Hewlett-Packard Co.

Dell Inc. said Thursday its net income fell 5 percent in the last quarter despite early signs that businesses may be starting to buy new computers again.

Consumers snapped up low-cost laptops and smaller netbooks over the holidays, pushing Dell's PC shipments up 29 percent. Those products are less lucrative, though, and Dell's revenue and profit in the consumer PC division grew much more slowly. Dell's profit margin was below expectations, and its shares fell 7 percent in Friday trading.

If you've got a car and a bicycle, do you need a motorcycle too? Wireless carriers are betting that you do. They're making a big push this year for the motorcycles of the gadget world: devices that are bigger than a phone but smaller than a laptop.

The most famous entrant in the category is Apple Inc.'s iPad, which comes out next month. But many other manufacturers are crowding into the niche, and were planning to do so even before Apple's announcement in January.

The JooJoo, a Web-browsing tablet device that is the subject of a high-profile Silicon Valley legal dispute, appears on track to reach early buyers at the end of February.

The flat touch-screen computer was known until December as the CrunchPad, after the technology blog TechCrunch. It was born from a post by the blog's well-connected and outspoken founder, Michael Arrington, that called for collaborators on a "dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen Web tablet."

Small and inexpensive "netbooks" were some of the most popular computers in the recession, wooing consumers with their portability and prices that were often below $400. Now with the economy improving, consumers will be asked to open their wallets to new styles of computers, including some costing a bit more.

The European Union's antitrust chief said Tuesday that U.S. senators who pressed her to approve Oracle Corp.'s takeover of Sun Microsystems Inc. should stop interfering in Europe's affairs and prioritize U.S. health care reform.

Neelie Kroes, EU competition commissioner, is holding up the $7.4 billion deal over worries that it would give Oracle too much control over the database software market.

A group of 59 U.S. senators wrote to her last month, asking her to speed up approval for a deal that, if it fails, could cost thousands of American jobs.

European Union regulators said Friday that they have extended until Jan. 27 a deadline to wrap up their antitrust review of Oracle Corp.'s planned $7.4 billion takeover of Sun Microsystems Inc.

The European Commission said Oracle had asked for more time "in order to have the opportunity to further develop its arguments in response to the Commission's concerns."

The EU executive gave them an extra six working days.

European antitrust regulators have formally objected to Sun Microsystems Inc.'s planned $7.4 billion sale to Oracle Corp., escalating a battle over a deal that has already been cleared in the U.S.

The so-called "statement of objections" that Sun received Monday from the European Commission isn't entirely surprising, since the commission already expressed concerns about possible harm to the database market from an Oracle-Sun tie-up when it launched a formal antitrust probe of the deal in September.

Carly Fiorina's claim to fame -- her five-and-a-half years as chief executive at Hewlett-Packard Co. -- could also be her greatest vulnerability in next year's U.S. Senate race in California.

Hours before Fiorina made her candidacy official on Wednesday, her campaign aides sent reporters an 11-page report touting her record at HP. At the same time, Sen. Barbara Boxer's team was portraying Fiorina as an insensitive CEO who oversaw the firing of thousands of workers and a then-controversial merger with Compaq Computer Corp.

Personal computers are changing -- and not just because of the recent launch of Windows 7. Visit an electronics store and you might also find laptops are missing a familiar component. You could experiment with new ways of controlling some computers. And you'll see portable PCs slimming down.

Even with all the attention lavished on Apple's iPhone and Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle this year, your PC likely is still the center of your digital universe. Here's a look at what the season's computer trends mean for you.

- We're over drives.

Some of technology's best-known companies are betting there's pent-up demand for on-demand books.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's top seller of personal computers and printers, is teaming up with online retailer Amazon.com Inc. to challenge Internet search leader Google Inc. in the quirky new market of re-creating digital books as paperbacks.

The concept represents a different type of book recycling, as digital copies created from print get a second life as paperbacks.