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14/10/2014

A thief in your own home...

Sometimes you have bad luck with new hires: during his probationary period one of our sales employees from an office in Western Europe actually managed to steal the...

Sometimes you have bad luck with new hires: during his probationary period one of our sales employees from an office in Western Europe actually managed to steal the bag of another employee after our Networking Dinner in Frankfurt - complete with company laptop, etc. Suspicion fell immediately onto him, but he said he knew nothing. Well, the next morning the camera recording at the hotel clearly showed - before he took the bag - how he had been looking around for cameras. So, criminal AND stupid - two things we do not need.

25/09/2014

Finally a game changer in sight

"Killer products" are too rare in our market....

"Killer products" are too rare in our market. By this I mean products whose additional benefit to the customer is instantly appreciated, so that he throws existing hardware overboard with joy and replaces it. No boring evolution, but please revolution. There has not been anything like this in the field of label printers for a long time anyway. Either the printers only print in black/white, or very slowly and maintenance-intensive in colour. And then, there it stands today on the table, a pre-production sample from Epson: a colour printer that delivers high-quality labels like those from the print shop. Imagine the speed like this: take a toilet paper roll, hold it firmly by the open end, and hurl it across the room. That is how fast the printer "spits out" the colour labels, which are then instantly dry. Epson is a global leader in ink technology for office and photo printers -- and has made a technological leap on top of it. Why should we do without colour in the warehouse? We can encode countries in colour or print the customers' logo in perfect quality. Or if I now need to individually mark food items, then, for a similar label price I would prefer colour, please, and they should be promotionally effective. Tickets, vouchers -- imagination knows no boundaries. No, the printer does not look like an office printer. Instead, it has a professional metal housing. The ink comes out of tanks made for 20,000 labels, and the print head never has to be replaced. There is a winder for giant rolls, and a cutter. The only drawback is the purchase price. It will easily be five times the amount of a comparable single-colour printer. At the moment it is only for companies which recognise a strong added value, and which, for example, wish to save on the costs of pre-printed colour labels and logistics. But I bet this miracle printer will only be the start of a complete printer series, because there is a lot of room for growth. It is unclear whether Epson really can produce enough printers to meet the initial onslaught. Nevertheless, it was time that something started moving again -- something to delight customers. I myself admit that I am not very interested in most "new" products. I am, however, as happy as a little child about this device. Congratulations, Epson!

06/08/2014

Dear Telekom!

Nothing new in Taunus: thunderstorms all around Jarltech's headquarters in Usingen. There was thunder and lightning non-stop and this had to happen at some point:...

Nothing new in Taunus: thunderstorms all around Jarltech's headquarters in Usingen. There was thunder and lightning non-stop and this had to happen at some point: lightning struck not far away and all companies of the neighbourhood were knocked-out, internet-wise.

It quickly became clear that the loss of our fibre optic internet connection must somehow be connected to the lightning strike. With a night-time call at Telekom, we learned that there was a problem with the lines, but that there were no need to worry and that we could go home, everything would be operational again shortly. Not so, unfortunately. And Telekom were not at top form either. Note that we are not talking about a standard DSL line here, we are talking about our fibre optic lifeline.

As the internet was gone overnight, a technician came at 8 AM the next morning and confirmed that our internet was gone. However, the fibre optic cable to Frankfurt was intact. Everything is fine, I thought, the problem will be fixed soon then.

That is what I thought ... until the technician packed up, saying: "I am only in charge of the fibre optic network availability. The problem here seems to be the router and that's not my responsibility. A local colleague will contact you shortly." Unfortunately, it was impossible to call this colleague, so we started our emergency procedures to secure our shipping capability. At least, that worked like a charm -- no wonder, as it is not Telekom who make our deliveries. Well, there is nothing to be done about. Not until noon finally the second Telekom guy arrived, checked the router and made his diagnosis: "The router is probably defective; it reacts neither to internal nor to external requests and needs to be replaced." We already knew that. Just give us a replacement router! Telekom answers: "We don't have one, only in Hanover." Great. Not only do we have contracts with courier services, we could also go and get it within the hour with Jarltech's jet. The commiserate employee of the T-Club tried to explain us why it would unfortunately not be possible to conciliate this with their own processes and stated that the router may only be delivered by Telekom's own courier service. Additionally, it must also stop over in Gießen to be configured, which ate up even more precious time. They could e-mail and upload it, but no way, the configuration is "secret".

Our administrator's offers to support the Telekom guys with getting the router from the specialist shop around the corner or to fly the T-Com router in from Hanover, or even to configure it ourselves via Telekom's phone support were all refused. That is disappointing, especially as this line alone yearly costs us a five digit sum. And all assertions as to when which problem would be solved were just so short every time that it would not have been worth it to switch to our backup line from Arcor.

At last, there was a happy ending when a very friendly Telekom employee finally showed up at 8 PM, bringing us the last Cisco module available in Germany, which was found to be the cause of the failure. The module was then replaced within 5 minutes by his trainee and placed back into the rack. After exactly 15 minutes and a call with Telekom central support, internet was available again. This should have happened much faster! What upsets me is that you are powerless, because you cannot call anyone at Telekom. All the technicians hide their phone numbers. They are all very friendly and competent, but they hide themselves. We thought only the CIA would hide their caller number nowadays.

Of course, we also must hold ourselves accountable. While we have a couple of internet providers for emergencies, as well as a replacement for every in-house router and server, this one, mysterious Telekom router was the weak spot, with no backup. This cannot be -- I wonder if it is possible to get another one from Telekom, because if we had one, we would also have that top secret configuration twice. It would even be sufficient if Telekom were to stock one fibre optic router in the Frankfurt area.

A router that costs as much as a second-hand medium-sized car obviously is not helpful as long as its configuration is locked away at Telekom. Only them, and probably the NSA, know these ultra-secret data.

Dear Telekom, there is room for improvement!

29/07/2014

Russian tank technology?

I just received an e-mailing advertising METO / ARGOX label printers that said: "Printing with Russian tank technology." We couldn't believe it at first....

I just received an e-mailing advertising METO / ARGOX label printers that said: "Printing with Russian tank technology." We couldn't believe it at first. What we think of it: considering the current situation, this could hardly be more distasteful.

Our advice: if you don't have any tact, still switch your brain on at least sometimes.

30/06/2014

A new trick

It is really interesting: a label printer manufacturer is trying to plow its way across Europe, plus win over our employees via a headhunter....

It is really interesting: a label printer manufacturer is trying to plow its way across Europe, plus win over our employees via a headhunter. When the results came back negative we suddenly received an offer: "Would Jarltech like to become our distributor?" No, we wouldn't.

09/06/2014

Sam's Chili con carne

Traditionally at our "Networking Dinners" at the Mantis in Frankfurt we serve chili con carne at midnight....

Traditionally at our "Networking Dinners" at the Mantis in Frankfurt we serve chili con carne at midnight. Over time we have been asked more and more what the secret is that makes it so tasty. The house chef was kind enough to share his recipe with us:

Sam's Chili con carne

250 grams onions, cubed 3 garlic cloves 1 Thai chili pepper, browned in olive oil Add to these ingredients 1 kilogram of ground beef and spice to taste with salt, pepper, cumin seed and a bunch of chopped coriander. Deglaze with 250 millilitres of red wine. Add 2 bay leaves, 2 tablespoons of tomato paste and 250 grams of finely chopped root vegetables. Puree 1.2 litres of peeled tomatoes with some coriander and half of a Jalapeno chili pepper. Add this to the meat and let it simmer. Now add 700 grams of kidney beans and 300 grams of corn. Re-check the spices and add salt, pepper and cumin seed as needed. If you wish, add a little beef broth and dried chili peppers.

Enjoy! See you again in Frankfurt!

22/05/2014

How annoying!

Do you know what is really annoying: when job applicants only realize on the way to the appointment just how far away the company is from home....

Do you know what is really annoying: when job applicants only realize on the way to the appointment just how far away the company is from home. Can't you look that up ahead of time? Do we all need to sit here and wait in front of a pot of coffee and a plate of cookies, only to receive a phone call with the message: "I am turning back. It's more than 10 minutes from home."

And, of course, the call came in 20 minutes after the scheduled appointment time.

Well, at least the cookies were good. :)

15/04/2014

Zebra buys Motorola

Today we are preoccupied with the news that Zebra bought Motorola (for 3.5 billion USD, according to Reuters)....

Today we are preoccupied with the news that Zebra bought Motorola (for 3.5 billion USD, according to Reuters). Very interesting, but with a little thought, it was forseeable. After all, Zebra had to do something to keep up with Honeywell (who just acquired a new printer line with Intermec). We are asking ourselves the question, of course, how this will affect the distribution market in Europe. There will be some concentration risk, on both the vendor and the distributor side. However, the situation remains exciting!

03/04/2014

Jarltech iPhone app for field technicians

Our iPhone app for support technicians is now availble in the app store....

Our iPhone app for support technicians is now availble in the app store. If a service engineer encounters a defective product in the field, he just scans the barcode and receives the warranty status in return. The app will also show any service contracts connected to that unit, as well as the country-specific return-to address. The Android version is ready as well, and will be available for downloading early next week. Our known "web app", which has been available for many years, delivers all other Jarltech contents (including this blog) to your mobile device. In the near future, we will combine the functionality of our different apps into one.