Gala show marks PCQuest awards night

It was an evening to remember at the Palace Grounds, the venue of the fifth

Bangalore IT.COM, when the 14th PC Quest Users Choice Awards were awarded to

different IT vendors.

Altogether 42 awards were given under different categories of hardware,

software and services. The evening was also marked by a spectacular ballet

display by the troupe Brahmahari.

The chief guest for the evening was DB Inamdar, Minister for IT and Tourism,

Karnataka State Government. Wipro received the award for the best Indian IT

brand, Microsoft as the best MNC IT brand and Windows XP the best product of the

year.

The PCQuest User’s Choice awards are based on an all India survey conducted

by IMRB to gauge which IT products users are likely to buy. The survey covered

decision-makers from large and small businesses, development houses and

households.

Respondents made their choices on the basis of how well-known the brand is,

its pricing, its quality and after-sales service provided.

The other 39 awards given away included awards for the best home PCs and best

office PCs to Compaq, best notebooks to IBM, best tape back up devices to HP,

best CD writers to Samsung, best hard disks to Seagate, best DVD drives to Sony,

best general-purpose servers to Compaq, best high-end servers to IBM, best

network switches to Cisco, best cellphones to Nokia, best monitors to Samsung,

best dot matrix printers to Epson, best inkjet, laser, large format printers and

desktop scanners to HP, best UPSs to APC, best modems and ISDN devices to

D-Link, best PC speakers to Mercury, best web cameras to Logitech, best digital

cameras to Sony, best ERP software to SAP, best server operating systems to

Windows 2000, best corporate messaging servers to MS Exchange, best professional

graphics software to Adobe Photoshop, best software development tools to Visual

Basic, best web development tools to Java, best case tools to Rational Rose,

best Indian language software to I-Leap, anti-virus software to Norton, best

accounting software to Tally, best ISP to VSNL, best free e-mail service and

chat client to Yahoo, best Indian portal site to Rediff.com and the best Indian

news site to Indiatimes.com.

Rani Satish, Minister for Kannada and Culture, Karnataka Government, Vivek

Kulkarni, IT Secretary, Karnataka Government, Pradeep Gupta, MD, Cyber Media,

and BV Naidu, Director, STPI Bangalore who were also present on the occasion,

gave away some of the awards.

Speaking on the occasion, Inamdar stressed on the need for combining tourism

along with business for the development of Karnatka. "There is a great

potential in the tourism sector in Karnataka and it needs to be tapped fully. I

express my best wishes to the PCQ Awards."

The Minister also gave away the BIT.COM awards. gotoBavaria received the best

award for the IT Nations pavilion, Robert Bosch received the award for the STPI

pavilion, Kerala and Gujarat shared the award for the best stalls in the Tech

States Pavilion, TCS got the award in the Software pavilion, Canon got the award

in the Spectrum Pavilion, Hinduja TMT got the award in the Enterprise and Yuva

Pavilion, Bharti and Tata Teleservices shared the award for the Telecom and

Networking pavilion, Immaculate got the award for the BPO pavilion and Adarsh

Group and Hiranandani Constructions got the award for the Infrastructure

pavilion. TCS received the overall award for the best stall at the BIT.COM.