Buyers want quality products not low prices

Zatni Arbi, Contributor, Jakarta

Oops, I did it again. I thought about rechecking what GIS exactly stood for when I was writing last week's article, but I never had the chance to do so as the final deadline for submitting the article had already arrived. So, I incorrectly wrote "Geological Information System". A reader, Mr. Erik van der Zee, who is himself a geo-information consultant, was kind enough to point out that it should have been "Geographical Information System".

I should have known it by heart, because my own nephew is actually one of those people in charge of the GIS that the municipal government of Jakarta has built. I really thank Mr. van der Zee for the correction. As usual, I truly appreciate any feedback and corrections that readers can give me.

And here is another tip that I also forgot to share with you, which Mr. van der Zee reminded me of as well. If we need to look for a better synonym for a word that we have already typed, we can place the cursor inside the word and just hit Shift +F7 to quickly call up the built-in thesaurus in Microsoft Word. Again, a lot of thanks go to him for this.

Benq: A Reincarnation.

A new brand has now arrived from Taiwan. You may still recall that, a couple of years ago, Acer, the electronics giant from this industrial marvel, made a serious attempt to increase its share of the global market through products such as cell phones, keyboards, scanners, CD burners, video projectors, etc. Acer collaborated with a number of innovative companies around the world to come up with new devices and tools that consumers might want and need. After some time, it turned out that Acer did not get very far with its products, mostly because of problems with product quality.

Recently, Acer made a renewed attempt, but this time through an independent company within its group. In the re-branding program, Acer Communication and Multimedia changed its name to Benq. At last month's launch event at the Grand Hyatt, Jakarta, local consumers and IT reporters were able to look at some of its initial digital consumer products.

As of today, Benq offers 22 products in categories such as display, storage, imaging, broadband and wireless. Surprisingly, the company has already collected 670 global patent rights, which is quite a promising performance. Personally, however, I think Benq has so far done a good job on the design side but still has a long way to go in applying the latest technological breakthroughs. The real strength of their products will still have to be proven over time.

In the display category, for example, Benq has a series of LCD screens in 14, 15, 17 and 18-inch formats. The Acer FP581, for example, has quite a stunning design. Its tilt and swivel base, which can be folded, can also function as the handle if you want to tote the monitor around. Unfortunately, it seems that Benq still has some work to do on the specifications. The 75/75 and 70/70 degree viewing angles are a little bit behind the industry standard, which now touts at least a 160-degree horizontal and vertical viewing angle, for example. Its pixel pitch, which is 0.281 mm, is still higher than Samsung 770 TFT's 0.26 mm. Besides, it only works with analog input and does not support DVI.

What else does it offer at the moment? Benq has a large-sized, 42-inch plasma display, three different models of cell phones including one with an integrated PDA, four different models of CD-RW drives and four portable ones. In the area of presentation equipment, Benq also has three lines of portable projectors -- ultra slim, ultra portable and portable. There is also the Acer Digital Camera 300, which can also capture short video clips and function as a PC camera. Many of these products still carry the Acer logo.

Hard work is needed.

e-Life was an effort by Acer to enrich consumers' lives with electronic gadgets, particularly those that allow for direct links to services delivered through the Internet. This time, Benq did not really have a special e-slogan to market, which is good for us as we are getting bored with slogans that actually point to the same e-lifestyle. Whether Benq will be able to compete with industry leaders such as Sony and Panasonic-Matsushita remains to be seen.

One thing is for sure: In the consumer electronics market, people are not really interested in low prices. They want good quality products with advanced technologies, whether they really need them or not. In order to succeed this time around, Benq should really work very hard to create products that both excel technologically and work reliably. After all, what is the point of making expensive 18-inch LCD monitors if they lag behind the others in their specs?