Canon
LV-7565U Projector: $7,999
www.canon.com

Is your customer looking for a boardroom fixture or Mobile
display device for presentations? Rather than picking different projectors for each task, take a look at Canon's LV-7565U, which works well in both environments.

Physically diminutive, the LV-7565U weighs less than 7 pounds and measures just under a foot wide. That's not small enough to slide into a laptop bag, but it is certainly portable. At the same time, Canon includes its 1,500 lumen lamp with a native 1024 x 768 resolution and 1.6x wide-angle lens, yielding an 80-inch image from less than eight feet away.

Portability is affirmed by an array of connectivity options, which include two VGA inputs, S-Video, composite, and stereo audio inputs. You also get a Wall Color Correction mode capable of adapting to different colored surfaces. Finally, a bundled remote controller allows you to move around while presenting—helpful for keeping the audience engaged.

Adobe
After Effects Professional: $999
www.adobe.com

Adobe is a fixture in a number of fields. Photoshop rules the roost
in image editing. Acrobat is one of the most prolific document creation apps. And when it comes to motion graphics and creating effects, expect your customers to ask for After Effects.

Version 7.0 sports a redesigned user interface and a bevy of new features. A graph editor streamlines workflow while 32-bit HDR color support improves the precision of lighting effects, yielding a more life-like picture. Because the 3D effects are rendered in OpenGL, your customer will want a capable graphics card on their After Effects machine. Add value by bundling good graphics hardware with the software package.

Bells and whistles only tell half of the story here. After Effects is also highly integrated with Adobe's other products so customers are able to import Photoshop images and Premiere Pro projects with attributes intact. That sort of interoperability, coupled with expansive file format support, is notable to project-oriented professionals.

FujiFilm USA
LTO Ultrium-3
Tape Media: $79
www.fujifilmusa.com

While external disk-based backup continues to gain popularity for its reliability and ease of setup, tape still dominates as a standard for data archival. And don't expect tape to fall off anytime soon, especially as customers adapt to the newest compliance laws. Archival is most definitely here to stay, so it's important for resellers to learn about a few of the different formats.

LTO (Linear Tape-Open) is one of the more popular choices for archival since linear technology involves fewer moving parts and, consequently, better reliability. You'll also see an excellent compromise between performance and capacity with speeds up to 80 MBps compressed.

Fujifilm's Ultrium-3 media natively stores 400GB of data but accommodates 800GB compressed. When you divide out the price per gigabyte, you can't even get close to that value with a disk drive. A 1,000,000+ head pass durability rating is fairly confidence-inspiring when you start talking long-term data storage, too.

NVIDIA
Quadro FX 5500: $999
www.nvidia.com

We're big fans of copious performance, but 1GB of memory on a graphics card sounds excessive. Believe it or not, though, you probably have customers who can put such a beast through its paces. According to NVIDIA, geological exploration and medical imaging folks are already pushing the limits of 512MB boards. Similarly, CAD and CAE professionals, who rely on precise lines, utilize the highest degree of anti-aliasing available and also put a strain on memory.

NVIDIA adds its own valuable extras to the 5500's 1GB frame buffer. A pair of dual-link DVI outputs, for example, paves the way for some pretty amazing resolutions. SLI compatibility gives VARs the opportunity to integrate two graphics cards in a single system for quad-display support. And an SDI connector serves the digital broadcast crowd, opening the door to yet another group of buyers.

While it's true that not every customer will need an ultra high-end graphics card, NVIDIA's Quadro FX 5500 is extremely versatile and feature-rich. For those who can use it, the card is a compelling value.