Stories by Paul Zucker

  • yARN: The elephant in the store

    There’s nothing you don’t already know in what I’m going to tell you. Still, it might be worth your while reading it and thinking about how it applies to your business.

  • SWOT: Stored, secured and zipped up

    Many resellers that complain about poor margins on data storage hardware may be missing the whole picture. Not only are they doing their customers a disservice by not providing security solutions, they are missing out on a solid income stream

  • OPPORTUNITIES: Excelling at the upgrade sell

    How you sell Windows XP depends on your customer base. But it also depends on how proactive you want to be. In the retail channel, most Windows XP Home edition sales will probably be no different to any other popular product - stack 'em high and keep topping up the pile.

  • Homepage: A farewell to ARNs

    This is my last column for Australian Reseller News. It was almost eight years ago when IDG's MD Don Kennedy asked me to call in for a chat. Six years earlier I'd worked for IDG as editor of Australian PC World and following that I'd spent a few enjoyable years as a freelance journalist. Don Kennedy had an interesting idea. IDG France had a young publication called Distributique, and he thought the idea would work in Australia.

  • Homepage: Lob a grenade into the boss's office

    How many screws hold the cover on your PC? If you answered in your best Mexican bandito accent "Screws? I dohn need no damn screws!" you're the sort of user IT managers hate. While a lack of these screws could conceivably mean you took them to make a quick repair to your grandfather's pacemaker, it probably means you fiddle with your PC. It's bad enough when you fiddle with your home PC, but it's a real worry when it's your work PC.

  • Homepage: ChannelWorld '99 Conference - a rare opportunity to network

    ChannelWorld conference is on next week in Sydney. As the first event of its type, we've spent a lot of time finding out what resellers want to get from it. Originally we thought that if we packed it full of useful information about making your business run more effectively, we'd be meeting your needs. While that is still a vital part of the conference, we've realised that this is a unique opportunity for you to get together and network, and discuss some of the issues that are vital to the channel.

  • Homepage: PAL canapes are being served in first class

    My first job was with Masterfoods, the company that makes that excellent spread called Promite. (That'll annoy Vegemite eaters who think Promite is about as palatable as something you'd scrape off the bottom of a beer fermentation vat. In truth, that's where most of those yeast spreads come from.) It was a vacation job that consisted of writing down all the company's recipes. Up till then, at best they were on scraps of paper, and most probably they were only in the heads of one or two of the leading hands. These guys knew by instinct just how many chooks and how many bags of herbs and fillers and other ingredients to dump into the giant mincers and mills and cooking vats to make the Spicy Chicken paste or whatever was on that day.

  • Homepage: Putting the heat on name brands

    Many resellers love the idea. Vendors such as IBM and HP hate it. Intel loves it, but can't be too public about its feelings. End users range from loving it to hating it, but many couldn't care. What is it? The white box server! The industry is selling a lot of servers and there's still usable margin in it. And with any luck, this situation will continue.

  • Homepage: ChannelWorld '99 - a conference for resellers

    A month from now, Australia's first independent conference for the IT channel will be under way. It's a two-day event in Sydney, organised and sponsored by Australian Reseller News, Inform Business Development, and leading vendors and distributors in this industry. ChannelWorld '99 is a business-to-business event which will perform a number of functions. Not the least of these is to get 300 channel people together to discuss the challenges you face in the months and years ahead.

  • Homepage: Can I see your PC buyers' licence please?

    1999 may go down as the year when computer privacy issues came to a head. The news has been full of stories about corporate e-mail and users' files being inspected and archived by management. Now, Intel and Microsoft have inadvertently entered the privacy debate with features of upcoming products.