BT, the British ISP and one of the region’s largest companies has announced they will be offering employees the opportunity to take one year off of work in exchange for a 75 percent price cut for that year.
Any employee who takes the pay cut and vacation will receive the 25 percent remaining of their salary as an upfront payment.
BT is desperately trying to cut costs after posting a massive 1 billion pound loss for the Q1 2009.
The telecom has also said it will be laying off over 15,000 of its 100,000 employees over the next year. Employees are also being given larger incentives to work part-time.
Result for: q1
Microsoft has noted today that the upcoming RC of Windows 7 will include an “on/off” switch for Internet Explorer 8, making the browser not mandatory for the first time ever.
The option can be accessed through the control panel and will “turn IE8 off” but not necessarily uninstall the browser. By turning the feature off, the IE8 executable file “iexplore.exe” is deleted but the browser can be turned on again whenever the user wants.
Jack Mayo, group program manager for the Windows 7 document and printing team, added that the company wants to give users more options in turning off features that they may not necessarily need or want.
“We want to provide choice while also making sure we do not compromise on compatibility by removing APIs provided for developers,” Mayo said. “We also want to strike the right balance for consumers in providing choice and balancing compatibility with applications and providing a consistent Windows experience.”
Mayo did not add a release date for the new public RC but did say a final version of the OS will be available in Q1 2010.
Result for: q1
Fujitsu has announced that they have inked a deal to transfer their HDD business to Toshiba, helping to soften the blow of a potential $112 million USD loss in the division for the fiscal year.
Fujitsu will spin off the division into a separate company which will then be purchased in full by Toshiba.
Although the agreement is already set, the actual deal will not occur until April at the earliest as Toshiba wants to have the deal happen in their Q1 fiscal 2009.
The deal should give Toshiba a stronger push into the smaller HDD market, including those for HDD-based media players and those found in laptops. The company also noted it will use the opportunity to “branch out” into solid-state drives and “other business-class storage.”
