Good week, bad week

Who has been jumping for joy and who has been feeling glum over the last week?

Good week

Target staff
Ronald Reagan's description of inflation being "as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hitman" will chime with anyone whose pay packet has failed to grow in line with their grocery and fuel bills in recent years.

But one firm whose staff won't be daunted by the prospect of the consumer price index rising back above the dreaded three per cent mark is distributor Target Components. For not only are inflation pay rises for all staff a "moral duty" for employers, those who fail to provide them are also sucking demand out of the economy, according to MD Paul Cubbage.

We would toast Cubbage's sentiments with a nice sparkling wine if prices hadn't gone up so much since the credit crunch.

Torfaen schoolchildren
We were thrilled to hear that the procurement fiasco in south Wales is finally coming to an end after two years.

Torfaen Council has proudly declared that its share of 1,200 controversial surplus laptops - which were bought for a neighbouring council accused of pulling out of the deal at the last minute - are finally in use. And what's more, Torfaen deployed them a week ahead of schedule, and the revised cost was £4m less than forecast.

We're sure the kids will have a fabulous time on the creaking machines. Who said Solitaire, Minesweeper and Paint had gone out of fashion?

London SIs
All 32 of London's boroughs have come together to offer three lucky IT suppliers the chance to get their hands on a contract that could be worth more than £1bn.

Westminster Council has led the way in the tender, which is split into three lots: distributed computing, service desk and datacentre services. Once the contract is awarded, it is set to run for four years, with each borough able to cherry-pick their required services.

It is estimated that between five and seven suppliers will be invited to tender for each of the lots. Bidders will have to do a quiz on the Olympics, eat a batch of jellied eels and recite all the words to The Sideboard Song. Have a banana!

Bad week

Samsung (and all of us)
You might, not unreasonably, be concerned that instability on the Korean peninsula could see the world dragged back to the dark days of the Cold War, with nuclear annihilation hanging over us all like the sword of Damocles.

You might have worried somewhat less about the impact this could have on the tech supply chain. But with the world's largest IT firm having its HQ just 35 miles from the demilitarised zone, the industry will be watching developments nervously.

With HP, Dell and Apple relying on a combined $30bn-worth of Samsung components every year, any slips in the South Korean firm's production would have a far-reaching effect. Thankfully, a well-placed source on the ground claims that "most [at Samsung] do not believe all-out war is a possibility".

Underlicensed SMBs
Survey respondents are notoriously prone to fibbing if asked to divulge sensitive information. So we were a little surprised to see that nearly a third of UK SMBs quizzed by the BSA admitted to having knowingly using unlicensed software. And nearly two in five said they had often allocated additional PCs and software to staff before stumping up for additional licences.

We're not sure what's more stupid: being underlicensed, or telling the world's largest anti-software-piracy body that you are underlicensed. Although we can only assume this was an anonymous survey, if you do get a knock on the door from the piracy police, don't come running to us.

Vendor bigwigs
Some of vendorland's biggest-hitting big hitters faced a torrid time this week.

HP boardroom trio Ray Lane, John Hammergren and Ken Thompson finally succumbed to calls for their heads from powerful investor groups. Lane resigned his chairman role, but remains a director, while the others step away from the company entirely.

Meanwhile, Michael Dell's (pictured) fight to regain control of the family firm gets ever messier, as 8.4 per cent shareholder Southeastern Asset Management claimed he has undervalued the firm and is giving "no sound reasoning" why it should be taken private again.

Never a Dell moment in this story. (Sorry...)