Lenovo Leads in Notebook Customer Satisfaction

The most recent Technology Business Research (TBR) report concludes that Lenovo has held firm to its No. 1 ranking in customer satisfaction for ThinkPad notebooks. In TBR’s 3Q2005 “Corporate IT Buying Behavior and Customer Satisfaction Study,” Lenovo improved its positioning by adding “product design satisfaction” as a fifth competitive strength to its already established leadership for “quality, parts availability, phone support and time to repair.”

According to the study, “Lenovo’s progress has been consistent and full of purpose, based on progressively improving positions over time. Lenovo has maintained its strong hold on its perceived differentiation in the areas of hardware quality and design, while also maintaining its distinction across all three areas of notebook support.”

Intel Volunteer Program in Eight Countries

The Intel Volunteer Matching Grant Program, which has served Intel communities in the United States since 1995, is being launched in China, Costa Rica, India, Ireland and Malaysia after successful international pilots in the Philippines and Israel last year.

The Intel Volunteer Matching Grant Program has raised almost $10 million for schools over the past 10 years. During this time, Intel employees have volunteered more than 1.2 million hours in classrooms, reading with first graders, explaining algebra equations and providing real-world examples of an engineer’s daily tasks; all in an effort to demonstrate to children that their education and well-being matter to adults in their communities.

Intel’s Volunteer Matching Grant Program is unique in that the dollars generated by the program are directly related to the number of hours that Intel employees volunteer at schools. Once one or more Intel employees have volunteered 20 hours at a single school, the school receives a cash donation. The donation amount is based on the total number of Intel employee volunteer hours accumulated during the academic year. Dollar amounts vary by geography according to local currency exchange rates.

Management Changes at Adobe Systems

With the completion of the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe Systems Inc. has announced several management changes. Management of the combined company includes executives and board members from both organizations. Bruce Chizen continues as CEO and Shantanu Narayen remains as president and chief operating officer. Macromedia’s CEO Stephen Elop has joined Adobe as president of worldwide field operations.

Peg Wynn has been brought onboard as senior vice president of human resources and Garrett J. Ilg as president of Adobe Japan. The company also announced the resignation of Murray Demo, executive vice president, finance and chief financial officer. A search for Demo’s successor has been initiated.

Wynn, former vice president of human resources for Xilinx, will lead worldwide planning and development of Adobe’s global talent pool, overseeing staffing, training, compensation and benefits and HR systems. Garrett Ilg, president of Adobe Japan, joins Adobe from BEA Systems where he was senior vice president and head of Asia Pacific.

Research Network for Asia-Pacific

Asian-Pacific research is to be boosted by the deployment of a high speed network to link scientific researchers with their peers across the region and in Europe. Managed by research networking organization DANTE, the project, known as TEIN2, creates the first largescale research and education network for the region, linking 10 countries at speeds of up to 622 Mbps.

TEIN2 will link national networks in China, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Australia. The new high capacity network aims to bridge the digital divide between different countries across the region and enable faster collaboration on projects across the globe through links to Europe’s GEANT2, the world’s most advanced international research and education network. Potential applications include natural disaster warning systems, e-learning and e-health initiatives, linking radio astronomy telescopes and other projects where fast transfer of massive amounts of data is vital.

The network will be operated by DANTE, who already operate networks in Europe (GEANT2), Latin America (ALICE) and North Africa/Middle East (EUMEDCONNECT). The first links will begin operation in January 2006. The Topology is available to download at www.tein2.net.

Sri Lanka Telecom Upgrades Network

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) has deployed Juniper Networks M-series multiservice routers to enhance its network and to provide advanced IP services to SLT’s premium and corporate customers. The Juniper Networks M-series has replaced the legacy gateway routers in SLT’s network, enabling SLT to achieve significantly higher performance and reliability.

The M-series multiservice routing platform supports a full range of advanced IP services including ADSL, Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP VPN services. The M-series provides line-rate performance at high speeds — even with advanced quality (QoS) and class of service (CoS) filters — enabling SLT to offer assured performance for its advanced services even as new services are added.

HP’s Cost Saving UNIX Blade Solution

HP has introduced its first UNIX blade technology to bring the cost-efficiency and versatility of blades to UNIX customers. Adding mission-critical capabilities to the HP BladeSystem platform, the new HP Integrity BL60p blade server supports the HP-UX 11i operating system and the Intel Itanium 2 processor. The BL60p is ideal for distributed, remote sites and UNIX infrastructure consolidation as it allows organizations to automate goal-based workloads across multi-operating system platforms with HP’s Global Workload Manager software.

Demonstrating the power of HP Integrity servers and the Itanium processor, the HP Integrity L60p outperformed its nearest competitor, the IBM JS20, by 60 percent on recent benchmark and business process testing.