ShadowRAM: Vroom vroom! Kutteh takes Porsche

COMMENTARY: Rumours, truth and innuendo


Vroom vroom! Kutteh takes Porsche

The folks at printer vendor Kyocera announced the first winner of their Porsche Boxster promotion -- the lucky punter is David Kutteh from POS Technologies in Rockdale, NSW. David Finn, managing director at Kyocera, presented this beautiful car to David on 9 September at Kyocera’s offices in North Ryde.

Kutteh is not surprisingly excited about driving this machine and is confident that he can stay in the lead and continue to drive it next month.

He told The Shadow: “It’s quite enjoyable, it’s really a nice toy. It feels good driving it -- you get a lot of looks and respect. I can’t believe how they [people] give you so much respect just for the image!”

“We’re going to win it again, that’s for sure,” he enthused.

He said he sold around 70 printers in one month to take the top prize. Already, Kyocera is touting the promotion as a runaway success with 600 companies involved in its new channel program.

The top reseller of the year gets the car for 12 months and if the person stays on top for two years running, he or she wins the car outright. The Shadow is sure David and his team will be vying for the prize. Kyocera has been particularly aggressive of late with its channel sales promotions.

It also recently claimed success for a MasterCard promotion -- originally launched in May last year -- that entitled channel sales staff to earn credit on a card for each printer that they sold.


Dell under fire

Dell continues to get hit from many sides -- bloggers in the US who have been scoring website hits complaining about customer service and analysts who have been complaining about Dell’s poor profitability.

But if you were counting on any of that changing Dell’s strategy, think again. After a quarter in which Dell’s revenue disappointed many, executives promised they would take a good, hard look at Dell’s pricing structure because, they admitted, it may have been too aggressive.

How’s this for a good, hard look?

Recently in the US, Dell was still giving away 19-inch LCD monitors with purchases of desktops that were already bargain basement. Dell folks may be following that old adage of losing money on every LCD but making it up in volume.


Macrodobe? Acro-Macrobe? Who knows?

Those wacky kids over at Slashdot are having some kinda fun with the pending Adobe-Macromedia merger.

Speculation about a new company name runs high. Some suggest Macrodobe.

Or MacrodobeMedia. Adobomedia? Macrodobedia? Acro-Macrobe? Or -- perish the thought -- AdMedia.

The US$3.4 billion deal, announced in April, is slated to close this year, although the US regulators did ask for more information in July.


Carly to pen new book

Should we start calling her the Unsinkable Carly? The former HP CEO, who was so publicly dispatched last year as punishment perhaps for the HP-Compaq merger, will now pen a book. Ms Fiorina’s memoir is due next year from Penguin’s Portfolio imprint.

The Shadow can’t wait!