Reviews
View From The Bunker
A Support Value-Add Targeted To Resellers
Oliver Rist
11/29/1999
InternetWeek
Page 41
Copyright 1999 CMP Publications Inc.

It's taken me a long time, but I finally learned an important lesson, and I have the Y2K IT hassles to thank for it. With all the testing and confirming that needs to get done, like most IT managers, I don't have time to worry about the PCs on the users' desks. This brings us back to the lesson this whole mess has taught me: There is more to corporate desktop hardware purchasing than the right scribbles on the spec sheet and a decent price tag. A reliable name brand and solid support are worth their weight in plutonium when things get sticky. Many PC resellers are realizing the same thing and trying to add this kind of value to their products. That's important to you because it means you might still find great support at price tags lower than those offered by the really high-end vendors.

iLogistix Inc. recently sent me a sample of some impressive support technology with its @priori emergency recovery (@ER) CD system. iLogistix is a European company that delivers turnkey hardware and software manufacturing solutions to resellers, including many in Microsoft's Authorized Reseller program.  The @ER technology lets resellers build not only general recovery CDs for their customers, but even custom ones for specific clients (presumably as long as they buy the CDs in sufficient numbers). Imagine being able to buy the hardware, have it configured with your own selection of applications, and then have BIOS locked recovery CDs custom-built to restore each system straight to your own corporate desktop configuration-OS and applications.

iLogistix sent me samples of the @priori system along with the Sony Vaio for which the disc had been configured. Testing was no big hassle: Just crash the OS, and then haul out the @ER CD. Of course, it's a good idea to make sure that your machines are configured to boot from the CD in CMOS before trying this stunt, but thankfully, we remembered to check that before things got embarrassing.

Recovery was sweet, though that wasn't surprising considering that the disk in question had been specifically formatted for the Vaio. On the other hand, that's what you'd find in real life as well, since all @ER CDs will be built for specific desktop configurations. Shortly before press time, iLogistix sent me a new version of the CD. Same basic result, except that recovery times were reduced. Our testing didn't show this to be a huge difference, but it's a nice touch all the same.  Overall, an @ER recovery CD could greatly help IT support technicians quickly service large pools of desktops. As long as users are forced to store data files on the network, recovery would be seamless.

Oliver Rist is contributing technical editor at InternetWeek and technical director at Grand Central Networks Labs. He can be reached at orist@cmp.com.
 

iLogistix is a world leader in software and hardware manufacturing operations for the computer industry. iLogistix has served the OEM community since 1984. The @priori Division has over a decade of experience building tools for OEMs to manage their software. @priori webpatch is a new web-based, model-specific, update management and 1 to 1 marketing system. @priori emergency recovery is a hard disk recovery solution, capable of selective non-destructive recovery.

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iLogistix, the iLogistix logo, @priori, WebPatch and Emergency Recovery are trademarks or registered trademarks of Software iLogistix Corp. Microsoft and Windows95 are registered trademarks of Microsoft.