VerTecX21 Launches Kerberos

Cork, Ireland. Monday, August 4th 2008.

In a somewhat muted announcement today. Engineers working for Multimedia specialists VerTecX21 have completed work on the new Secondary System Kerberos. It is the first time in VerTecX21's history that a new unit has been built exclusively for that role.

On hand to deliver his usual press conference was the director of VerTecX21 himself, Mr. Creedon.

"Good evening ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief," began the visibly tired director. "As was released earlier, Bellerophon ceased to function over a week ago. VerTecX21 Engineers were unable to pinpoint the source of the malfunction but we believe that with 90% certainty it was related to the Abit IS-7 Motherboard. It is our intention to get to the bottom of the malfunction and to repair Bellerophon to a functioning state at some point in the future, but time constraints prevent that operation from becoming a priority. For the time being, Bellerophon is decommissioned. To define our terminology: 'Active' is in service and working, 'Inactive' is not in service but in full working order, 'Decommissioned' is not in working order but serviceable, 'Dismantled' means all parts and components are removed with the intention that they will not be reassembled, but could be later and 'Scrapped' is basically disassembled with parts sold and/or destroyed with no possibility of reconstiution. Note that I will not be taking questions on Bellerophon at this time.

"I'm pleased to report that Project: Cerberus, was successful and a replacement for Bellerophon was constructed. The unit was designated Kerberos and went online with all functions as of today. Kerberos (pronounced KER-ber-OSE) is the correct name for the mythical Greek three-headed dog which guarded the gates to Hades. This name was chosen to reflect that under normal operating conditions, the Secondary System has three active displays - three "heads" as it were," smiled Creedon. There was much nodding of heads from those assembled at Creedon's genius.

"Kerberos utilises as much technology as possible from Bellerophon but it's more like Maxximus in operation and appearance with a P35 motherboard, identical RAM and its casing is similar to Maxximus but it's naturally less powerful by design with a Core 2 Duo processor, 500w power supply, and 256Mb graphics card mainly due to it's role not requiring the immense resources of a Main Computer."

Creedon then took a number of questions from the floor:

Reporter 1: "Mr. Creedon, why was there a delay of 6 days between first initialisation of Kerberos on 30/07/08 and the Active Service Status Notification dated today when there was only a difference of 3 days for Maxximus and that was constructed from scratch?"

Creedon: "Excellent question. There was a driver problem between either the Gigabyte GA-P35 motherboard and the ATi Radeon 7000 and/or the ATi HD 2400 Pro. The most up to date ATi driver set no longer supported the 7000 so an unsigned driver was used. Additionally there was an incompatibility between the 7000 driver and a driver for the PCI bridge of the motherboard which was updated directly from Intel and not the motherboard manufacturer. VerTecX21 cannot take all the credit however. We notified CNET of our issue and there was much troubleshooting over the past 24 hours; I would not issue the ASSN until everything was working. The final part of your question displays ignorance- it's far easier to build from scratch with all new components than it is to integrate older components into a new system. Next."

[Laughter]

Reporter 2: "If I may Sir, just following on from that: Why integrate the old components? Why go to the trouble of double the construction time? Why not simply build from scratch?"

Creedon: "Because while yes it does take longer and it is sometimes a great deal of trouble- it's not more trouble then it's worth. The existing Bellerophon components used were still perfectly functional and the cost of all new components while not prohibitive would have been impossible to justify as necessary in this case. For analysis, VerTecX21 has now included a costing section at the bottom of all the technology pages. Here you will be able to see that the total cost of new components for Kerberos was less than a quarter of the total cost of Maxximus' new components and about half of Bellerophon's."

[Round of Applause]

Reporter 3: "Sir, there has been an admission of failure on the part of VerTecX21 to seamlessly and promptly adapt to the problem with Bellerophon causing delay and loss of services. Do you have anything personal to say on that?"

Creedon: "Yes, I am personally deeply sorry to all that our temporary loss of service has affected. All I can promise at this stage is that we are in the process of reviewing and redesigning our contingency plans so that a repeat of the problem will not affects us to the extent it has. Thank you very much, no more questions."