Cisco’s growing again, and CEO John Chambers has called the beginning of a tech recovery. But don't assume this is the proverbial rising tide that's going to lift all boats.

First the good news: Cisco (CSCO) turned in a bang-up quarter. For the three months that ended on October 29, the seller of networking gear managed $9 billion in sales and 35 cents per share in profit, both of which outpaced even the most optimistic analyst expectations. Even better, Chambers said the current quarter will also shape up nicely – a promise that sent Cisco stock up a healthy 3% after hours.

But even in Cisco’s celebration, there were hints of caution. Though he signaled good results for this quarter, Chambers wasn’t willing to set sales and earnings targets for the rest of fiscal 2010, saying it’s too soon to assume that this recovery has legs. He asked analysts to maintain their ho-hum expectations for Cisco's financial performance, despite his apparent optimism – basically requesting that they keep the bar low, even though he feels more confident that he can clear it. More

New software transforms your phone into a GPS device – and a pretty good one, too

Navigon's MobileNavigator app for the iPhone has features some standalone units lack. Photo: Navigon.

As my wife will tell you, I have a comically bad sense of direction. I once got lost driving home from the mall.

This makes me a prime candidate for a GPS device. I’ve used a few for brief stints, mostly on long road trips, but never got into the habit of using one for everyday errands. There are a couple of reasons for that. For one, it’s a hassle to dig the thing out of the glove compartment. For another, entering an address on most of these things is a crazy-making experience.

My perspective changed recently, though, when I bought a new GPS unit for $70. Well, that’s not exactly what happened. I actually downloaded a GPS-based iPhone (AAPL) app for $70.

Yes, 70. Seven-zero. I’ll be the first to admit that it sounds crazy to pay that much for software that runs on a phone. The overwhelming majority of phone apps out there cost between 99 cents and $10. More

Online jukebox Lala hooks up with Facebook and Google. Together, can they mount a serious challenge to Apple?

Lala's Nguyen aims to challenge Apple's iTunes. Photo: Lala

Apple rules music retail for now: iTunes passed Wal-Mart (WMT) last year to become the top-grossing music store in the world. But that doesn’t mean things will stay that way.

The latest challenge to iTunes comes from Bill Nguyen, the serial entrepreneur who founded Lala.com.

Palo Alto-based Lala is an online jukebox with 8 million songs; you can buy the rights to stream a radio-quality version of any song for 10 cents or download a higher-quality version for 99 cents. He says he’s averaging about $67 per year from paying customers.

By itself, Lala poses no threat to the iTunes juggernaut. But now it’s teaming up with Google (GOOG) and Facebook, arguably the two hottest properties online. Late today Google is expected to announce a partnership with Lala that should drive massive amounts of new traffic to the service.

And just last week, Lala announced that it will team up with Facebook and its 300 million users to push a new form of music distribution: song gifting. Soon, Facebook’s legions of social networkers will be able to do more than chat, update and poke — they’ll be able to buy each other songs, right within Facebook’s payment system.

We caught up with Nguyen soon after the Facebook announcement to ask about his vision for digital music, and why he dares to take on iTunes and Apple (AAPL).

Fortune: What’s the elevator pitch on Lala. What business are you in? More

(AAPL) (HPQ) (MSFT) (DELL)

Remember how cloud computing was supposed to kill client/server? Turns out it’s more of a wedding than a funeral.

First, some background: The hype surrounding cloud computing in recent years has been nothing short of wild. If you believed the popular wisdom, the traditional computing model was toast. Businesses were going to stop loading specialized programs onto workers’ PCs and buying expensive software and servers for data centers.

Instead, we’d have the cloud. Service providers like Salesforce.com (CRM) and Amazon (AMZN) would own the hardware and software, and let companies plug in over the Internet and use it on demand. More

(AAPL) (MSFT)

Is it time to dust off the party hats?

From the cheery headlines accompanying the latest round of tech earnings, you’d think so. Google (GOOG) CEO Eric Schmidt declared last week that, “the worst of the recession is behind us.” IBM (IBM) actually boosted earnings targets for the year. Taken along with the stimulus potential of Windows 7, Microsoft’s (MSFT) critically acclaimed PC operating system that launches this week, some say happy times are here again.

Not so fast. As we head into week two of this round of tech earnings, it’s important to keep in mind what these numbers show, and what they don’t. More

Vista was too bloated for many corporate PCs to handle when it arrived three years ago. Its successor, Windows 7, is a better fit. Photo: Microsoft.

Rewind three years. One of the harbingers of doom for Windows Vista, Microsoft’s much-maligned operating system, was a survey that showed half of corporate PCs were too old or anemic to upgrade from XP to Vista. In other words, to get the new software, companies would have to spend a fortune on new computers.

Most never made the upgrade: 92% of PCs in the United States and Canada are still running XP, according to Softchoice, an IT consulting firm.

So it’s a good omen that Softchoice, the same firm that issued that fateful Vista study, is singing a very different tune about Windows 7. This time, its survey of 450,000 corporate PCs in the U.S. and Canada shows that 88% can handle the upgrade. More