Despite rumours about deeper price cuts, the consumers were offered discounts on Mac computers, iPods and accessories at levels similar to years past through the Apple Inc's much-anticipated Black Friday event.

The consumer excitement was stroked by Apple announcing a one-day Black Friday 'shopping event.' However, no further details were disclosed by the company. The prices were cut on certain items by approximately 5 to 10 percent. Where a discount of $21 was being given on an iPods, which was being sold for $378; a 13-inch MacBook was being offered for $1,200, a discount of $100. However, the very popular iPhone was not on sale.

Soon, the Asus Eee PC 1000H model of netbooks would be replaced by the company with the 1002HA. Though almost similar design is featured by the new netbook, it has a thinner profile.

A brushed metal external shell and front mounted speakers and the same system specifications as the older model with a 1.6 GHz Intel N270 Atom Processor, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard disk would also be featured by 1002HA. The new model will be powered by Windows XP.

San Francisco  - Shares in technology giant Hewlett-Packard Co rallied by as much as 15 per cent early Tuesday after the company reported that preliminary earnings would beat Wall Street's expectations.

HP said it expects to post a profit of 84 cents a share, on revenue of 33.6 billion dollars for its recently completed fourth- quarter, beating last year's figures of 81 cents a share on revenue of 28.3 billion dollars. Excluding one-time charges and items, HP said it earned 1.03 dollars a share, beating the forecasted earnings of 1 dollar a share.

The results represented a rare positive development for the embattled tech sector and helped lift HP shares by 4.16 dollars to 33.50 dollars in early trading.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) would deliver application, maintenance and development services for IT operations of Ericsson, the largest telecom product supplier of the world. TCS has signed a five year pact with Ericsson on Wednesday. .