PCQuest awards– Glitzy unveil of IMRB survey

The 13th PCQuest User's Choice Awards were enticed at a
brilliance ceremony held at Orchards farms in the capital recently. The awards
were held after zeroing the results based on the nationwide survey of
respondents by IMRB in 11 cities that comprised 85 percent Net users. There were
37 categories under which the selections were made. Indiatimes.com and
rediff.com bagged the Best Indian News Website and Best Indian Portal award
respectively. Yahoo bagged the Best Search Site plum.

The Best Free e-mail Service Provider award went into the
kitty of Yahoo.com while the Best ISP award was amassed by VSNL. Norton bagged
the Best Anti-Virus award and the Best Indian Language Software award went to
ILEAP. The User Choice picked up Tally as the Best Accounting Software.

There was a tie-up for the category of Best Web Development
Software, which was thus jointly shared by MS Front Page and Java. Visual basic
was considered as the Best Software Development Tool and Macromedia Flash wore
the crown for the category of Best Web Graphic Software. Adobe PhotoShop bagged
professional graphic software award.

Windows NT won the Best Net Operating System award and the
Best Floppy Discs award went to Sony. Seagate usurped the Best Hard Disk Drive
award with HP getting happy with the Best CD writers and back-up devices awards.
The Best modems and ISDN devices awards were won by D-Link.

HP maintained its leadership in the Large format, Inkjet and
Laser printers and collected all the three honors, while the Best high-speed
printer and Dot matrix award went to Epson and TVSE respectively. The Best
Monitors award once again won by Samsung while the Best Cell Phones award went
to Nokia.

The award for Best RDBMS went to Oracle which again became a
part of tie-up in the Best ERP solution category and thus Oracle and SAP shared
the honors. The Best Network Switches award went to D-Link and for the
Desktop-scanners to HP, while later on HP and Compaq both shared the Best
High-end Workstations award. IBM bagged the awards for Best Network Servers and
Notebooks and Compaq received the honors for the Best Home PC section. The Best
UPS award was won by APC.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Head, Cyber School of Convergence and
TV anchor Geetika Ganju anchored the awards ceremony. The performance by the
dance troupe 'Dynamite' gusted the atmosphere with its scintillating
performance. HP was the event partner on the occasion.