Acer’s multi-brand strategy is paying off, with enthusiastic adoption of its eMachines brand among consumers and resellers right across the world. The eMachines product range, one of the world’s fastest-growing PC brands, was acquired by Acer Group in October 2007. The product range is marketed under its own brand in Africa and the rest of the world, in line with the Acer Group’s decision to adopt a multi-brand strategy.

eMachines products are officially sold and supported in South Africa, where they have received a warm reception from the market. Acer plans to expand coverage of the eMachines brand in the rest of Africa over time, but the products are already available in some countries from certain resellers.

Says Paul Fitchet sales manager at Acer Africa: “The eMachines product range is positioned as a full-featured, reliable, value range of notebooks, desktops and LCD monitors. The eMachines range has enjoyed enormous success in the US, South Africa and other parts of the world, because many consumers today are looking for practical yet affordable products in many segments of the market.”

Fitchet says that Acer Group implemented a multi-brand strategy after acquiring the Packard-Bell, Gateway and eMachines brands to ensure that each brand has a personality and product range suited to the needs of its unique customer base. The Acer brand has entrenched itself as the brand of choice for small business users, consumers who want the latest technologies and corporate users that need powerful and reliable solutions for their workforces.

By contrast, eMachines is positioned in the budget and value segment of the market place with highly affordable pricing. It is aimed at the pragmatic end-user that makes computer purchasing decisions based on convenience, reliability and affordability. The eMachines product range has sold in excess of five million units and is a well-established brand across the world.

Fitchet notes that although eMachines has its own brand identity, it is backed by Acer Africa’s extensive support infrastructure. It carries a warranty supported by Acer Group Services and can be serviced by in-country Acer Group service centres.

Toshiba has appointed Tarsus Technologies, South Africa’s leading distributor of the world’s foremost PC brands, as an official distributor for its entire range of laptops and peripherals in SA.

This landmark agreement marks an important step in Toshiba’s commitment to its reseller channel, because it makes the company’s products and services more widely available to resellers and end-users, where there has been a growing demand for the Toshiba brand.

Reon Coetzee, Head of Sales for Toshiba Africa, says that with Toshiba’s renewed focus on servicing the corporate and business-to-business space, Tarsus was a natural choice of distributor to partner with.

“Tarsus is South Africa’s longest-established IT distributor and has built an amazing track record in terms of logistics, skills and value-added services for large-scale IT rollouts at some of South Africa’s biggest corporates.

“We’re aware of the growing demand for Toshiba’s solid products from both consumers and corporates, and, in terms of our evolving channel strategy, our aim is to appoint the best partners in their respective fields to ensure that this demand is fed.

“In addition,” he says, “we want to ensure that our end-users benefit from the values that Toshiba stands for – quality and excellence – both of which have been strong attributes of Tarsus in its long history as South Africa’s leading IT value added distributor.”

“Tarsus is delighted to add Toshiba to its already comprehensive portfolio of products,” says Pierre Spies, CEO of Tarsus Technologies.

“Tarsus carries one of the widest ranges of PCs and laptops in South Africa and having Toshiba join that portfolio adds a new level of strength to our overall product and service offerings.

“We’re proud to be able to offer Toshiba’s legendary reliability and quality to our channel and corporate customers,” he says.

With Tarsus joining the ranks of Toshiba partners alongside Mustek, both Coetzee and Country Manager for South Africa Jorge Da Silva, are confident that Toshiba will become the brand of choice amongst consumers and corporates alike.

“Toshiba is known for its innovation and ability to deliver top quality products,” Coetzee says.  “Our qualification process has proven this and with the competitive offering, we expect to take a sizable chunk of the South African market in the next 12 months.

“We’re also excited to be able to offer our channel partners and resellers the opportunity to grow their revenues, and to support them with the products and services that they have been [patiently] waiting for,” he concludes.

Acer South Africa has unveiled the brand-new Aspire Z5600 series of all-in-one desktop PCs, offering a sleek design and an intuitive touchscreen interface that further breaks down the barriers between humans and technology.

The next-generation touchscreen technology featured in this innovative machine gives you the ability to control your applications and entertainment with hands-on efficiency. Windows 7 compliant multi-touch capability provides many more gesture combinations than single-touch screens, allowing you to flick, rotate, magnify and more, making the experience faster, more intuitive and more fun than using a keyboard and mouse.

“Touchscreen technology is for everyone – it is already part of our daily lives in ATM machines, handhelds, GPS devices, check-in terminals at the airport, smartphones and MP3 players,” says Josef Chvala, product manager, at Acer South Africa.

“With the Aspire Z5600, Acer brings this familiar and easy to use technology to home computing, making computers friendlier for people who still aren’t at ease with them. Experienced PC users, meanwhile, will be able to do many tasks quicker and more efficiently.”

The starting point of this new, hands-on computing experience is the Acer TouchPortal where you can access your multimedia files and devices, drag and drop your photos onto the photo wall, play videos, watch DVDs and switch from one format to another just by tapping on a virtual button.

The portal brings your devices together so you can easily print your pictures simply by dragging them on the printer icon; it allows you to browse websites and to explore places on Microsoft® Surface Globe, spinning it like a real globe. With Acer TouchMemo you can hand-write or draw memos, so you won’t miss a beat.

Acer Touch Gadgets integrates your friend lists from Flickr and Facebook and provides photo update notifications and instant browsing, while Acer TouchMediaShare offers enhanced photo management like editing, magnification and emailing.

The Aspire Z5600 offers no-compromise performance in a space-saving all-in-one PC design. It features an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, up to 750GB of hard drive space and 4GB of DDR3 RAM, an ATI HD 4530 MXM (512MB DDR2) and a full high-definition 1080p display.

Tarsus’ Acer PM takes a closer look at what the channel and its customers should know

The shipping date for Windows 7 is upon us and there’s still a ton of confusion in the technology channel as to what customers should know and what the primary reasons to upgrade are.

“The good news is that market experts seem convinced that Windows 7 is going to be a winner,” says Shane Krog, Acer desktop product manager at Tarsus.”

“Furthermore,” Krog says, “the confusion in the market is perfectly normal, considering the pain experienced with the adoption and subsequent support of Windows Vista through its stabilisation.

“However, resellers need to know that Windows 7 is a very different animal,” he says, “and having tested it internally for some months now, there’s absolutely no doubt in Tarsus’ mind that a swift migration to the new operating system is the best route to follow.”

But what benefits should resellers and their customers be aware of as they formalise their plans?

“The benefits that Windows 7 brings to the table can be divided into three categories; namely that it works better, allows users to be more efficient and improves security,” says Krog.

“Under the topic of ‘works better’,” Krog says, “the process of connecting to wired and wireless networks has been streamlined, the sharing of data has been simplified with home-groups and users largely being able to support themselves through troubleshooting issues with ‘Action Centre’.

“The most compelling benefit under the ‘works better’ banner is undoubtedly the fact that customers can run legacy applications in a separate XP-mode, which actually boots up a separate instance of Windows XP under the Windows 7 hood,” Krog says.

“We see this as one of the primary reasons to consider the OS,” he adds.

Under the banner of ‘more efficiency’, Krog says, “Microsoft has streamlined and extended its desktop search, allowing files and applications to be easily located; brought a feature called ‘Libraries’ into the equation to centralise access to music, pictures, video and other documents; substantially overhauled the way its operating system behaves visually; and made it perform better with older hardware.

“The most important benefit comes last, however, and Windows 7’s improved stability and security is a good enough reason to move on its own,” says Krog.

“Simple to use backup tools, built-in encryption that simply has to be enabled and the ability to roll a file-version back using the aptly-named ‘previous versions’ feature rank highly on the list of security and stability features that enterprises should be considering.

“The overall stability of the operating system in practice, evidenced by the fact that we experienced far less system crashes, no data loss and better application behavior during our testing is the clincher though,” says Krog.

“New features are great, however, there’s simply no substitute for the improved stability of the operating system – and we’re counting on that factor to drive confidence back into the market,” he concludes.