Powerball jackpot boosted to least $500 million.Owing to poor sales on Sunday and Monday, it was decided to boost the Powerball jackpot from $425 million.

Alone Colorado lottery ticket sales have rised up 92% over last week. 

Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi State Lottery Association said that they are looking forward to how many people play for $500 million.

Draw is scheduled on Wednesday and Tickets will be available till an hour to draw. 

According to recent reports by Piper Jaffray analyst Eugene Munster, Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is not expected to sell as many Macs as it did during last quarter of 2011.

A report from the NPD Group also highlighted that Apple’s Mac sales have gone down by 16 percent for the month of October on year to year basis.

Munster is on the other hand positive for sales of iPhone 5 and believes by end of last quarter Apple will report huge sales of iPhone 5.

Other Apple products important for high sales growth of Apple are the 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display and the upcoming iMac.

In 2011 last quarter sales of Apple’s total Mac were at 5.2 million, a 26 per cent increase year over year. One of the Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) main product in 2013 will be HDTV (high-definition television set).Munster said that Apple should make its 42 to 55-inch HD television ready for holiday quarter of 2013 with a price tag between $1,500 to $2,000. HDTV will not only have a versatile design, but the main features will include Siri and Face-Time support also. Users will also be able to interface HDTV with other “iDevices” like iPad and iPhone.

Apple is expected to release streaming radio like service  in march 2013 , iPadmini with Retina Display technology , set-top box like  Apple TV and an incremental upgrade with the “iPhone 5S”.

Shares of Cray’s (NASDAQ:CRAY) rose on Friday after its announcement of partnership with Intel.

Cray’s (NASDAQ:CRAY) will be using Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC)’s Xeon processors in its latest Cascade XC30 cluster (supercomputers). Initially Xeon processor “Sandy Bridge” will power XC 30 cluster and in next year the socket-compatible “Ivy Bridge” followed by more powerful Xeon-Phi co-processors.

The Xeon is a brand of multiprocessing / multi-socket-capablex86 microprocessors designed by Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC). The Xeon are normally used in huge servers like communication, security, data storage and carrier’s servers and industrial automation and control equipment.

So how Xeon differ from normal CPU processors like i7 and why we don’t use them in normal computers? The answer is simple.

Although presently i7 processor used in desktop is based on same architecture as the Xeon CPUs but the main differences are:-

-Xeons is the cream of the crop.

-Xeons are also usually updated much before than normal processors like i7. 

-More costly than normal processors.

-Runs at relatively low voltages and cooler with less heat generation.

-Normally runs 24/7 without any degrade in performance.

-used in multi socket motherboards where as i7 aren’t.

– if Xeon are used instead of normal processors ,relative motherboard and hardware must be used to match up with extreme clocking speed, thus further adding to the cost

-Xeon is able to work in multi-CPU based systems, whereas absolutely no i7 models available does

The first ever Xeon processor was Pentium II Xeon (code-named “Drake”). It was released in 1998 with L2 cache of 512 KB. Pentium II Xeon was replaced by Pentium III Xeon (“Tanner”) In 1999. In mid-2001 Pentium name was dropped from Xeon processors and they were simply called Xeon. Initial variant “Foster”, was launched which was different from Pentium IV followed by Prestonia and “Gallatin”, which had an L3 cache of 2 MB and Max CPU clocking at 1500MHz to 3200MHz.

The upgrades continued with introduction of newest versions of Xeon processors with more speeds and upgraded caches. The last ones Sandy Bridge (Second Generation) followed by Ivy Bridge (Third Generation) which is based on tri-gate (3D) transistors were finally launched. 

Ivy Bridge provides 20 percent faster performance than Sandy Bridge. Its advance 3D transistors will consume 50 percent less energy as compared to 2D transistors. Ivy Bridge supports updated version of PCI Express i-e PCI Express 3.0 (Third version of PCI), RAM of upto 2800MT/s, 4K video (4K is latest technology where 4K means 4000 pixels)

The latest in the Xeon series is Haswell (Fourth Generation) and Intel demonstrated the Haswell architecture back in September 2011.Intel Plans to release it in 2013 as the successor to Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.

In third quarter Cray’s (NASDAQ:CRAY) had a net loss of $5.2 million, or 14 cents per share as compared to loss of $12.2 million, or 35 cents per share during the same period last year. Revenue fell by 3 % from $36.7 million to $35.7 million.

Cray’s said that it expects rise in revenues in 2013. It is also planning to acquire Appro for $25 million.

Intel CPU core road maps is Shown below

Dell’s stock gained 2.94 per cent, or 27 cents, to hit $9.45 a share that started at $9.19 on the Nasdaq.

Dell Inc.’s (NASDAQ:DELL) purchased two cloud-computing companies Clerity Solutions and Wyse Technologies as well as a security solution provider company SonicWALL, Inc. Dell has also completed the acquisition of Quest, an award-winning IT-management software provider.

Clerity helps customers move applications and data from old app systems to modern systems, Clerity’s will add to Dell Services to help customers reduce the cost of engineering by redesigning  their critical applications and data based on legacy computing systems to latest architectures, including the cloud.

Wyse Technologies is the global leader and specializes in cloud client computing,. The addition of Wyse will not only improve Dell’s enterprise solutions and services but also  expands Dell’s desktop virtualization capabilities .

SonicWALL, Inc.,is a security solution providing firm and leader in advanced network security, data protection , and secure remote access. Next-Generation Firewalls and Unified Threat Management (UTM) Firewalls will help Dell to provide its customers with better security solutions.   

Dell also acquired software company Make Technologies to boost its capabilities in applications modernization. Make Technologies, provides software and services to reduce the cost, risk as well as time to re-engineer applications.

Dell Inc.’s (NASDAQ:DELL) second quarter sales were $14.5 billion, against estimates of $14.7 billion, Sales in the same period a year-ago were $15.7 billion.

Dell Inc.’s (NASDAQ:DELL) forecast revenue for third quarter is $13.8 billion against target of $14.85 billion a slight dip from second quarter.For fiscal year 2013 It is predicting earnings per share of at least $1.70 compared with forecast of $2.13 per share. 

 For the current year Dell saw its market down by 28.09 per cent.The major reason behind it is less sales of personal computers and consumers switch over to mobile devices and tablets.

McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE)‎ world’s biggest hamburger chain sales dropped first time in nearly a decade in the month of October.

McDonald’s Corporation (NYSE)‎ global revenue at restaurants fell 1.8% for the month. The last time it dropped was back in year 2003. The fast-food sales fell by 2.2% both in the U.S. and Europe. In Asia, Middle East and Africa, it dropped 2.4%. McDonald’s has 40% of its business in Europe.

Burger King and Wendy’s are spending millions on AD campaigns and offering good food deals that is badly affecting McDonald’s sale.

The same was true for Europe, where. Because of the region’s ongoing economic uncertainty, McDonald’s said it would offer new meal combinations at various price ranges and continue remodeling restaurants.

Although rival Wendy’s declared losses in the third quarter but key sales figure rose.Wendy’s lost $26.2 million (7 cents per share). It posted a loss of $4 million last year.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) are making the highest profit margins from the sales of their tablets followed by Google and Amazon, according to research firm IHS.

Apple is the leader in tablets market and has gained high profits from its Ipad series. The recent launch of smaller-sized tablet, the iPad Mini that went on sale on Friday has a price tag of $329. Ipad mini costs roughly $305 in parts and labor for the 32GB Wi-Fi-only model, with 49 % margin, IHS analyst Andrew reported. Whereas price of 16GB model is about $295 and it sells for $499.

Microsoft’s Surface tablet presently costs about $267 that went on sale on Oct. 26 priced at $499.

Apple’s third generation Wi-Fi iPad with 32GB of memory and with a screen 9.7-inch costs $333 and retailed for $599, for a 44% profit margin. The 16GB model cost $316 and priced at $499, for a profit margin of 37 %.

Google’s 7-inch Nexus 7, costs $159 (8GB model) and sells for $199, with profit margin of 20%, according to IHS. Google makes 33 percent margin on its 16GB model, which costs about $167 and sells for $249.

Amazon’s 7-inch Kindle Fire HD costs $174 (16GB model) and sells for $199 with a profit margin of 13%. 

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) is switching to Skype after plans to stop its instant messaging service ‘Windows Live Messenger’ in 2013.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) that is trading at 29.06 per share and down by 0.07% looks for a better future and is becoming users choice if we look at Windows 8 that’s selling like hot cakes on smartphones and has surpassed in the race of internet traffic from Android. 

Microsoft that acquired Skype for $8.5 billion last year is already offering its users to login to Skype with their Microsoft account. Another major reason of this switching by Microsoft is decline in the users of Windows Live Messenger that was introduced Ist in the year 2009. The IM service roughly lost 200 million users since the year 2010.

As per Ubergizmo Microsoft’s Skype presently has users over 280 million. 

Users of Windows instant Messaging service who are addict to it will surely miss the service but Microsoft believe that it will offer much superior services with Skype. Microsoft has recently launched a newer version of Skype thus making it more stronger network and better choice for users.

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has been trying to hide their mandatory Samsung apology on its UK based website, but after receiving tough words from websites like Hacker News and Reddit they had to reveal their apology but so far not displaying it as it should be.

Its few months that UK courts dropped Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung over patents that Samsung infringed its design. The judge directed Apple to post a public apology to Samsung on its UK based website and during hearing at some point also remarked that Samsung’s tablet wasn’t as nearly as cool as iPad. Apple playing smartly highlighted the Judge remarks more in its website and displayed that its design’s are much superior than that of Samsung’s. Samsung again went to court and Jury forced Apple to Display the Apology properly. 

On 25 October 2012, Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) again published a statement on its UK website but that was inaccurate. UK Jury ruled that Apple must apologies to Samsung as per Courts orders. 

Although after much criticism received from several websites like Hacker News and Reddit Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) finally displayed the Apology but as per CNET the page on which statement about Samsung is displayed is coded in a way that most of its space is occupied by Ipad mini advertisement thus almost hiding the statement again.

Let’s see what Samsung and court again do about this poor behavior of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL).

Windstream profit of $53.7 million was down from $78.1 million that it posted during the same period last year,thus shares dropping from 15 cents to 9 cents over the year.

Windstream was earlier known as spinoff of Alltel Corp.’s landline business and Valor Communications Group Inc.s, formed in 2006.  It is expanding with the passage of time and also acquired a local exchange carrier Paetec Holding, Corp which provides broadband services.