Bandar Seri Begawan - The fast and seamless integration integration with the education community is an important part of ICT expansion and in ensuring that better and greater innovations, it is imperative that the education community has unhindered access to new and upcoming ICT breakthroughs.

Concepts Computer, recently awarded the first recognition and certification as Brunei's genuine Microsoft software reseller for Brunei by Microsoft, is working together with Microsoft (Brunei) Sdn Bhd through its education community offer promotion.

Unveiled yesterday at its main office Kiulap, media members were briefed by Microsoft Academic Programme Manager, Andrew Tan, Concepts General Manager Mr Vincent Pao and Concepts Marketing Executive Zul Abd Rahman.

In the promotion for the purchase of selected Acer laptops and All-In-One multimedia PCs, Concepts will bundle together with the Microsoft Office Professional Plus Academic 2010 Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Excel 2010, Microsoft Power Point 2010, Microsoft Access 2010, Microsoft Publisher 2010, Microsoft Outlook 2010 and Microsoft One Note 2010.

An additional value to the education community offer, customers who purchase these selected Acer laptops or all-inone multimedia PCs will receive gifts worth B$268 including a free half-day professional training for Microsoft Office products conducted by Microsoft certified trainers worth $180.

Andrew Tan, who is involve in the education sector pointed out that they create .training programmes for teachers under the Ministry of Education (MoE) and also private schools and through that they partnered with concepts for this particular promotion.

This partnership serves to build the awareness that they are not just buying the office packages but also getting full value of the training and how to use them, along with other free softwares like the Learning Suite and Security Essentials, which is a free anti-virus program.

He said that with learning suite there are a lot of tools that can be selected. They also have a Microsoft education website where there are sections catering to higher education, teachers, faculties, school leaders and students.

Learning Suite is pre-installed with the devices so during the half-day training definitely we will cover as much as possible but nevertheless they have an education website catered for teachers and students where free products for download are available as well as guidelines on how to execute the softwares.

Another advantage for schools with live@edu, they have the availability to store their file and share online within the school or between teachers and students for collaboration.

Other freebies included with the purchase are free high-quality learning tools with Microsoft Learning Suite, Microsoft Security Essentials anti-virus, Microsoft special designed sling bag and Apacer 4GB pendrive.

The selected Acer laptops and Acer All-in-One multimedia PCs include Acer ICONIA W500/W501 Tablet, Acer Aspire S3 UltraBooks, Acer Aspire Notebooks and Acer Aspire All-In-One PCs.

The education community offer that will run until March 31, 2012 is specifically for those in the educational community namely principals, teachers, education officers, students and school staffs under MoE or other governmental educational bodies, excluding private institutions and schools.

Concepts Computer is also currently participating in the Book Fair 2012 at ICC until March 5. For more information on any of the promotions, individuals can drop by the nearest Concepts Computer showroom or call 2233551/2/3 or 2448102/3.

--Courtesy of Borneo Bulletin