User:Gavin Wilson/sandbox

Events

Date	Event
12th September	HP announced that Patricia Dunn would step down as chairman in January of next year, as a result of a pre-texting scandal. CEO Mark Hurd will become chairman.
11th September	The popularity of Websites that rely on user-generated content has increased dramatically in the UK, according to new statistics: MySpace is up 467% to 5.2 million visitors, Piczo is up 393% to 4 million, YouTube now has 3.9 million, and Bebo is up 328% to 3.9 million. Even Wikipedia saw a 181% increase in usage, year-on-year.
14th September	BT Global Services this week laid out its vision for the next three years: revenues to double in the USA, Japan, India and China, and £400m of savings each year, achieved through offshoring and slashing its procurement costs.
12th September	Microsoft warned that it may delay Vista, the next release of Windows, in Europe unless it receives clear guidance from the European Commission about its antitrust requirements for the operating system.
13th September	Dell has been forced to delay its 2Q financial report as it deals with state and federal accounting investigations. Dell revealed last month that the SEC was looking into its past financial statements. As a result, it has been forced to put its stock buyback programme on hold until the market can be confident the share price is right. To correct its course, Dell has also announced plans to outsource more services as it expands around the world and to spend $150m on improving customer satisfaction.

Date	Event
13th September	50 years ago today, IBM launched the first magnetic hard disk. RAMAC offered 5MB of storage on a total of 50 disks measuring 24in in diameter. The disks were stacked on a cylinder and a reader head moved from one disk to the other to retrieve information. It was considered too expensive to have 50 reader heads. RAMAC was housed in an enclosure about the size of two fridges, and weighed several tons.