Avantech’s Sleek New PC Can Take the Heat
Here’s a back-office application that promises to interest employees as much as their managers. Priority Pay Inc., a new company formed by the Orange County team that founded and sold CompReview several years ago, wants to move payroll processing to the Internet.
Priority Pay manages payroll-processing functions, allowing employers to access the information from any Internet-connected computer. Customers supply the usual wage, salary and timesheet information, and Priority Pay takes care of the rest.
The company is one of a growing number of “application service providers,” companies that host software on off-site computers accessible over the Internet instead of users’ hard drives. The idea is to let someone else take care of the high-tech minutiae and software upgrades, saving time and eliminating the need for an in-house tech guru.
Some experts believe Internet-based services could become a driving force in the payroll processing segment.
Priority Pay’s system was developed under a partnership with IBM and formally launched in October. The service is scheduled to roll out nationally within the next few months.
For more: www.prioritypay.com.
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The Internet has been turning corporate America on its head with new challenges and opportunities, but someone apparently forgot to fill in small businesses.
According to a survey commissioned recently by Irvine business management application maker Sage Software Inc., 79% of the country’s small businesses say they’ve felt little or no impact from the global network.
Despite the attention the Internet has received from just about everyone over the last year, only 9% of survey participants said the Internet was an effective promotional tool. The survey polled 200 owners and top managers from businesses employing 10 to 300 workers.
Sage president and chief executive David Butler said many respondents expect the Internet to affect their businesses more in coming months than it does now.
“Effective use of the Internet is the key to success for small business,” he said. “It may not be enough to simply have a presence on the web.”
And naturally, Sage promises to help businesses in the process.
For more: www.sage.com.
Form might follow function, but that doesn’t mean a PC has to be ugly to be useful.
Irvine touch-screen PC maker Advantech Technologies Inc. is introducing its first aluminum-cased computers, the sleek PPC-A84, this week. In addition to adding a sexy high-tech shell, the aluminum casing absorbs heat, eliminating the need for a CPU cooling mechanism.
Because it doesn’t take in or blow out air, the PC is ideal for industrial cleanroom and hospital environments.
The $2,250 unit comes standard with 32 megabytes of RAM a 2.1 gigabyte hard drive and Windows 98.
For more: www.advantech.com.
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Bits:
Newport Beach extreme sports web site Troublewear.com has adopted an e-commerce system developed by Aliso Viejo-based Smith Micro Software Inc. Worldwide Wireless Networks Inc., Orange, is teaming with Los Angeles-based Zyan Communications to roll out high-speed digital subscriber line service across the country. The first video-on-demand systems developed by Sextant In-Flight Systems, Irvine, have been fitted on several of Japan Airlines’ 747-400s. The systems, which offer movies and music, will appear on high-traffic flights, including Toyko to Paris, Rome, London, New York and Chicago. Irvine computer game maker Interplay Entertainment Corp. has signed a distribution deal with Monte Cristo Multimedia, a European developer of business simulation games such as Wall Street Trader 2000. Procom Technology Inc., a Santa Ana maker of storage devices for computer networks, has received a “product of the year” award from Imaging & Document Solutions magazine for its DeltaFORCE server. The award comes on the heels of an “editor’s choice” award from Network Computing magazine. Alexander Publishing has released its year 2000 OC high-tech directory. The publication has information on more than 1,000 area tech companies. To order: (800) 605-6150.
