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Dell unveils new LED, laser colour printers

Dell announced the launch of three new LED and laser colour printers that deliver the next evolution in colour printing technology to small and medium businesses and home offices worldwide, further enhancing the company's robust portfolio of solutions designed exclusively for growing companies.

Dell's breakthrough LED printing technology, including the world's smallest A4 small business colour laser class printer, rounds out its printer family delivering optimal performance and energy efficiency to organizations of all sizes.

No-compromise Colour Printing with New LED Printers - Top buying considerations for home offices, small businesses and distributed workgroups include workspace efficiency, support resources for printer maintenance and affordability for fast and quality printing. Dell's LED A4 colour printers squarely meet these requirements.

With Dell Clear View LED print technology, the Dell 1000 series colour printers are a perfect unity of technology and design, purposefully engineered to be compact for greater space efficiency without compromising print quality, performance, energy savings and ease of maintenance over comparable laser printers in the same class. High-resolution print quality allows customers to produce professional-looking marketing collaterals in-house, and fewer moving parts and a drum and fuser unit designed to last the lifetime of the printer make for easy maintenance and reliable printing.

1250c - As the world's smallest A4 colour laser class printer, the 1250c is ideal for the small business or home office. Printing up to 12/10 (mono/colour) A4-sized pages per minute (ppm) with up to 8 percent less power consumption during printing.

1350cnw - As the world's smallest A4/Letter colour laser class network printer, this wifi-enabled printer prints up to 15/12 (mono/colour) A4-sized ppm with up to 11 percent less power consumption during printing.

1355cn - The world's smallest 4-in-1 multifunction colour laser class network printer, the 1355cn comes with print/copy/scan/fax capabilities and delivers fast print speeds (15/12) (mono/colour), network.

Astron Hosts Distributor Convention

Astron Limited, one of the leading pharmaceutical companies in Sri Lanka, held its Distributor Convention on March 25, 2011 at Cinnamon Grand.

The company is engaged in developing, manufacturing, marketing and distributing renowned and trusted health care products for over 5 decades.

The Distributor Convention was organized with the twin objectives of appreciating Astron distributors' contribution in achieving corporate goals, and to recognize their valued individual performance.

Multi-Drugs of Homagama won the coveted award for the Best Distributor of the Year 2010. Astron Limited Managing Director Marise Deckker - gave away the awards to the winners. "Our Distributors play a pivotal role in the company's success, especially in the areas of sales and distribution.

Hence, we wanted to recognize and reward their excellence in performance," said Sirimal Fernando-Director Marketing, Astron Limited.

"Astron believes in providing quality health care products to its customers whilst being a responsible corporate citizen," said Astron Ltd Managing Director Marise Deckker.

Defender outraces petrol off-roaders

A Land Rover Defender modified for racing by Frontier Automotive, the sole representative for Land Rover in Sri Lanka, took top honours in the Truck and Jeep categories at the recently concluded Foxhill Supercross in Diyathalawa.

The 2.4 litre diesel was driven to victory by Lieutenant Colonel Duminda Jayasinghe of the Sri Lanka Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, in the Diesel Trucks and Jeeps up to 5500 cc turbo category, and in the Jeeps and Trucks Open class, in which all other contenders were petrol-fuelled heavily modified off-roaders.

The racing Defender was modified for the challenging conditions of the Foxhill track by a Frontier Automotive team of technicians led by Anuruddha Yapa, the company's Director After Sales.

The vehicle was personally race tuned by Charlie Fawcett, the owner of the famed Twisted Performance of UK, also represented in Sri Lanka by Frontier Automotive.

"The Land Rover Defender is a legendary off-road machine, and its series of wins in circuit racing underlines its versatility in extreme and varied situations," said Frontier Automotive (Pvt) Ltd Director and CEO Sheran Fernando.

"Beating larger turbo-charged petrol engines in gruelling off-road conditions is a great testament to the performance credentials of Land Rover, as well as to the skills of our own engineers and technicians who prepared the Defender for racing."

Rural school gets library, computer centre from Motorola

The library and Computing Centre funded by Motorola Solutions Foundation and built with the assistance from parents & teachers of a remote rural school Bamunugama Vidyalaya in Yapahuwa electorate was recently declared opened by Cabinet Minister for Cultural Affairs T .B Ekanayake and Motorola Software R&D centre Director and Sri Lanka Country Manager Anuradha Tennakoon.

Bamunugama Vidyalaya situated 125KM off Colombo has over 100 children where the majority live below the poverty line and had never seen a computer before.

A year ago the school library was limited to one cupboard with hardly 200 old books with torn pages. The cupboard was next to principal's table giving hardly any room for the principal to move around or the children to access when the principal was at his seat.

Children read books sitting on the ground under the trees in the school garden. School had no electricity and the poor parents could not contribute anything other than the labour for the development of the school.

Today we have a separate library building with new furniture, volumes of new books and brand new five computers thanks to Motorola's genorocity said the school principal Mr. Ranbanda. Not only that, Motorola helped us to obtain electricity too and the children can now comfortably sit under a fan and read books or work on the computer which they had never seen in their life . Our school and the entire village is indebted to Motorola for their kindness added the principal.

The library and the computing centre well worth over 03 Million Rupees was completed with Rs. 1.2 Million grant from Motorola Solutions Foundation and labour and material contributions from the parents. We gave the concept, specifications for the building, money, directions and empowered the School Development Society to complete the project. It was a great challenge for them. But they had the determination and will power and completed the whole project in a matter for six months said Motorola Sri Lanka Director Anuradha Tennakoon. Parents contributed labour and timber while the principal and the teachers worked hard to complete the project with the limited funds. Parents and teachers of Bamunugama Vidyalaya set up an excellent example for the entire country added Mr. Tennakoon. Motorola Sri Lanka staff too contributed to the project by way of donating books.

The Motorola Solutions Foundation (formerly the Motorola Foundation) is the charitable and philanthropic arm of Motorola Solutions. With employees located around the globe, Motorola Solutions seeks to benefit the communities where it operates.

The company achieves this by making strategic grants, forging strong community partnerships, and fostering innovation. The Motorola Solutions Foundation focuses its funding on public safety, disaster relief, employee programs and education, especially science, technology, engineering and math programming.

Record Q1 for Etihad in revenues

Etihad Airways today reported its most successful first quarter to date, with revenues up 21.2 per cent to US$ 770 million (Q1 2010: US$ 635 million), attributable to strong performances in both passenger and cargo traffic.

Coupled with a 5.9 per cent reduction in costs per available seat kilometre, this delivered positive EBITDAR (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, amortisation and rentals) in the quarter for the first time.

The results mark continued progress towards the airline's goal of break-even in 2011 and profitability in 2012.