CHANNEL TALK - PCSQUEALER
Gladiator to meet you
Just as you're recovering from a gut-wrenching time at Comdef, Networks 98 appears just around the corner. So let PC Squealer take care of you with some more heartfelt top ten tips to surviving Networks 98.
1. Get a map, as you're bound to get lost and keep running into that overbearing sales type insisting you buy his amazing router thing.
2. Take full advantage of the free beers offered at various techy stands in a vain attempt to make you like them. You'll need a drink to dull the pain.
3. Ignore offers of a famous Birmingham curry. The vendor you annoyed by sending back all that dodgy kit is only after revenge by making you poop through the eye of a needle - it will keep him laughing for months.
4. Enjoy the magical nightlife offered by Birmingham - the clubs look just like those featured on the quality programme The Hitman and Her.
5. Milk every single World Cup marketing ploy employed by unoriginal businesses, then you won't have to hunt for a souvenir for your young children.
6. Have fun spotting Birmingham's famous Gladiators who play with their pootle sticks in the NEC's sister building, the National Indoor Arena.
7. Avoid your brain melting by refusing to visit every stand at the exhibition - your boss will never know.
8. Watch out for journalists trying to trick you by posing as technical sales types - you can spot them a mile off by their tasteful clothes.
9. Stock up on aspirin and Lucozade - a trip around the exhibition with a hangover is not very pleasant.
10. Better still, stay at home and enjoy the World Cup.
I'll have another ...
Hurrah! The World Cup has finally started and distributors are doing it in style as C2000 recently proved. Not only did a whole gaggle of C2000 cronies, including managing director Graeme Watt and networking guru Steve Lockie, travel to France for the Scotland v Brazil game, but they all looked like Russ Abott in his Scottish period by dressing in ginger wigs, tartan hats and kilts. Let's hope they weren't wearing their Scottish skirts in the traditional way. Mad and crazy Graeme was so happy on the way to the Parisian hotel that he made the taxi driver wear a ginger wig and tartan hat all the way to their destination. But things got pretty sad after a rip-roaring night of booze, when Steve answered a call to his room, saying: 'Hello, Computer 2000 networking division, can I help you?' He should have continued drinking - if only to forget.
A weighty problem
What is value add? It's one of those really important questions that everyone feels the need to ask each other all the bloody time. So at last, PC Squealer has the answer - and it comes in the shape of wrestling legend Giant Haystacks. An arty farty creative type recently told us how he had invested in a whole load of spanking Apple G3s. He chose to purchase his Apples from a reseller on Tottenham Court Road and was sent an ape resembling god of body hair, Giant Haystacks, to link everything up. Unperturbed by this disturbing spectacle, our little artist informed his dealer he wanted a Mac at his house for those days when he couldn't be bothered getting out of bed on time. All was fine and dandy until the Giant Haystacks lookalike turned up at the house and was faced with the vision of some dodgy looking steep metal stairs leading up to the front door. Bad went to worse when Twinkletoes attempted to climb the stairs, G3 in hand, only to fall through the rusty slats and become lodged in the stairway. Luckily, a fire engine arrived to cut the poor chap out with the G3 remaining miraculously unharmed. Service with a smile or what?
Feeling comfy are we?
Jaguar Communications will just not give up on its cleverly named marketing ploy, 'Intra-the-net'. Apparently, good old Jaguar is going to be running a World Cup theme at Networks 98 and PC Squealer has its fingers crossed that the people staffing the stand will stay in exactly the same pose as pictured on the right. Look at the happy little man reclining at the forefront of the photo in a provocative pose, looking as if he is being impaled by a 20in wide cable. But at least all the people look worryingly happy. However, PC Squealer was less impressed with the other photo we were sent of a good looking woman in a football T-shirt with a caption reading: 'How would you like to get your hands on one of these?' Grow up.
Excuse me while I hurl
Hold on to your sick bags because a recent survey has shown that US business school graduates admire Microsoft CEO Bill Gates more then their own mothers.
Bill only beat 'mom' by a percentage point, but it gives a whole new meaning to selling your mother to the devil. Or in Bill's case, should that be the other way around?
Say it in plain English
The ever-growing lexicography of euphemisms corporations use to try to soften the blow when they poop on the more vulnerable of us from a great height has one more entry courtesy of Compaq. After Digital shareholders approved its acquisition, a statement issued by Compaq warned it would be hit by several changes in the third quarter. One of the charges mentioned was for 'employee separations'. PC Squealer gives you three guesses as to what that means.
Pump up the volume
There's been speculation aplenty about whether Datatec is going to splash out and purchase everyone's favourite distributor, RBR. But from the way Ben White, joint managing director at RBR, is throwing his money about you'd think the buyout had already gone through. According to a little bird, Ben has just bought a nice new house in Gloucester, which is apparently worth between two million and three million smackeroos and is next door to the exotically named club The Pump House. Our Benjy's house is so flash the whole house is kitted out in top-of-the-range Bang and Olufsen stereo equipment. Now, just in case you don't know what this is, the stereo system can be controlled from any point in the house by either remote or mind control, leaving the happy owner with more time to kick back and count his money. Other boys with musical toys include Nick Morse of ACC and Bob Jones 'IT Entrepreneur'.
Can you spot a link?