when it bought IBM's PC unit in 2005. The company's sales in developed markets have since slumped in the global economic recession and it has restructured to bring its focus back to China and other emerging markets. Chinese residents had to register with the government to become Internet users even late in the decade, said Liu. Lenovo today is the top PC vendor in China. Liu also emphasized the importance of company culture, describing Lenovo's as an example. "Make the company's interests the top priority, seek truth in forging ahead, take the people as the base," Liu said. To succeed like Lenovo, companies must "love to battle, know how to battle, and conduct campaigns with order," Liu said, using language reminiscent of "The Art of War," an ancient Chinese book on military strategy by Sun Tzu.

Chinese president Hu Jintao has promoted the slogan "take the people as the base" as a part of socialist theory. Liu attended a Chinese military college in the 1960s and worked on a Chinese farm during the Cultural Revolution, a chaotic period when many graduates were sent to the countryside for re-education.

NASA: Orbiter spots ice in Martian meteor craters

A NASA spacecraft orbiting Mars has spotted exposed ice in five different spots on the Red Planet. NASA scientists said they found the exposed ice inside craters , caused by meteors slamming into the Red Planet last year. After years of speculation and last year's intensive hunt for water and other elements that could support life , NASA scientists reported today that they've found frozen water just a few feet below the planet's surface. "This ice is a relic of a more humid climate from perhaps just several thousand years ago," said Shane Byrne of the University of Arizona, Tucson, during a press conference today.

Scientific instruments onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter found that the icy craters range from 1 1/2 to 8 feet deep. The images are sent back to Earth where scientists pour over them, comparing any new spots, or possible craters, to photos taken earlier. The exposed ice first appeared as bright patches and then darkened in a matter of weeks as the ice vaporized in the Martian atmosphere. "Craters tell us a lot about the object on which they occur," said Ken Edgett, a senior staff scientist at Malin Space Science Systems. "They're great probes of what lies beneath the surface." In the average week, the orbiter's high-resolution camera captures more than 200 images of Mars, covering an area greater than the size of California. Because of the area where the ice was discovered, scientists said today that if NASA's Viking Lander 2, which worked on the surface of Mars in 1976, had dug four inches deeper than it had at the time, it would have struck ice. Before NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander froze to death in the long, cold Martian winter last year, the robotic vehicle dug up and analyzed soil samples and verified the existence of ice on Mars . The found ice proved that water - a key element to support life - exists there.

Going thin and bling, HP tries to strike Envy with latest laptops

Hewlett-Packard Co. introduced a half-dozen new notebook PCs today, including a luxury line that bears a striking resemblance to Apple Inc.'s laptops. Overall, two things unify the new models introduced by the world's largest notebook vendor: a skinny, sub-inch profile, and an overt emphasis on design, including metallic shells and imprinted or etched designs on the cases. HP also introduced a thin-and-light Pavilion consumer notebook with an aluminum shell starting at $549, and a new Mini netbook powered by Nvidia Inc.'s ION graphics. Take the two new high-end notebooks HP is calling its Envy line.

The result, as the picture below and PC World's reviewer both confirm, is a machine very similar to Apple's unibody aluminum-encased MacBook Pros. The Envys come encased in sleek gunmetal gray aluminum-magnesium alloy shells, use a low-profile, chiclet-style, backlit keyboard, sport a long-running but nonremoveable lithium-polymer battery, and a bright (410 nits) widescreen. The Envy 13, with a 13-in. screen, is 0.8-inches thick and weighs 3.74 pounds. He likens the strategy to the car industry. "The Envy is like a Lexus, a luxury car that is still affordable to the upper-middle-classes," Kay said. It starts at $1,699. The Envy 15 starts at $1,799. Fully loaded models of either will cost more than $2,000. Roger Kay, an analyst with EndPoint Technology Associates Inc., is not bothered by HP's strategy of aping Apple's design or its prices. "More than any other vendor, HP has narrowed that gap" with Apple, he said. Dell Inc.'s forthcoming ultra-thin (0.4-inches) Adamo, by contrast, is likely to be priced more "like a Ferrari - only a few people are going to be able to buy them." Besides the Envys, HP rolled out the Pavilion DM3 consumer notebook.

It also rolled out a new business notebook, the ProBook 5310M, which starts at $649. HP also introduced a special edition of its HP Mini 110 netbook imprinted with a picture created by a noted European design firm. Tipping in at 1-in. thick and 4.2 pounds, the aluminum-clad Pavilion starts at $549 when equipped with an AMD processor. The HP Mini 110 by Studio Tord Boontje will start at $399. HP also introduced the new HP Mini 311. It comes with a larger-than-average 11.6-inch screen powered by Nvidia's ION multimedia platform. Shim hailed HP's ongoing prowess at taking high-end trends and translating them into products that work at different price points. The Mini 311 also starts at $399. That pricing appears to be lower than other ION-equipped netbooks, notes Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC Corp.

HP has been "pretty successful" going "after a wide audience, from entry-level to high end," he said. "Apple, I would argue, is still just high-end." Most of the notebooks will become available on Oct. 22 the day that Windows 7 launches, though buyers can reserve them immediately via HP's Web site.

Ballmer flogged, other execs over company meeting messages

Microsoft's acid-tongued covert blogger Mini-Microsoft offered up a report card on Thursday's all-company meeting at Seattle's Safeco Field, giving CEO Steve Ballmer   two zeros and accusing business division president Stephen Elop of "sucking the life out of the stadium." While Microsoft employees provided tepid tweets from the company meeting that pulled 20,000 of them into the baseball stadium and jammed AT&T's cellular network, Mini-Microsoft looked for signs that the company was tuned into the job at hand, understood the impact of thousands of layoffs over the past year, and how Microsoft might stem inefficiencies at the company. He must acknowledge it starkly. The evolution of Microsoft Windows Seven things to love, hate about Windows 7 CEO Ballmer was the first to disappoint, according to Mini-Microsoft, who hoped that the company leader would "come out front first, before any other Microsoft leadership, to speak the truth about the last year and where we are now. We had layoffs.

Ballmer got zeros on both counts. We had inefficiencies." Ballmer, however, didn't appear until the end, slapping hands with employees sitting close to the stage and tearing an iPhone out of an employee's hands and pretending to stomp on it. Elop faired even worse, drawing Mini-Microsoft's wrath for crushing the blogger's hope for short, sweet and powerful demos. "Elop. Baby. Steven.

Dynamics. What did I do to you to have that forced down my eyeballs? ... Geez. XRM. Really? Did anyone give you advice that this was a bad idea? If not, you're seriously lacking good reports willing to give you honest feedback." Mini-Microsoft had blogged before the confab on six hopes for the company meeting.

If so, keep listening to them. In the grading system each hope represented a point and when all was said and done the score was 1.75. "Hey, almost one-third realized," wrote Mini-Microsoft. The other hopes included "practical vision," which Mini-Microsoft graded out at .5, giving Craig Mundie, chief researcher and strategy officer, and Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, props for focusing on "practical aspects of product groups, research, and inbetween the technology transferring power of the labs groups."Mini-Microsoft's hope for short, sweet and powerful demos earned a .5. "Robbie Bach [president of the entertainment and devices division] did okay, but I can't say the demos blew me away," wrote Mini-Microsoft. Ballmer's zeros came from not coming out first to "set the context for the meeting in light of a pretty awful FY09 Q3 and Q4," and one for not giving a serious wrap up. The grade for Mini-Microsoft's hope on getting a good peek at new stuff came up .75. He called looks at Bing, Zune HD and new Laptop Hunter commercials "conservative." And the hope to see a new review system got a zero. And Mini-Microsoft had kind words for Dr. Qi Lu, formerly of Yahoo and now running Microsoft's online services group. "[He] might be my favorite techie right now.

On the up side, Mini-Microsoft said he was surprised to hear COO Kevin Turner, who opened the meeting, admit that the company had over hired. I was impressed with what he's brought together for Bing and what's coming and how he has focused the team and adopted some of the new technology that Satya [Nadella, senior vice president of research and development] was showing. Ever?" Who the hell thought we'd be feeling so good about our search decision engine?