About Bill

San Francisco journalist Bill Snyder has followed business, technology, and the business of technology for nearly 25 years at newspapers, national magazines and Web sites.

He’s currently writing features and a weekly column -- “Tech’s Bottom Line” -- for InfoWorld; a bi-monthly column for BusinessWeek – “The Digital Manager” – and is a frequent contributor to Stanford Business, CIO Magazine and the San Francisco Chronicle.

He learned the bits and bytes of computers, chips and software, during stints at PCWeek and PCWorld, where he was executive editor for news and later editor-in-chief of PCWorld.com. He was the technology editor at Business 2.0 and more recently worked at TheStreet.com, where he wrote the popular TechWeek column and covered technology stocks for an audience of investors.

The Economics of Energy [Stanford Business]
START IN SANTA BARBARA, CALIF., and drive north along the twisty coastal highway to San Luis Obispo. Turn right and head east to the hot, grassy Carrizo Plain an hour or so away. [more]

IBM's Palmisano: Tech's slumdog millionaire [InfoWorld]
IBM's cruel layoff options: Take a job in the Third World and lose your severance, move within the United States at your expense, or lose both your job and severance. [more]

Portable PCs: From the TRS-80 to the Mini 2140 [BusinessWeek]
Today's netbooks harken back to the earliest laptops: super-convenient, but functionally limited. So consider the alternatives [more]

Vietnam's Market Economy Leaves the Poor Behind [San Francisco Chronicle]
(12-08) 04:00 PST Ho Chi Minh City -- At 16, Xuan Phuong left her home in central Vietnam to join the Viet Minh's struggle against the French in 1946. [more]

Dell edges out SAP and Oracle for 'Bozo of the Month' [InfoWorld]
The company that invented nothing tries to hijack cloud computing with a cheesy legal play. SAP, meanwhile, tries to pull a fast one on its customers. [more]

Nobel Laureate Sharpe on Retirement Economics [Stanford Business]
With millions of baby boomers closing in on retirement age, saving money for a comfortable old age is nearly as popular a conversation topic as sex. [more]