Computer Trade Shopper articles from December 2004

Computer Trade Shopper archives from December 2004

Extreme prediction that may come true.(Editorial)
December 1, 2004... I've often pondered over the apparent tendency, call it human nature if you want, by people in positions of knowledge to put forward extreme predictions both positive and negative. The press must share a fair portion of blame for this but...

Dell to widen its channel links.(Reseller News)
December 1, 2004... Dell is set to shake up its relationship with UK distributors as it moves to widen its EDI (electronic data interchange) systems and continues to use reverse auctions to purchase third-party products from the channel more competitively. At...

VCOMM born from DCM.(Reseller News)
December 1, 2004... The directors of distributor Data Communications Management (DCM) UK has split to launch a new company following a failed management buyout (MBO). VCOMM has emerged from the DCM UK business, with ambitions to expand now the company is free...

BSA ups limit on rewards paid to whistleblowers.(Reseller News)
December 1, 2004... The importance of software audits was emphasised again last week as the Business Software Alliance (BSA) doubled the maximum cash reward available to people who report businesses using illegal products. The trade body traditionally offers...

Nortel enters repositioning/ rebranding phase.(Reseller News)
December 1, 2004... Nortel has dropped the 'Networks' part of its name in a move that will see new product launches and co-marketing activities push through the channel at the start of next year. Becoming Nortel is the beginning of a rebranding and...

Police alert in West Country as thieves target dealers.(Reseller News)
December 1, 2004... Channel players in the West Country have been warned by police to be vigilant and check their security arrangements after a gang of criminals targeted a number of channel companies in the area. The warning follows the second break-in at...

Maxtor's anti-grey tactics are questioned.(Reseller News)
December 1, 2004... The UK grey market represents a "special issue" for hard drive vendor Maxtor, and the company's vice-president for EMEA Didier Trassaert has vowed to find out why. In the past year, Maxtor has increased distributor warehouse spot checks,...

Channel players encouraged to practice what they preach.(Reseller News)
December 1, 2004... With corporate compliance and governance on the lips of security specialist sales people in the channel, systems integration giant Logicalis has urged resellers to lead by example and evaluate their own businesses. This Friday, Logicalis...

IMRG forum set up.(Reseller News)
December 1, 2004... The Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG) believes organised gangs are behind cardholder not present (CNP) frauds and is setting up a quarterly forum for members to exchange information on attempted crimes. The membership group is a...

Computer Trade Shopper reviews.
December 1, 2004... This year, Computer Trade Shopper will not only continue to deliver regular reviews of market-leading products, but will step up its commitment to find the 'best of the best' with an awards programme of gold, silver and bronze marks, which will...

Heat Pipe Puts Card in Lead.
December 1, 2004... With some of the biggest gaming titles of the year just getting ready to hit the shops there is going to be more call than ever for cutting edge graphics cards that can cope with the demands of the likes of Half Life 2. The fact that games...

Safe Storage to Fit SME Needs.
December 1, 2004... The world of network-attached storage is not quite at the level where it is a commoditised sale but it has become more of a proposition for resellers and system builders serving the SME market. Two things have happened in the last couple of...

Stylish Cubes Hit the Mark.
December 1, 2004... A couple of years ago the barebone system was just emerging as an option for system builders and appeared to be a solution to space and user demands that was almost too good to be true. Channel buying managers, reviewers and the general...

A True Digital Hub Arrives.
December 1, 2004... Imagine a perfect world where you come through the door, hang your coat up, grab a remote control and then press power on with the option to listen to music, watch TV, play games or watch a movie. For most people that is still a dream and...

Graphics for a Wider Audience.
December 1, 2004... At a recent briefing updating a select few about developments in the graphics card market an executive from AMD took the stage and told the assembled audience that now is the time to upgrade because of PCI-Express and, of course, his 64-bit...

The Ultimate in Notebooks.
December 1, 2004... It was only a couple of years ago that manufacturers cottoned on to the fact that, having spent years shelling out on new office PCs every three years, we were getting wise to the 'upgrade or die' message and were becoming increasingly happy...

Nothing Beats the Big Screen.
December 1, 2004... The world of monitors has seen some major changes this year with price drops, shortages and threats of increases in carrier charges all adding to the pressure on those vendors determined to stay at the top of the tree. The positive feature...

'Big secret' about to break in the UK.(Computer Trade Shopper round-up)
December 1, 2004... One of the largest names in the motherboard business pitched up in the UK recently, vowing to shake up the market and gain market share from rivals. Stephen Ling, sales and marketing director at Foxconn, said it had opened up the British...

LaCie has paired its fastest external drives to debut the new d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface offering capacities of up to 250GB and a 7,200rpm 8MB buffer with larger capacities arriving this winter.(Shorts)
December 1, 2004... LaCie has paired its fastest external drives to debut the new d2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface offering capacities of up to 250GB and a 7,200rpm 8MB buffer with larger capacities arriving this winter. The attraction for users is the...

Sadly thieves surround us but those users with laptops can sleep more easily thanks to WebTrack, a covert tracking system, which uses the latest telephone technology to locate and retrieve your machine, with the assistance of the police forces throughout the country.(Shorts)
December 1, 2004... Sadly thieves surround us but those users with laptops can sleep more easily thanks to WebTrack, a covert tracking system, which uses the latest telephone technology to locate and retrieve your machine, with the assistance of the police forces...

Canon is taking its message about digital imaging on the road in time to get punters parting with their cash and rushing out to get products like the camera pictured for Auntie Jean or Uncle Bob.(Shorts)
December 1, 2004... Canon is taking its message about digital imaging on the road in time to get punters parting with their cash and rushing out to get products like the camera pictured for Auntie Jean or Uncle Bob. Dates for the diary include: Heathrow Terminal...

Those resellers unable to afford to advertise their services in the way they would like could have an answer with PC IQ.(Shorts)
December 1, 2004... Those resellers unable to afford to advertise their services in the way they would like could have an answer with PC IQ. The company aims to pool the resources of service specialists with the intention of generating local new clients through...

Still room for customization.(Talking Shop)
December 1, 2004... What are your main responsibilities at the company? My main responsibility is to run the distribution sales team at Centerprise, ensuring they sell the right products at the right price to the right audience. This means keeping up to...

Opportunities in recycling: with the deadline for responses from the industry closed we look at the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive consultation paper and how the legislation will affect the computer trade.(Market Overview--Weee Directive)
December 1, 2004... The WEEE Directive was enacted in January 2003 and will take effect from August 2005. The legislation addresses the back-end of a product's lifecycle and mandates for the take-back and recycling of a large percentage of virtually any electrical...

Manufacturers.
December 1, 2004... ASSOCIATIONS PC Association 01763 262987 www.pcassoc.org DATA STORAGE 1st Computer Traders Ltd 01827 55555 www.1ct.com Amacom Technologies Ltd 020 8993 7373 www.amacom-tech.com Apple Computer UK...

Distributors.
December 1, 2004... DISTRIBUTORS 1st Computer Traders Ltd 01827 55555 01827 66666 3d Micro Limited 020 7384 1174 020 7736 6033 4Front Network 01635 567299 01923 210910 a A One...

One down, two to go if Gartner is right.(Editorial)
December 15, 2004... The year has certainly ended with a bang--well a bloody big shock at least. News that IBM has sold its PC business to Chinese manufacturing giant Lenovo will have permeated the Western world and sent shock waves from Sutton (CTS HQ and the...

HP rejects Gartner direct laptop figures.(Reseller News)
December 15, 2004... Hewlett-Packard has disputed figures from Gartner that indicate one in five notebooks sold by the vendor in the third quarter bypassed the channel. The findings by the market research firm state HP sold around 100,000 laptops (70,000...

Computacenter found guilty of unfair dismissal.(Reseller News)
December 15, 2004... Wafford Employment Tribunal has found Computacenter guilty of unfairly dismissing two enterprise sales specialists (ESSs) on the basis of redundancy. One has settled out of court with the reseller and the other is expected to attend a remedy...

Opportunities for upgrading with the demise of NT4.(Reseller News)
December 15, 2004... With support ending for NT4 at the end of this month, Microsoft has revealed the extent of users yet to upgrade from the nine-year-old operating system. Despite the product not being sold since 2000, about 16 per cent of Microsoft's...

Kingston in 168m [pounds sterling] bid for 0mnetica.(Reseller News)
December 15, 2004... Hull-based networking service provider Kingston Communications has proposed a 169m [pounds sterling] takeover of Omnetica, in a bid to create a pan-European leviathan. If the deal meets shareholder approval this week the joint firm will...

Channel change not on cards.(Reseller News)
December 15, 2004... Following the biggest shake-up the global IT industry has seen in years, UK resellers have been left in shock after IBM sold its PC division to Chinese giant Lenovo for $1.75bn (913m [pounds sterling])--instantly creating an "aggressive...

IT directors in the dark over ROI from mobile technology.(Reseller News)
December 15, 2004... The majority of users have not calculated return on investment (ROI) from investments in mobile and wireless technology and have no plans to do so, according to research by systems integrator Omnetica. A survey of 390 IT directors by the...

HP to use TopValue in mid-market push.(Reseller News)
December 15, 2004... Resellers will have access to a range of A-model PCs and special bid pricing through the TopValue engine as Hewlett-Packard moves to bolster its presence in the mid-market. The TopValue scheme, traditionally aimed at SME, provides a set of...

Toshiba gets aggressive on notebooks.(Reseller News)
December 15, 2004... Toshiba's UK channel head believes the company has shaken off the perception that it is an expensive brand and can now compete more effectively at the low end after cutting supply chain costs. However, there have been suggestions that the...

Transparent view of memory.
December 15, 2004... Back in the old days when you had to be a skilled magician to open up a PC, memory was something everyone desired but few knew how to handle and install. But things changed and now not only do people know what capacity they want and need...

Flat TV compromise that works.
December 15, 2004... On the way into work the other day I snapped up a copy of the Radio Times bumper Christmas edition and spent the train journey marking all the films I wanted to see. A fair few are shown in the week in the run up to the 25 December and I...

Calling the world for free.
December 15, 2004... Judging by the frequency of telesales calls waking up my two year old around 6pm every night, the business of telecommunications is at boiling point. Operators seem desperate to clinch service agreements. Some of them are probably facing the...

A mobile made for all seasons.
December 15, 2004... You don't have to be the head of research looking into the laptop market at a large analyst house to know that sales are going well and demand is widening for mobile products. Thanks not just to price drops but also to the explosion in...

Minimal design is on the case.
December 15, 2004... Cases have undergone a revolution this year and have truly come into their own with the manufacturers of tin finding a sense of humour, a serious face for the corporate space as well as an inventive twist when it comes to different form...

On the trail of valuable assets.
December 15, 2004... A phrase in the dictionary of selling technology that is widely used is "seeing is believing" but it could be rewritten as "seeing is understanding potential" and that would be true of Wasp products. At this year's CTS show up in...

High quality makes gigabyte stand out.(Computer Trade Shopper round-up)
December 15, 2004... This year has seen a wide range of products come under the inspection of the CTS review team, and with the curtain coming down on 2004 it is possible to make a couple of observations about quality. Despite the constant pressure the system...

VIA Technologies has formed a licensing agreement with QSound Labs for its leading edge audio technologies to enhance VIA Vinyl Audio products.(Shorts)
December 15, 2004... VIA Technologies has formed a licensing agreement with QSound Labs for its leading edge audio technologies to enhance VIA Vinyl Audio products. Under the agreement, VIA will bring together its Vinyl Audio Controllers with QSound's unique audio...

Get ready for Gigabyte's high-performance scalable link interface (SLI).(Shorts)
December 15, 2004... Get ready for Gigabyte's high-performance scalable link interface (SLI), the GA-K8NXP-SLI, which belongs to the family of high-performance motherboards, delivering revolutionary technology like SLI, PCI Express Graphics interface, Serial ATA...

Evasham Technology has unveiled the Evesham Decimator PC, featuring the latest ATI Radeon X850 PCI Express video card.(Shorts)
December 15, 2004... Evesham Technology has unveiled the Evesham Decimator PC, featuring the latest ATI Radeon X850 PCI Express video card. The manufacturer is confident that this will be on the Christmas wish list of every blue-blooded gamer in the UK.

Gecube has also been busy with the launch of its Radeon X850 UniWise series, which adopts the vendor's one slot/low noise fan architecture, which significantly reduces fan size to save space and free up adjacent PCI slots.(Shorts)
December 15, 2004... Gecube has also been busy with the launch of its Radeon X850 UniWise series, which adopts the vendor's one slot/low noise fan architecture, which significantly reduces fan size to save space and free up adjacent PCI slots. In addition, the...

At the rough end of innovation: Matt Piercy, general manager, UK and Ireland, for anti-virus specialist F-Secure.(Talking Shop)
December 15, 2004... What are your main responsibilities? Primarily sales, marketing and finance. Overall it is to grow F-Secure's market position in the UK and Ireland. Do you have a business maxim? Communicate, communicate, communicate. This has been...

3G under the Christmas tree? The latest 3G technology is gathering momentum and Christmas should mark a significant milestone in its take up. But are there enough incentives beyond the hype to push customers into upgrading?(Market Overview--3G Technology)
December 15, 2004... Following a wait of four years since the 22.5bn [pounds sterling] bids for 3G network licences, Christmas 2004 finally witnesses the technology gathering momentum as three of the five operators target WCDMA network services at a market they...

The tender spot.(Tender Invitations)
December 15, 2004... This is a list of public authorities that are inviting bids from potential suppliers. Further information is available from Tenders Direct--contact details at the bottom of the page. These notices are from the Official Journal of the European...

Mercury[TM] Empowering your PC: brings profitability to resellers.(Advertorial)(Advertisement)
December 15, 2004... Mercury products offer the channel a powerful combination of affordability, reliability and compatibility which ensures profitability for the reseller. The Mercury product range includes cases, networking, peripherals, components and lifestyle...

PEAK: products available from VIP computers.(Advertorial)(Advertisement)
December 15, 2004... PEAK Hardware International Co., Ltd. is a manufacturer of computer components, peripherals and related hardware products. PEAK Hardware is the proud owner and manufacturer of the PEAK brand. PEAK's strategic business objective is to...

Manufacturers.(The Directory)
December 15, 2004... MANUFACTURERS ASSOCIATION PC Association 01763 262987 CD-ROM/DVD STORAGE 1st Computer Traders Ltd 01827 55555 Amacom Technologies Ltd 020 8993 7373 Apple Computer UK Ltd ...

Distributors.(The Directory)
December 15, 2004... DISTRIBUTORS 1st Computer Traders Ltd 01827 55555 01827 66666 3d Micro Limited 020 7384 1174 020 7736 6033 4Front Network 01635 567299 01923 210910 a A One...