September 2007 Newsletter

TOP User Conference 2007

The Total Order Plus User Conference began with a Thursday night dinner at Roy's in San Francisco, Friday morning breakfast and meeting at the Marriott Courtyard, followed by a bus tour of San Francisco. Dinner was at Fisherman's Wharf on Friday night.

Saturday began with breakfast and meeting, followed by a stop at Muir Woods north of the Golden Gate Bridge, which has the tallest type of Coast Redwood trees in the world. Saturday evening dinner was at ZuZu in downtown Napa.

Sunday breakfast was at the Fairfield Inn. Wineries on the Sunday tour included Opus One, Robert Mondovi, Frank Family (included lunch), Beringer, Rutherford Hill and Jessup Cellars. Dinner again at ZuZu's.

Monday morning breakfast was at the Canyon Cafe and followed with a meeting at the Fairfield Inn.

Those in attendance were Pat Staudt, Frank and Kristopher Berceli, Allegheny Marking Products, Pittsburgh, PA, Denis and Arlette Pellitier, Ray Stamp Company, Quebec City, Quebec, Connie Breon and Archie Tucker, Mindware Corporation.

Note: Denis from Ray Stamp in Quebec City has offered to host the TOP Conference in 2008. It will include a tour of their new office they will be moving into the first of next year.

Conference Photos

Next Generation Acer Power 2000

Designed for today's digital office, the AcerPower™ 2000 is small and stylish yet packs a powerful punch. This ultra-compact system has a physical volume of just over three quarts (three liters), about one-tenth the size of typical tower desktops and one-fourth the weight and three times faster. The almost silent operation of the Acer 2000 is conducive to a productive work environment. In addition, its low power consumption prolongs component life and reduces long term costs. It can reside on top of your desk and is close to the size of a notebook.

Various models and configurations are available in Windows Vista or Windows XP Professional. The platform is a brand new technology Intel Core Duo processor Pentium 4 or Celeron, up to 2GB of system memory, up to 400GB hard disk drive, Intel Graphics Accelerator 3000, 8 USB ports (4 front and 4 back), headphone and microphone jack, Ethernet Rj-45 port, VGA port, DVI port and 6 audio jacks.

There is also an AcerPower 1000 available that has a AMD processor, Windows Vista or Windows XP, up to 2GB system memory, up to 400GB hard disk drive, Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150 Graphics, 8 USB ports, headphone and microphone jack, Ethernet Rj-45 port, LAudio jacks, DVI port and a VGA port.

Call Mindware Corporation at (800) 950-0401 or email support@mindwarecorp.com for pricing.

Acer to Acquire PC Maker Gateway

Acer would vault into the No. 3 spot in global market share by acquiring Gateway. The deal could give Acer the scale it needs to take on its bigger rivals. For a company on the ropes, PC maker Gateway could go a long way in helping its new owner take a swing at Hewlett-Packard and Dell.

By snapping up Gateway for $710 million, Acer would gain a bigger toehold in the US marker dominated by HP and Dell and be poised to expand in Europe, where China's Lenovo has been eager for growth. Gateway's stock hit a high of $2.44 a share in March and fell to $1.13 in August and shows little evidence of a turnaround from years of slumping sales. That is when Acer made their offering of $1.90 a share. Assuming Acer wins regulatory approval of the deal, the enlarged company will account for about $15 billion in global sales and would make Acer the No. 3 PC manufacturer in the world.

UnForm 7.0 Promotional Pricing

The normal upgrade formula for upgrading from UnForm v5.0 to v7.0 is 75% of the new retail price. Upgrades from v4.x and older, no discount.

3rd Quarter 2007 special pricing

• v7.0 Laser forms only upgrade from v5.0 – 55% of new retail price.
(Example: 3 print job license Retail $1595.00 x 55% = $877.25 upgrade retail price)
• v7.0 Laser forms only upgrade from v4.x and older – 65% of new retail price.
(Example: 3 print job license Retail $1595.00 x 65% = $1036.75 upgrade retail price)

4th Quarter 2007 special pricing

• v7.0 Laser forms only upgrade from v5.0 – 65% of new retail price.
(Example: 3 print job license Retail $1595.00 x 65% = $1036.75 upgrade retail price)
• v7.0 Laser forms only upgrade from v4.x and older – 75% of new retail price.
(Example: 3 print job license Retail $1595.00 x 75% = $1196.25 upgrade retail price)

Things You May Not Know About TOP

Total Order Plus allows you to set up to three vendor part numbers for each item in inventory. When you enter a purchase order in the PO module, the vendor part number will display after the description of the item as a cross reference for your vendor.

Question:

We would like to be able to enter a credit memo for sales tax only. Is this possible in TOP?

Total Order Plus now allows you to enter a credit memo without line items and upon access to the total screen, the system will prompt you with a message asking if this is a sales tax only credit memo. You must answer Yes, zero out any freight if any, and enter the amount of the tax. TOP will automatically make the amount a negative.

Note: this is a new feature in TOP. You need to contact Mindware if you want this change.

Changes to Total Order Plus and UnForm are made on a continual basis. We will keep you updated by listing the most recent changes in each of our newsletters. Following are the most recent:

Printer Cartridge	List	Prebate	Price
Optra S Series High Yield	230.00	Prebate	200.00
Optra T52x Series High Yield	373.00	Prebate	325.00
Optra T61x Series High Yield	348.00	Prebate	285.00
Optra T62x Series High Yield	414.00	Prebate	360.00

Location	Date
Daylight Savings Ends	11/04/2007
Thanksgiving Day	11/22/2007 *
Thanksgiving Holiday	11/23/2007 *
Christmas Eve	12/24/2007
Christmas Day	12/25/2007 *
New Year's Eve	12/31/2007
New Year's Day	01/01/2008 *