Top stories for 2006

competitor Toner Warehouse for an undisclosed amount. Company owner and director Alex Piccinini used his own funds to purchase Toner Warehouse
from its owner Isabel Fryer. Piccinini said his acquisition gave the Brisbane, Queensland-headquartered distributor a warehouse in Sydney and access to more vendors such as Epson and Brother, although agreements with these vendors were subsequently “under review”.

Cellnet heads into SA with HiTech acquisition

Rumours of Cellnet’s impending acquisition of a distributor were finally confirmed when it bought SA distributor HiTech Distribution. In an ASX statement Cellnet managing director Adam Davenport said the acquisition provided a strategic expansion of both Cellnet’s national footprint and IT market presence. “South Australia is a similar market to Queensland as it features a large regional area with a lot of small to medium sized clients. The acquisition allows us to significantly grow our volumes there,” he said.

Casual resellers: Symantec wants you

Security products from the likes of Symantec still proved to be popular amongst CRN readers. They continued to give feedback about Symantec’s call to sign up casual resellers to its certified partner program in the new year, after the dust settled from its Veritas acquisition. Julie Parrish, vice-president of global channels at Symantec, flew in to Sydney to convince about 6000 regular business partners in Australia, ranging from integrators to small white-box builders, of the advantages to being an official Symantec partner.

Synnex wants telcos to sell Mio

Distributor Synnex wanted Telstra and Optus to push its latest Mio PDA/phone through their retail channels. The distributor’s push to sell its latest product, the Mio A701, through Telstra and Optus stores signalled its first foray into the telecommunications retail channel. Mio’s A701 is a combined mobile phone, GPS unit and PDA device. The PDA/phone comes with Windows Mobile 5.0 and also has Bluetooth 1.2.

Dell’s first AMD notebook hits our shores

Dell Australia released its Inspiron 1501 laptops, the first models
based on AMD chips. The Inspiron 1501 line-up starts at $1099 and comes built with a 1.8GHz Sempron, 512MB of memory, a 60GB hard drive and a 15.4-inch LCD screen. It is double the cost of the US product. Dell planned to offer buyers a choice between the Sempron, Turion 64 and dual-core Turion 64 X2 processors.

Wireless rabbit creates Internet buzz

CRN readers could not get enough of the story about a social networking product that was hunting for local resellers. A wireless rabbit computer peripheral had been causing a stir of excitement on social networking sites. Talking, singing and waggling its ears, this rabbit interfaces with Internet content as a high-tech toy of the new millennium. Taking the shape of an unobtrusive white blob, this “rabbit” features cartoonish eyes and animatronic rabbit ears that swivel and rotate in response to various stimuli, such as wireless streaming music or realtime stock reports.

Pioneer upgrades Vista

Readers jumped on the story about Pioneer Computers offering Vista upgrades, before any dates were even set for its release. Speaking to CRN, Jeff Li managing director at Pioneer, said from 26 October 2006 to March 2007, all Pioneer DreamVision PCs, DreamBook notebooks and server products installed with Microsoft Windows Media Centre Edition or Windows XP Professional would be eligible for a free upgrade to Vista. He said the white-box maker had been given the go ahead to start advertising the upgrades from Microsoft’s US head office.

AMD chip shortage hits local builders

System builders were up in arms over a severe shortage of Advanced Micro Devices’ Athlon 64 X2 processors, largely blamed on the chipmaker’s global OEM agreement with Dell. Builders claimed they had been having trouble for months getting their hands on AMD chips because the chipmaker actually had a similar production problem that had plagued Intel. Dell was blamed for buying 50 percent of AMD chips globally and creating the shortage.

2006 for stories strategy top