Laptop users who frequently travel to the US may have to contend with far stricter measures regarding the data in your laptops.

A US Appeals Court ruling this week declared that customs officials working at the Los Angeles International Airport did not violate a man’s rights when they decided to tamper his computer in searching for alleged child pornography files.

The exact statement of Judge Diarmuid o’Scannlain was “We are satisfied that reasonable suspicion is not needed for customs officials to search a laptop or other personal electronic storage devices at the border.”

The case began in 2005 when Michael Arnold, returned from a his trip to the Philippines. He was found to have been carrying a laptop, a separate hard drive, memory cards as well as six compact discs. Officials requested Arnold to open his laptop and turn it on and two icons identified as photos were seen on the desktop. When officials clicked on the folders they saw images of naked women. He was detained and questioned for several hours. A thorough search of his computer was made and allegedly what looks like child porn was discovered.

AMD’s woes are just not letting up. It was announced recently that the company’s Chief Technology Officer Phil Hester has resigned.

According to various reports, Hester issued his resignation effective immediately. Friday was his last day at work. Hester is just the third person to resign from AMD over the last year, this included Henri Richard, who was the head of Sales as well as Dave Orton, who haded the ATI Graphics division.

Hester’s responsibility will be divided among the various department heads, and at this moment there are no plans to fill the position he left.

Just last week AMD announced that it was going to let go of ten per cent of its workforce and also said that it is looking towards lower revenues that previously speculated.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) has reported its fifth straight losing quarter today. But the company is still optimistic that it will turn things around with the arrival of its quad core processors.

With the books closed for what is one of the worst 12 months of the company, AMD executives have revealed its plans to make the company profitable this 2008. Among the many strategies is the release of its quad core desktop and server processors as well as bringing in new products, among them Puma, its new mobile platform.

Most of the problems the company has encountered is being blamed on AMD’s acquisition of ATI. Up to now, nothing profitable or significant has come out of this move, but AMD executives are firm in their resolve that the ATI acquisition was the right decision.

2008 will be a key year for AMD and it may also be the year when consumers will finally see if the ATI decision will bear fruit or become one of the biggest business duds in years.

A few days ago, I blogged about Dell’s deal with Tesco, which i think is the computer manufacturer’s move to further expand its market. Now, I recently found out that Dell is going to buy a privately held storage consulting company as a way of increasing its presence in the storage sector.

The company, Networked Storage Company, is based in England and offers clients a number of services that seek to assist companies in implementing their own data storage solutions.

This purchase comes in the heels of Dell’s announcement a while ago of buying EqualLogic, a company that specializes in iSCSI storage.

These series of acquisitions are seen to fit into the Simplify IT initiative that Dell is spearheading. The said program aims to provide clients with a streamlined offering of hardware, software and services that will significantly simplify how IT infrastructure is built in a company.

Will Dell succeed in such a lofty and very ambitious project. It’s one thing to provide good hardware, but to provide a whole complement of hardware, software and services to end-users looks to be very daunting. Will Dell have the muscle to really back this new initiative for the company. Only time will tell.

In what could be considered as signaling the end of an era, CompUSA has reportedly been sold to an arm of Gordon Bros., a restructuring firm. This means only one thing folks, CompUSA will be closing its retail stores.

At this early juncture CompUSA has not yet issued a definite timetable on when its stores will close. The only information given was that all 103 stores will remain open for the holiday season and will all be fully staffed. There are reports that some stores will be sold to other retailers.

Gordon Bros., on the other hand, announced that consumers should expect bargains on computer and electronic products as it beings its store closing sales.

CompUSA.com as well as CompTechPro will still be run by the company while sales are ongoing.

It is sad news that CompUSA is finally closing its doors. But as a consumer I am also quite excited about the possible bargains that I may be able to get when the closing sale does start.