Toshiba, a company best known for making laptops and consumer electronics, on Monday said that it will enter the solar-photovoltaics business.

But don't expect to see Toshiba-branded solar panels on a home rooftop any time soon. The company's industrial and energy arm plans to build utility-scale solar power plants.

Toshiba's photovoltaics business will be part of the conglomerate's Transmission Distribution & Industrial Systems business, which makes equipment for natural-gas power plants.

The division also makes rechargeable batteries for industrial use and has a systems integration operation for installing power generation equipment.

The push into solar energy is part of Toshiba's corporate goal to lower its carbon emissions and enviro

Dell's biggest problem is that its one-time differentiation - low-cost hardware assembly and distribution - is now common industry practice. Indeed, it now routinely gets beaten at its own game, as called out in a recent article by Ashlee Vance in the New York Times.

Dell's growth, to revenue of $56 billion in 2006 from $5.3 billion in 1996, has come from within. But company executives now concede that they need to make a large acquisition, or a series of them, to tap the repeating, higher-margin revenue streams that come from the software and services businesses....

"It's not a question of size [of acquisition]," said Brian T. Gladden, chief financial officer at Dell. "I think the question is more around diversifying our revenue base and becoming bigger in some things

Searches at Microsoft's Windows Live Search site dropped again in November from a year ago while Google's continued to rise, according to Nielsen Online figures released on Monday.

Searches at Windows Live Search fell 16.7 percent year-over-year, giving Microsoft 9.1 percent market share in the U.S. in November.

Google's searches rose 21.7 percent, for 64.1 percent market share, and Yahoo's searches dropped 1.4 percent from November 2007, for 16.1 percent share.

Total searches for the month exceeded 8 billion, up 9.6 percent from a year earlier.

In October, Google's searches rose 8.1 percent, giving it 61.2 percent share, while Yahoo's searches declined 12 percent and Microsoft's fell 19 percent year-over-year.

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I'm as guilty as the next person for having a social network portfolio that's too big. Aside from my Twitter account, I belong to Plurk and Identi.ca, and although I use Facebook most often, I still have MySpace and Hi5 accounts.

But now that 2008 has passed and it's time for us to evaluate what we did last year and try to improve upon that for 2009, why don't we start by cleaning out our social network portfolio and start using only those services that we like best in each category? After all, spending more time on multiple services isn't nearly as rewarding as getting more quality time with the best services, right?

Social bookmarking keeper: Delicious

Social bookmarking services are extremely handy when you want to remember a site at a later time, but that

Microsoft started off its new-year executive shuffling by promoting longtime Server and Tools unit head Bob Muglia to President, a title he shares with Entertainment boss Robbie Bach and business software chief Stephen Elop.

Muglia

It's a title elevation for Muglia, whose responsibilities remain the same. It also reflects the growing importance of the server unit, which accounted for $13 billion in revenue in the most recent fiscal year, now making up fully a fifth of Microsoft's total sales.

"The core of our success at Microsoft has always been great people--people who combine talent, drive, vision, customer focus, and leadership," CEO Steve Ballmer said in an e-mail to employees. "Few people at Microsoft embody these qualities more fully