Archive: April, 2008

Have you seen our website lately? Because Computer Merchants has been Green since 1979! Yes we refurbish used computers, recycle parts and turn the lights off at night. But we go further than that ladies and gentlemen. We are focused on being ‘Green’, continually taking steps in the right direction as we strive to use [...]

Here at Computer Merchants, we’re serious about minimising our impact on the environment. We’ve previously stated that: We will calculate and publish our carbon and water useage per person so that we can publicly work towards improving this and share our progress.  We meant it. Our Water Usage Calculated as the number of litres of water [...]

Strictly available until 30th May 2008 Pricing does NOT include the following: GST Delivery Installation Plain English Terms and Conditions Apply. Subject to prior sale. Call us on 1800 777 111 and quote “Web Specials” for your discount. BRAND NEW IBM System p Bundle Promotion IBM SYSTEM P520 IBM 4 Way Power 5+, 1.65Ghz Processor [...]

Here’s a snapshot of the IBM zSeries range These machines are all available on the broker market and represent great processing value starting at below $500 / MIP. Our zSeries machines all come with IBM MSQ banding. This means that when IBM install the equipment, they will make sure that the systems are in good working [...]

We have some very exciting news for our IBM System p customers! After a 12 month search, we’ve found a product that provides real time data replication for AIX. The product is called “EchoStream for AIX“. Even though it is new to Australia and New Zealand, EchoStream is already installed in many sites world-wide. EchoStream [...]

As a top IBM hardware supplier, we have added to our already strong internal systems to manage and maintain customer hardware maintenance. Many of you have commented on how simple we make the whole process. Some points to note are: We provide reminders 2-3 months out from your maintenance renewal This allows time for you [...]

Do you want to keep ‘green screen’ functionality but have an easier to use, more modern system? Many System i customers have applications that are developed in-house using RPG. We know of one case of a customer’s application which provided excellent coverage of their corporate distribution and manufacturing requirements. However, some of the specific challenges [...]

As many of you would know, Computer Merchants and Interactive have enjoyed a close business relationship for many years. Here’s an update on what our good friends at Interactive are up to… Interactive has signed Bank of Queensland as its 1,000th customer It caps off another great year for the Australian-owned systems availability company and [...]

The successor to IBM Query/400 has arrived in the form of DB2 Web Query Based on the latest Web 2.0 and AJAX web technologies, DB2 Web Query allows any enterprise browser to be used for the user interface. Several of the key features include: WYSIWYG Report ‘painter’ Web Based HTML and PDF viewing Pivot and [...]

HansaWorld are an international ERP and CRM vendor with over 70,000 installations world-wide! They offer 3 major advantages over other applications on the market: Strong Integrated Customer Relationship Management Mobile solutions for field staff remote access Single integrated database approach aimed at the mid-range market Do You Have Mobile Staff? HansaWorld’s products work with hand-held [...]

I feel the need…the neeed for speeeed” “Perhaps it wasn’t quite up to the Maverick and Goose performance from the legendary Top Gun movie but when Jas and Carl attended the recent IBM Top Gun training, they mixed it with the elite of IBM sales professionals throughout Australia and New Zealand. IBM Top Gun gives [...]

Are you looking for a High Availability solution for your System i but don’t really know where to start? For a limited time we are offering a no cost evaluation of your current environment, normally valued at about $2000 AUD which will help to answer a lot of your questions. Already taken up by a [...]

Pricing does NOT include the following: GST Delivery Installation Plain English Terms and Conditions Apply. Subject to prior sale. Call us on 1800 777 111 and quote “Web Specials” for more information on the following items. Complete IBM Systems Machine: IBM 9406 825 - OS: V5R4 - CPW: 3600/3600 - Tier: P30 Memory: 2GB - Tape: 3581 H23 LTO [...]

Hello from the Computer Merchants Logistics Team! As you will read in the Tech Section of this month’s newsletter, it was our responsibility to organise the shipping of the System i570 to Bank of South Pacific in PNG. Our responsibilities included working closely with production and our on-site engineer Richard to track the progress of [...]

Many of us who have been around a while will know that partitions in an IT environment are nothing new, particularly in a mainframe environment. However in the past few years the concept of Logical Partitioning has made a resurgence. The benefits to users are many, including: Reduces floor area, reducing real estate usage Ability [...]

Success Story Our engineer Richard recently had the pleasure of travelling to Papua New Guinea to work with the great people from Bank South Pacific at their Port Moresby office. Richard was responsible for the installation and set-up of their new i570 Power 6+ System i, with 2 Frames, 5 LPARs and over 5 TB [...]

So far it has been a glorious 2008 Fantastic weather, dwindling wine supply and Wellington Sevens fever has hit town. Hi, I am Samantha McBride and I am the Regional Coordinator for Interaction Australasia. A little about me I was moved to New Zealand as a teenager and haven’t looked back – and why would [...]

Whenever you migrate from a test environment across to production it’s important to check your firmware levels - especially on StorEdge 3000 series arrays. Our best advice is to have a technical professional undertake the installation, which will minimise downtime and any potential data loss. On your Sun servers, check your firmware levels too. From the Sun [...]

We take pride in becoming more sensitive to the environment, now only using biodegradable cleaning products in our warehouse. A few weeks ago though we met a challenge: the disposal of approximately 1,000 redundant CDs. After talking to a number of organisations, we found that their methods have the same end result as just throwing the [...]

We’re hearing from so many of you that Solaris 10 is a lot easier to use than previous versions of Solaris. And it’s also a very economical operating system. If you’re running Solaris 8 or 9 maybe you should consider upgrading to Solaris 10. Solaris 10 is free, and provided your applications can be supported, [...]

Disk replacement under Solaris 9 and 10 is different to previous versions of Solaris With Solaris Volume Manager (SVM), a lot of people are replacing disks and skipping the correct procedures because they’re not aware of them, and this is leading to problems at a later time. When you replace a disk, you really need to [...]

Just a quick note to let you know that we are able to source 1-5 year old Lenovo desktops and notebooks, as well as IBM System x servers and related products – complete with warranty! Some of the key benefits of this are: Fast delivery, stock readily available Competitively priced You can buy the exact [...]

A common question asked by our customers is “do we rent equipment?” The answer is YES! We typically come across a demand for rentals in the following situations: 1 – Flexibility We currently have customers that are renting complete machines from us. Success Story One example is a customer whose business was expanding meaning their [...]

Well sort of! Everyone on the street is talking about the new Sun X4100 and Sun X4200 servers. They take a fraction of the time to install, they’re very fast, and with Solaris 10 free to download, you can have your server up and running in no time. We’re also stocking some of the larger Sun Fire [...]

IBM’s POWER6 processor, combined with enhanced virtualization, energy efficiency and near-continuous availability features, offer exceptional price and performance for entry-level, Small and Medium Businesses wishing to run UNIX or Linux environments. IBM energy management and browser-based virtualization software makes it easier to achieve increased server utilization and energy efficiency by using EnergyScale capabilities and optional [...]

Congratulations to Bruce who celebrated 10 years with Computer Merchants in February Bruce started with the company in 1998 to develop the open systems market. Our open systems team now consists of 7 sales specialists, focussing on: IBM System p (RS/6000), IBM System x (x86/Intel), IBM mainframe, as well as Sun and HP products. Both Carl [...]

Dear Margaret,I’ve just got to share! I visited a zoo today – haven’t they changed! Lovely glass windows to look through to beautiful rooms, no more of the harsh bars and ugly concrete enclosures. And very high tech you know! They can control the temperature so the animals don’t get too hot – or too [...]

What Is Virtualisation? Modern computer hardware was originally designed to run on a single operating system and a single application. Virtualisation breaks that bond – making it possible to run multiple operating systems and multiple applications on the same server at the same time. This solution increases server utilization (typically from 5-15%, to 60-70%) and [...]

Pricing does NOT include the following: GST Delivery Installation Plain English Terms and Conditions Apply. Subject to prior sale. Call us on 1800 777 111 and quote “Cisco Specials” for more information on the following items. Cisco Specials PIX-515-UR-BUN (PIX firewall base unit) $2,100 WS-C6509 (Catalyst 6509 Spare Chassis) $2,920 WS-C6506 (Catalyst 6506 Spare Chassis) [...]

Pricing does NOT include the following: GST Delivery Installation Plain English Terms and Conditions Apply. Subject to prior sale. Call us on 1800 777 111 and quote “IBM Specials” for more information on the following items. IBM Mainframe IBM 2066-120 6GB, 6xOSA,4xICC, 24xESCON $150,000 IBM 2086-350 8GB, 16xESCON, 4xFICON $168,750 IBM System p IBM 2848 [...]

Pricing does NOT include the following: GST Delivery Installation Plain English Terms and Conditions Apply. Subject to prior sale. Call us on 1800 777 111 and quote “Sun Specials” for more information on the following items. Complete Sun Servers Sun SunFire V100 w/ 500MHZ CPU 256GB Ram, 2 x 40 GB HDD, CD ROM $1,570 [...]