Microsoft stock has crept higher since it sank three months ago on word of its Yahoo bid.

Can Microsoft do it again?

Late last year, investors and analysts were wringing their hands over a tech stock collapse. With the economy starting to slow, investors punished a slew of big techs including Microsoft (MSFT), IBM (IBM) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ). Not even hot-growth companies like Apple (AAPL) and Research in Motion (RIMM) were spared.

Then Microsoft reported earnings in January, and the sun came out: $6.5 billion in profit for the holiday quarter on sales of $16.4 billion. And best of all, the forecast was bright. “We actually feel very optimistic,” said Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell. “The next six months we feel very good about.”

The HP Mini laptop is aimed at the education market, but it could appeal to road warriors as well. Image: HP

Pick up HP’s new $500 mini-laptop, and the first thing you notice is the aluminum casing. Though the thing weighs only about 2.5 pounds, what’s striking is how its sleek skin makes it feel solid and professional – not at all what you’d expect from a budget PC.

I’m in a suite at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco getting a first look at Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) latest machine, which the company hopes will help it steal share from Dell (DELL) and Apple (AAPL) in the education market. (Each of the three companies has just under 20 percent of the worldwide market.) HP’s development team, I’m told, consulted educators as they designed the 2133 Mini-Note, and as I turn the laptop over in my hands that comes through in little details.

Michael Dell is still struggling to reclaim his company’s former glory, and the latest cutbacks show he still has a long way to go.

Dell (DELL) said Monday that it will close an Austin, Texas plant that makes desktop PCs. It’s just the latest step in a plan management laid out nearly a year ago, in which the company plans to shed 8,300 workers and save $3 billion in costs. The remarkable thing about Dell’s announcement isn’t the simple shuttering of a U.S. manufacturing facility – that sort of thing is happening across the country every day. It’s how precipitously Dell has fallen.

Lenovo’s critically acclaimed ThinkPad X300 laptop does without a hard drive. Image: Lenovo

While munching on a reuben at Birk’s, a steakhouse in Silicon Valley, Seagate (STX) CEO Bill Watkins is explaining why he’s not too worried about a these trendy new laptops that have everything but a hard drive.

On the surface, this would seem to be a big problem. Seagate, after all, is the world’s largest hard drive maker with expected sales of more than $3 billion this quarter – so Watkins likes to see his wares go into more gadgets, not fewer. It’s easy to see why he tends not to favor devices like Lenovo’s sleek ThinkPad X300, which is winning raves for its light weight and silent operation, and its 64-gigabyte flash storage drive.

By Jon Fortt and Michal Lev-Ram

Will Apple give up some control over the iPhone in order to court corporate customers?

That’s one of the juiciest questions surrounding a gathering on Apple’s (AAPL) campus Thursday, where CEO Steve Jobs has promised to open up the iPhone’s software secrets to the world for the first time. Apple’s invitation to the event also hinted at new business-friendly features for the device, and Silicon Valley is abuzz about what that could mean. Will the BlackBerry-toting masses be able to trade in the company smartphone for an iPhone?

Image: Apple

Can Apple regain its status as a Wall Street darling?

So far 2008 has not been kind to the technology trendsetter. With U.S. iPod sales slowing and iPhone hype fading, investors have been seized by worries that the crew in Cupertino isn’t much of a growth story anymore. The stock has fallen 40 percent from its recent highs, losing some $50 billion in market value –and it isn’t clear what could turn things around.

It does seem certain that major relief won’t come from Apple’s (AAPL) newest products. This week’s update of the MacBook laptop line adds speed and memory, but no breathtaking design touches. The super-slim but pricey MacBook Air laptop that CEO Steve Jobs unveiled in January has met with mixed reviews, and won’t provide enough of a boost to make up for the iPod slowdown. And Apple TV, the second incarnation of Apple’s failed attempt to bring digital downloads to the television, doesn’t seem to be attracting an iPod-like following either; on Amazon (AMZN), it’s about as popular as a niche backup hard drive.

So where will Apple go for a sales boost to lift its stock? Perhaps overseas.

Even as U.S. tech spending slows, the market for high-tech gear and the opportunity for Apple to grow, is rapidly expanding in Europe and Asia. To wit: Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) CEO Mark Hurd noted last week that emerging markets accounted for nearly half of the industry’s PC shipments at the end of 2007, and well over half of the growth.

As sales growth slows, the focus shifts to services

HP Executive Vice President Vyomesh Joshi wants to use software and services to drive printing profits. Courtesy: HP

Even during the bad times, Vyomesh Joshi’s printing business at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) was the go-to place for good news. As recently as 18 months ago, the affable executive vice president’s unit accounted for more than half of the overall company’s operating profits.

But things have changed since HP’s dramatic turnaround took hold. HP’s computing group grew profits 75 percent in the October quarter by stealing market share from Dell (DELL) and riding the popularity of laptop computers. Meanwhile the Technology Solutions Group, which sells servers and other tech plumbing to big companies, is doing well too – last quarter operating profit jumped 31 percent to $1.4 billion. “Because of our footprint, because of our global nature, we are what we talked about in the fourth-quarter call,” Joshi says. “We are meeting our expectations.”

Which means Joshi’s Imaging and Printing Group no longer needs to prop up the rest of HP. It’s a good thing, too – because Joshi has his own transformation to worry about.

A moody market braces for a big earnings week. How ugly will it get?

It’s time to face the music.

When leading tech companies offer their earnings numbers this week, Wall Street’s focus won’t be on how healthy their overseas businesses are, or how strong sales were during the holiday season. Instead, with global financial markets in turmoil, analysts will be sensitive to hints that executives are losing their sunny optimism.

The scrappy chipmaker has plenty of life left – but mistakes have cost it dearly.

AMD’s manufacturing facility in Dresden isn’t yet producing enough quad-core chips to boost the bottom line. Photo: Sven Doering/AMD

If you’d like to beat up on Advanced Micro Devices CEO Hector Ruiz, now would appear to be a good time. Ruiz has won praise for helping the chipmaker mature into a worthy challenger to industry heavyweight Intel, but as he prepares for a Thursday meeting with Wall Street analysts, AMD has the look of a well-used punching bag.

Its stock this year has dropped by half, and in recent weeks it has dipped below $10 per share for the first time since 2003. That price marks a disheartening throwback to the days when PC makers didn’t take AMD’s processors seriously and its market share was weaker at about 15 percent. There’s good reason for the share price collapse: though AMD landed a few good shots in recent years, Intel (INTC) has bounced back with a popular, competitively priced product lineup that’s grabbing back some market share and erasing its rival’s profits.

The executive briefing center on Dell’s campus. Image: Dell

Dell is held up as one of the business world’s train wrecks of the moment, sort of a tech version of Britney Spears. The stock is down near the levels where it traded when founder Michael Dell re-took the reins as CEO in February, and the pundits have plenty of questions about the company’s prospects. How could things have gone so wrong? Can Dell ever top the charts again?