Helping to confirm the forecasts this week, Gartner and IDC issued upbeat hardware sector data for the first quarter. compared to the first quarter last year. Meanwhile, Gartner reported that the PC market jumped 27.4 percent, exceeding its prior expectations for 22 percent growth.

Better yet, the rise in PC sales is not just due only to pent-up demand from the recession, according to some analysts. "While part of this growth is a correction from a dismal 1Q09, some of it was driven by new PC refresh projects in the commercial markets," said Loren Loverde, vice president of IDC Worldwide Trackers, in the IDC report.

All the good news this week helped push up the tech-heavy Nasdaq to the 2500 mark, which it had not seen since June 2008, several months before Lehman Brothers went bankrupt and Wall Street collapsed, sending credit markets into a tailspin and causing IT users to postpone purchases.

The Nasdaq closed at 2504 Wednesday, rising again to close at 2515 Thursday. Nasdaq computer stocks are up by 7.94 percent since the beginning of the year, while the exchange's telecom shares are up by 7.96 percent.

The rising confidence in IT has also helped companies that won't be reporting until next month. For example, Hewlett-Packard shares hit a 52-week high of $54.64 on Wednesday.