AAPL Stores gird for Leopard

[InfoWeek] Among the promotions: Apple Store staffers in New York City, San Francisco and other locations will hand special edition Leopard T-shirts to the first 500 shoppers.

Intel starts Penryn production

[CompWorld] Intel Corp. Thursday opened its new $3 billion manufacturing facility in Chandler, Ariz., kicking off mass production of its new 45-nanometer microprocessors.

MSFT making progress in putting Windows on XO

[Reuters] "We're spending a nontrivial amount of money on it," Microsoft Corporate Vice President Will Poole said in an interview on Thursday.

MST reports strong gains

[NYT] New versions of its lucrative personal computer businesses — the Windows Vista operating system and Microsoft Office 2007 — appear to be selling better than industry analysts anticipated.

Industry lobbies for patent reform

[AP] Dell Inc., Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Adobe Systems Inc. flew in executives Thursday to meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Their goal: firm flagging support for a bill that passed the House last month by a 220-to-175 vote.

Vonage settles with Verizon

[Bloomberg] Verizon Communications and Vonage Holdings settled a patent-infringement lawsuit with Vonage agreeing to pay as much as $120 million. The payment by Vonage, the unprofitable Internet phone service provider, would be cut to about $80 million if a U.S. appeals court agrees to reconsider its ruling last month that upheld most of a $66 million jury verdict for Verizon.