The Pentateuch, Law of Moses or Torah

Introduction

It is believed that the name Pentateuch "the first five books of the Old Testament, the book of the Law" (The Columbia Viking Desk Encyclopaedia, 1964, p.1402) was first found in the letter of Elora of a second century Gnostic, Ptolemy and passed into Christian use. These books are called The Law (Torah) or the Law of Moses by the Jews. (Everyman's Encyclopedia, 1978). It would be difficult to overestimate the role that the Pentateuch has played in the course of biblical scholarship. In all likelihood, these first five books in the Bible - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy- have been subjected to scrutiny more than any single block, with the sole possible exception of the Gospels (Knight and Tucker, 1985).

Origin

The word Pentateuch derives from the Greek pentateuchos "five-volumed (book)", following the Jewish designation "the five-fifths of the law". Jews call it the Torah, that is instruction, often rendered in English Law as it is called in the New Testament (Greek nomon; example, Matt. 5:17; Luke 16:17; Acts 7:53; 1 Cor. 9:8). According to Lasor, Hubbard and Bush (1982), the Pentateuch was "the most important division of the Jewish canon, with an authority and sanctity far exceeding that attributed to the prophets and writing" (p.54). They observe that the books of the Pentateuch are not 'books' in the modern sense of independent self-contained entries, but were purposefully structured and intended as part of a larger unity; therefore the term Pentateuch is not only convenient but necessary. However, granted this fact of the unity of the larger corpus, the conventional five-fold division is important not simply as a convenient means of reference to the material, but because there is clear editorial evidence establishing just these five books as genuine subdivisions of the material. Despite marks of real disparity and complexity in structure and origins, far more primary and important is the overarching unity which the Pentateuch evidences. A careful reading of the Pentateuch will reveal, beside a definite unity of purpose, plan and arrangement, a diversity - a complexity - that is equally striking.

Authorship

The traditional view according to Halley (1962) is that "Moses wrote the Pentateuch substantially...with the exception of the few verses at the close which give an account of his death, and occasional interpolations made by copyists for explanatory purposes" (p.56). This is in consonance with the view of Childs (1979). A modern critical view is that of a composite work of various scholars of priests made about the eighth century B.C., for partisan purposes, based on oral traditions, the principal redactors of which are called J (for Jahweh/Yahweh, the personal name of God), E (for Elohim, a generic name for God), D (for Deuteronomic) and P (for priestly). Each is claimed to be unique. However, "this view is not supported by conclusive research or evidence, and intensive archaeological and literary research has tended to undercut many of the arguments used to challenge Mosaic authorship" (The NIV Study Bible, 1984, p.2). Jews and Christians alike have held Moses to be the author/compiler of the Pentateuch.

Contents

The Pentateuch consists of the first five afore-mentioned books of the Bible. It must be observed that the first phrase in the Hebrew text of Genesis 1:1 is bereshith [in (the) beginning] which is also the Hebrew title of the book. The English title, Genesis, is Greek in origin and is derived from geneseos 'birth', 'genealogy' or 'history of origin'. Genesis therefore appropriately describes its contents since it is primarily a book of beginnings. 'Exodus' is a Latin word from Greek exodos, meaning 'exit', 'departure'. Leviticus receives its name from the Greek translation of the Old Testament (Septuagint) meaning 'relating to the Levites'. It mainly concerns the service of worship at the tabernacle which was conducted by the priests who were the sons of Aaron, assisted by many from the rest of the tribe of Levi. Exodus gave the directions for building the tabernacle and Leviticus the laws and regulations for worship there including instructions on ceremonial cleanness, moral laws, holy days, the Sabbath year and the Year of the Jubilee. The English name of the book Numbers comes from the Septuagint and is based on the census lists found in it. The Hebrew title of the book (bedmidbar, 'in the desert'), is more descriptive of its contents. It presents an account of the thirty-eight year period of Israel's wandering in the desert following the establishment of the covenant of Sinai. The word 'Deuteronomy' (meaning the repetition of the law'), the name of the last book of the Pentateuch, arose from a mistranslation in the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate of a phrase in Deuteronomy 17:18, which in Hebrew means 'copy of the law'. The error is not serious however since Deuteronomy is, in a certain sense, a repetition of the law.

Generally, the unity of the Pentateuch must be stressed when discussing the content. This is created by an interest in the historical narrative forming the Pentateuch's backbone and framework and into which the blocks of legal texts have been placed. A clue to this narrative's central role and importance is the fact that the Old Testament events most frequently cited in the New Testament as the background and preparation for God's work in Christ are precisely that sequence of divine acts from Abraham's call through the kingship of David. Summaries or 'confession' of this sequence of divine acts plays a central role in Scripture. The basic details confessing God's saving acts on behalf of His people could be illustrated thus:

i. God chose Abraham his descendants (Acts 13:17; Josh.24:3) and promised them the land of Canaan (Deut. 6:23)

ii. Israel went down into Egypt (Acts 13:17; Josh. 24:5-7; Deut. 6:21ff; 28:8)

iii. God brought Israel into Canaan as promised (Acts 13:19; Josh.24:11-13; Deut. 6:23; 26:9).

This is but the narrative backbone of the Pentateuch in miniature. The plan that unifies the different elements forming the building blocks of the Pentateuch includes: promise, election, deliverance, covenant, law and land. It is realistically observed that "the one element universally present and central to these credos...is the Exodus, representing Yahweh's deliverance and the historical realization of His election of Israel as His people" (Lasor, Hubbard, Bush, 1982, p.55).

The Pentateuch has two major divisions: Genesis 1-11 and Genesis 12- Deuteronomy 34. The relation between them is one question and answer, problem and solution; the clue is Genesis 12:3. This structure not only elucidates the binding unity of the Pentateuch but also reveals that the structure began stretches far beyond the Pentateuch itself. The end and fulfillment lie beyond Deuteronomy 34 - indeed beyond the Old Testament. It could be safely asserted that probably no where does the Old Testament set forth an ultimate solution to the universal problem which Genesis 1-11 so poignantly portrays. The Old Testament indeed does not arrive at full redemption. When the Old Testament ends, Israel is still looking for the final consummation when hope shall be fulfilled and promise become fact. The juncture of Genesis 10-11 and chapters 12ff., is not only one of the most important places in the whole Old Testament but one of the most important in the entire Bible. Here begins the redemptive history that awaits the proclamation of the good news of God's new redemptive act in Jesus Christ; only then will be found the way in which the blessing of Abraham will bless all the families of the earth. The Pentateuch is truly open-ended, for the salvation history which commenced awaits the consummation in the Son of Abraham (Matt. 1:1) who draws all people to Him (John 12:32) punctuating the alienation of humanity from God and from one another.

Purpose

The purpose of the Pentateuch was a leading into the realization by God that He was the Creator and Sustainer of the universe as well as the Ruler of History. It testifies to God's saving acts, the central act being the exodus from Egypt. God invaded the consciousness of the Israelites and revealed Himself as the redeeming God. Knowledge of God as Redeemer subsequently led to a knowledge of Him as Creator; understanding the Lord as the God of grace consequently prompted an understanding as the God of nature after He displayed control over nature as evidenced in the plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea and sustenance in the wilderness. It must be stressed that God's grace was evident not only in deliverance and guidance, but in the giving of the law and the initiation of the covenant. Israel's supposed pledge of obedience, oath of loyalty to God and His will is her response. One must hasten to note that this response is a gift of God's grace. The Pentateuch stands or better still possesses a rich inner unity recording God's revelation in history and His Lordship over history and testifying to Israel's response and disobedience. It generally witnesses to God's holiness which "separates Him from men, and His gracious love, which binds Him to them on His terms" (New Bible Dictionary, 1962, p.909).

Themes

Although several themes could be identified between Genesis and Deuteronomy, unique but inter-related, intertwined and invaluable ones could be identified. These include election, creation, fall/sin, covenant, law and exodus. Israel was God's elect. According to Stott (1988), the Bible is "sacred history - the story of God's dealing with a particular people for a particular purpose" (p.45). They were convinced that God had done this for no other nation (Ps. 147:20). Great thinkers of Greece (including Plato, Socrates and Aristotle) are not the focus but scriptural record concentrates on men like Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah and the prophets to whom the word of the Lord came, and on Jesus Christ, God's Word made flesh. Abraham's call has a present day significance to us and should not be slightly regarded as an event of the past. Election - God's special choice of individuals- basically contains two subsidiary features; promise and responsibility. Abraham is promised descendants, given the land of Canaan as his children's inheritance and promised a great name in the future. God's special favour was to rest not only on Abraham and his family but to all men through him (Gal. 3:29).

God's promises to Abraham therefore were not for the selfish enjoyment of a selected few but could benefit others if used responsibly. It is incontrovertible that God's choice of Israel has a missionary purpose. A covenant, in the Hebrew context, covered all human relationships and not a limited definition of a matter of legal documents and sealing-wax in the modern mind. This bond united people in mutual obligations. Naturally, people's relationship to God should be expressed in covenant terms. Covenant terms could be used to describe three unique occasions in the Pentateuch:

i. God's promises never again to destroy the world with a flood (Gen. 9:9)

ii. God's promises to Abram (Gen. 15:18; 17:4)

iii. The Sinai Covenant established with Moses and summarized in the 'book of the covenant' (Ex.24:4).

It must be borne in mind that although covenants were generally between equals, religiously it denotes a relationship between Creator and a lesser partner. However, the theological significance of the covenant must be highlighted. Based on initiative of God and implying a new revelation of the Creator, it made moral and ritual demands upon the people.

Taylor (1973) realistically observes that "the idea of law is central to the Pentateuch and...it gives its name to the book as a whole" (p.124). It basically covers the Ten Commandments (Decalogue - Ex. 20; Deut.5) and associates with these various collections of laws classified as:

i. The book of the Covenant (Ex. 21-23)

ii. The Holiness Code (Lev. 17:26)

iii. The Law of Deuteronomy (Deut. 12:26)

Since Israel was part of the Eastern Mediterranean culture and shared in the ideas and experience of her neighbours, several similarities could be noted especially with the Code of Hammurabi. The differences however made Israel's laws distinctive. They could be summarized thus:

i. Uncompromising monotheism (that is relating everything to the one true God)

ii. Remarkable concern for slaves, strangers, women and orphans (the underprivileged)

iii. Community spirit based on the covenant relationship shared by all Israel with the Lord

In a brilliant summary, Cornfeld (1961) observed that "Hebrew law appears from its earliest times to stand on a higher ethical level and postulates moral human relationship which do not seem to be equalled in other Near Eastern Legislations" (p.213). Israel must approach God with a due sense of His moral and spiritual distinctiveness. The elaborate sacrificial system generally found its fulfilment in the solitary sacrifice of Christ - the perfect Lamb of God- through whom sins are not only forgiven but atonement made for all men eternally (Heb. 10:1-18).

The exodus must be put in proper perspective. Described in Exodus 1-12, the Jews view it as the great intervention or saving act of God which later generations reminisced. This miraculous intervention was God's act of victory of the gods displaying total supremacy. Recalled annually in the Feast of the Passover, subsequent generations were reminded that they were initially members of a slave community mercifully redeemed from bondage. They were encouraged to use this as a deterrent, especially when curses reward disobedience. The historical significance was definitive. God could repeat His initial act. In Isaiah 51:9-11, Israel looked for a second exodus while in exile in Babylon.

The afore-mentioned themes are never submerged in the Pentateuch. Probably, the only other theme (which recurs in depressing regularity) is Israel's obstinate and persistent sinfulness. Among other things, they were slow to accept Moses as their deliverer, grumbled about hardship and desired to 'go back to Egypt'. Not even Moses was immune and was punished by not being allowed to lead God's people in the promised land.

Conclusion

Together, the five books trace Israel's origin from the earliest times, through the patriarchs; then the Exodus and Sinai periods prior to the entry to Canaan; they also contain much legal instruction. God's response to sin is consistently a blend of judgement and mercy. Beyond the immediate discipline of Adam and Eve, and confusion of tongues at Babel, God tempers justice with salvation. It is understandable therefore that in spite of man's path, God called Abraham to be the channel of grace and revelation to all mankind.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Childs, B. (1979). Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture. Philadelphia: Fortress Press.

The Columbia-Viking Desk Encyclopedia (1964). New York: Dell Publishing Co.

Cornfeld, G. (1961). Adam to Daniel. New York: The Macmillan Company.

Everyman's Encyclopedia, Vol. 1. (1979). London : Dent and Sons.

Halley, H.H. (1962). Halley's Pocket Bible Handbook: An Abbreviated Bible Commentary. Minnesota:
Zondervan Publishing.

Knight, D.A. and G.M. Tucker (1985). The Hebrew Bible and its Modern Interpreters. Minnesota:
Fortress Press.

Lasor, W.S., D.A. Hubbard and F.W. Bush (1982). Old Testament Survey: The Message, Form and
Background to the Old Testament. Michigan: Williams B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

The New Bible Dictionary (1962). London: The Inter-Varsity Fellowship.

NIV Study Bible (1984). Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.

Stott, J. (1988). Understanding the Bible. London: Scripture Union.

Taylor, J. (1973). The Five Books. In The Lion Handbook to the Bible. Herts: Lion Publishing.

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Infrared Heaters Consumer Reports - Lifesmart Amish Infrared Heater Review

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The Power Plus by LIFESMART offers safe heat. It will not burn children or pets and produces no emissions. This heater has a full ETL certification for safety features. It offers a consistent heat so that the temperature remains the same, without the loss of heat, from ceiling to baseboard. It will save on the heating bill as it will use up to 1500 watts of electricity, which is about the same as a hairdryer.

The LIFESMART power plus heater gets efficiency from the six infrared quartz elements rated at 25,000 hours. There are also four copper heat exchanges, three that wrap the quartz elements and one at the exit.

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The LIFESMART heater has a 110 volt plug & play with a 6 foot long cord for easy placement anywhere in the home.

Lifesmart Amish Features

The heater is rated to heat up to 1200 sq feet Healthier, cleaner air: built in lifetime filter that destroys bacteria, virus, mold, mildew and other unhealthy organisms. Eliminates contamination caused by forced air heating and space heaters Safe Heat: The LIFESMART infrared heater will not burn children or pets and includes several safety features. Portable and easy to operate: E-Z glide wheels are included as well as a soft touch LED control. There is also a remote control to operate the unit from across the room No special installation: 110 volt plug and play with a 6 foot cord

Lifesmart Amish Reviews

Overall, users really liked the performance of the LIFESMART heater. There were several comments about the ease of use and the convenient controls on the heater and the remote, including that users are able to set a temperature range and the heater will turn on when it falls within two degrees below the requested temperature.

Most consumers have mentioned that their heating bill only went up a small amount after using this infrared heater as a large source of heat in the home. A few users, who reported having small apartments, even used this heater as the only source of heat in their home. Most comments were that it heated evenly without any cold spots. Consumers also loved how quiet the unit was.

The complaints were that it did not heat up an area as large as it advertised or that users did not get the "infrared" feel from the infrared heater that they had hoped.

They seem to be a good buy for the money, overall, users like the LIFESMART.

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Ford Motor Company - Case Study

Background (General Facts)

Ford Motors is one of three leading automotive manufacturing companies in the United States. Based in Michigan in 1903 by Henry ford and grew to reach revenue of 0 billion and more than 370,000 employees by 1996 [1]. In the 1970's, the automobile market for the major auto makers - General Motors (GM), Ford, and Chrysler- was crunched by competition from foreign manufactures such as Toyota and Honda. In 1999, Ford acquired the Swedish Volvo model in an attempt to compete in the foreign market and expand to other regions. Furthermore, Ford launched a full organization re-engineering business process plan called "Ford 2000" aiming at reestablishing the company's infrastructure. The process meant reduction in their Vehicle Centers (VCs) to only five covering the operations that spanned 200 countries. It also meant cutting redundancies and requiring Information Technology (IT) to be the driving force and the link between Ford centers worldwide.

In building Ford's IT infrastructure, the company focused on implementing a setup that supported the TCP/IP communication protocol based on the U.S. department of Defense requirements. At those days, Ford internal network was meant to serve files transfer unlike most companies that used the network mainly for email communications. Throughout the 1990's, Ford developed a cost effective Global Enterprise Network Integration (GENI) process to link all its locations compromising on the type of the connection and the cabling in favor of full coverage. During the same time, Ford started building its Web Farm, which was basically a set of hardware and software managed by a team for building Ford's public website. The work started by publishing documents for technical references and moved to more advanced images from a live auto show. As a result, the website received 1 million visits a day in less than 2 years after its official launch. Throughout the end of the 90's, Ford established its web services by increasing the amount of information published, building more intelligent and standard web application in 12 weeks period, purchasing more Netscape browsers for setup on its users' machines, and creating a B2B server to allow the suppliers secured access to Ford's Intranet.

In the path towards service cost reduction and bringing more business through the web, Ford worked closely with its competitors in the U.S. market GM and Chrysler to establish what came to be known as "Automotive Network Exchange" (ANX) certificate. The protocols aimed at providing a unified communications standard through the Internet to enable suppliers to provide common technology for all manufacturers. Moreover, Ford focused on making information on its web site more accessible and useful by deploying a team to manage the process of adding and updating information based on an analysis of how humans deal with information. One final aspect of Fords endeavor was to try to build a model through its infrastructure that benefited from the model implemented by Dell computers to improve their supply chain and delivery process. The direct model would not work well for automotives as it would with computers, as a result Ford worked on its retailing network remodeling and identifying what would eventually give it the extra edge in delivery time.

Enterprise Architecture Issues

Ford's regional expansion to address the competition for market shares demanded cost management for the infrastructure upgrades IT infrastructure places limitations on the type of application development based on the platforms Easy access to information and prompt delivery of vital data to key individuals requires proper knowledge managementOrganizations reengineering and process remodeling is necessary when adapting new technologies to maintain the cost and increase efficiency Supply chain errors and delays can severely affect the progress of the business and the market value of the corporation
Analysis

Infrastructure Upgrade

Since the inception of the Internet in the 1960's, much effort has been made in standardizing how computers connect to it. In 1982, the International Organization for Standards (ISO) realized that during that period many ad hoc networking systems were already using the TCP/IP protocol for communications and thus adapted it as a standard in its model for the Internet network [2]. The main driver for IP convergence, at that period, was the growth in data traffic through wide area networks (WANs) established by local companies. Furthermore, in 1991, the Internet was open for commercial use, and that demanded a reduction in the total cost of operating the network to cope with 1 million Internet hosts that materialized in only 1-year time. Telecommunications companies like AT&T understood the potential and worked on standardizing the network offering voice services over IP networks that managed the separation between voice and data transmission [3].

At the same time, Ford had launched its plan to update its infrastructure, and seized the opportunity brought by the global movement of integrating the voice, fax transmission network with data transmission and expanded its WAN to include its offices in Europe and elsewhere. The financial benefits also came from the fact that Ford adapted the TCP/IP protocol from the beginning and made sure that all its technical infrastructure upgrades adhere to the standards. This made the transition of its system to the Internet as cost effective as it could be.

Web Technologies

Intranets employ the hypertext and multimedia technology used on the Internet. Prior to 1989, when Tim burners-Lee invented the Web [4], most applications used standard development languages such as C and C++ to create desktop applications that were proprietary and dependent on the platform. For example, applications running on a command-based operating system such as UNIX would not run under Windows, and those working for PCs might not work on Apple computers and vice versa [5]. The invention of HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language) introduced a new model for applications that conform to the standards provided by a single program, the "Web Browser". Unlike standard applications, the browser brought a unified interface that had a very fast learning curve. Users seem to require no additional training to work with web browsers. Furthermore, system administrators did not have to spend time installing upgrades on users' machines, since the Intranet client/server architecture facilitated all the updates through the connection with the web server [6].

Since Ford established its Intranet, it was aiming at building web applications through the initial analysis of "Mosaic", the early form of web browsers. The technical department at Ford used web languages to create the first web site in 1995. In 1996, the team started building applications making use of the unified "Netscape" browser that was deployed on all machines at the company, and working on a standard template to cut on the development life cycle. There was a substantial cut in training cost due to the user-friendly interface of web applications. Furthermore, the speed of development made vital applications available to different individuals across the company. For example, the B2B site allowed suppliers remote and secured access to various sections of Ford's Intranet. In addition, the development team created an application as a virtual teardown on Ford's website where Ford's engineers could examine parts of competitors' cars and evaluate any new technologies. The alternative would have been an actual trip to a physical location where Ford tears down cars to examine the parts.

Knowledge Management

While there are many definitions for knowledge, each company might adapt its own based on how it analysis data and information to acquire knowledge. The University of Kentucky, for example, defines knowledge as "a vital organization resource. It is the raw material, work-in process, and finished good of decision-making. Distinct types of knowledge used by decision makers include information, procedures, and heuristics, among others... " [7].

Organizations go through different activities to manage the amount of information they collect to form the knowledge base of the company. Activities include creating databases of best practices and market intelligence analysis, gathering filtering and classifying data, incorporating knowledge into business applications used by employees, and developing focal points for facilitating knowledge flow and building skills [8].

Ford was excited about the traffic it was receiving on the Web site and everyone was publishing all the material they have on desk on the Intranet. Nevertheless, there was a growing concern about the usability and usefulness of the material people were adding. As a result, Ford created a "Knowledge Domain Team" to build complete information in nine areas that were identified as vital to the business. The process Ford took was based on surveys and specialists input in how people perceive information, and what is considered vital and what is distracting in the structure of Ford's website. The aim behind the initiative was to reduce the time individuals spent in searching for information through proper indexing of the website content, and making sure that what was important could be accessed in due time, and what is trivial did not overwhelm the researcher with thousands of results.

Business Re-engineering

In the area of organization's re-engineering process innovation is the set of activities that achieve substantial business improvements. Companies seeking to benefit from process innovation go through the regime of identifying the processes, the factors for change, developing the vision, understanding the current process, and building a prototype for the new organization. History shows that organizations who define their processes properly will not have problems managing the issues and developing the change factors [9]. When introducing technology, business redesign is necessary. The industrial fields have been using Information Technology to remodel processes, control production, and manage material for generations. However, it is only recently that companies recognized that the fusion of IT and business would go beyond automation to fundamentally reshaping how business processes are undertaken [10].

When foreign companies were allowed to compete in the U.S. market, Ford understood that to succeed in business in a competitive arena it needed to implement strategies that competitors find difficult to imitate [11]. As a result, Ford bought Sweden Volvo to enter the European market, and partially owned Mazda to have a competitive edge with Japanese cars1 [12]. To achieve that it re-engineered its production development activities and global corporate organization and processes for dramatic cost reduction. Furthermore, it understood that expansion requires collaboration and alignment, and thus planned to establish the IT infrastructure through a WAN that connected all the offices. In the process of innovation and re-engineering, Ford has set policies to manage the cost of establishing the network, built models for continuous implementation, and organized global meetings to align all parties with the process. Adding to that, when it came to managing the website, Ford facilitated an awareness campaign for all the branches to understand that Ford is using the web to collaborate and research and adapting information technology as a way to maximize its business value. The goal for Ford was to maintain its leadership in the market and to do that in the most efficient and cost effective method that is there.

Supply chain management

Supply chain management (SCM) is about coordinating between suppliers, manufactures, distributors, retailers, and customers [13]. The basic idea that SCM applications revolve around is providing information to all those who are involved in making decisions about the product or goods to manage delivery from the supplier to the consumer [14]. Studies show that reducing errors in supply chain distribution, increases revenue, enhances productivity, and reduces the order-to-fulfillment period [15].

Ford often compared its supply chain process to that of Dell's, in an attempt to close the gaps in its own process and reach the level of success Dell has reached. The difference in the distribution model between Dell and Ford lies in the middle link of using retail shops. Since Ford cannot skip retail as a focal distribution point, it worked on establishing a network of retail shops that it owned. Ford made sure shops are not affecting each other in terms of sales, and gave them all a standard look and feel to establish itself in the consumer's market as a prestigious cars sales retail company. Furthermore, extensive re-engineering initiatives were undertaken to enhance Ford external network by eliminating the correlation with smaller suppliers. In that way, Ford made sure that key suppliers have access to forecasting data from customers' purchasing trends and production information to enable a faster order-to-delivery cycle. Ford vision was to create a model that allowed flexibility, predicable processes and delivered the product at the right time to the right consumer.

Conclusions

Ford is an example of how traditional organizations can mature to adapt what is current and maximizes the business value. The process that Ford went through necessitated the continuous support from management. In addition, it depended on alignment between those involved as a key for success. The correlation was not restricted to internal staff; it extended to cover competitors to reach mutual benefits, to work with suppliers to maintain similar grounds and adequate infrastructure, and to create training programs to educate all on the vision and organization's objectives.

Ford technical progress came at a time where the Internet was yet to reach its full potential. The introduction of Fiber-optic cables in the late 90's and the substantial increase in bandwidth would have helped Ford and cut on the cost in endured connecting its own offices. Furthermore, the ISP services that provided hosting servers were limited to only few players, which explained why Ford preferred to manage its own web server and maintain the overhead of the 24 hours uptime and backup.

From this case study, I understood the level of commitment large firms have to maintaining their position in the market. These companies know the revolving nature of business in the sense of how easy it is to fall back if they did not keep up with the change. The Ford process also shows the need for quick and resourceful thinking when faced with situations that might seem to be unfavorable. The way Ford ventured into the foreign market by acquiring local manufacturers was a strategic decision that did not only enabled Ford to merge with different technologies, but it also saved it the additional cost of establishing production centers in Japan and Europe.

Recommendations

Maintaining leadership in the market requires innovative organizations willing to reengineer to succeed. IT fusion with the business means restructuring and remodeling to understand the role IT would play to meet the business objectives Planning and modeling is vital when coordinating work with large teams. Constructing websites is not about content; it is about understanding what adds value and how humans interact with information. Knowledge management is a plan that companies need to develop as part of their initial business process modeling It is not wrong for large firms to try to adapt to successful processes implemented by other firms.
References

Robert D. Austin and Mark Cotteleer,"Ford Motor Co.: Maximizing the Business Value of Web Technologies." Harvard Business Publishing. July 10, 1997. harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml;jsessionid=WDARNHINBSYKSAKRGWCB5VQBKE0YOISW?id=198006 (accessed July 30, 2008). Computer History Museum, Internet History 80's. 2006. computerhistory.org/internet_history/internet_history_80s.shtml (accessed July 30, 2008). Darren Wilksch and Peter Shoubridge, "IP Convergence in Global Telecommunications." Defense Science & Technology Organization. March 2001. http://www.dsto.defence.gov.au/publications/2400/DSTO-TR-1046.pdf (accessed July 30, 2008). Computer History Museum, Internet History 80's. H. Joseph Wen, "From client/server to intranet." Information Management & Computer Security (MCB UP Ltd) 6, no. 1 (1998): 15-20. R. Boutaba, K. El Guemioui, and P. Dini, "An outlook on intranet management." Communications Magazine (IEEE), October 1997: 92-99. Joseph M. Firestone, Enterprise Information Portals and Knowledge Management (OXFORD: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2002), 169. David J. Skyrme, "Knowledge management solutions - the IT contribution." ACM SIGGROUP Bulletin (ACM) 19, no. 1 (April 1998): 34 - 39, 34. Thomas H. Davenport, Process Innovation: Reengineering Work Through Information Technology (Watertown,MA: Harvard Business Press, 1993), 28. Thomas H. Davenport "The New Industrial Engineering: Information Technology and Business Process Redesign." Sloan Management Review 31, no. 4 (Summer 1990): 11-28, 12 Gary M. Erickson, Robert Jacobson, and Johny K. Johansson, "Competition for market share in the presence of strategic invisible assets: The US automobile market, 1971-1981." International Journal of Research in Marketing (Elsevier Science) 9, no. 1 (March 1992): 23-37, 23. Austin and Cotteleer, "Ford Motor " , 2. Henk A. Akkermans, et al. "The impact of ERP on supply chain management: Exploratory findings from a European Delphi study." European Journal of Operational Research 146 (2003): 284-301, 286 Thomas H. Davenport and Jeffrey D. Brooks, "Enterprise systems and the supply chain." Journal of Enterprise Information Management 17, no. 1 (2004): 8-19, 9. Kevin B. Hendricks, Vinod R. Singhal, and Jeff K. Stratman. "The impact of enterprise systems on corporate performance:A study of ERP, SCM, and CRM system implementations." Journal of Operations Management 25, no. 1 (January 2007): 65-82.

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Physical Theatre and Commedia Dell'arte - An Interview With Wyckham Avery

Q: How did you start in physical theatre?

A: When I was a teenager I was very lucky to have worked with Dan Hurlin who is a phenomenal performance artist, writer and teacher. We didn't talk about the work as a genre like 'physical theatre' or 'realism' or 'absurdism' we just worked very physically. He taught me that acting was sweaty and theatre didn't have to look like real life. As I got older and found myself wanting more than what my Stanislavsky-based work was giving me, I started searching for other styles that paralleled my work with Dan, which eventually brought me to the Dell' Arte International School of Physical Theatre.

Q: What is physical comedy and what are its distinguishing factors?

A: Physical comedy is telling a comedic story with one's body insteaad of relying on words. Words can be used, but the actor doesn't rely on the words to get the story across. It's slapstick from commedia dell' arte, the old school Jerry Lewis kind of thing. Things need to be big in physical comedy. Most physical comedy these days is seen in cartoons, everything from Tom and Jerry and the Road Runner to the feature films like "Shrek." One of my favorite movies is "The Triplets of Bellville" which is an animated film that came out of Europe a few years ago. There is a little dialogue in the film and the bodies and movements of these cartoon characters are so filled with meaning and visual stimuli in their performance it's amazing. It's an interesting study in how physical theatre or performance works and how you tell stories, physically, as opposed to verbally.

Q: What is Commedia Dell'arte?

A: Commedia Dell'arte is a Renaissance Italian form of theatre and the term means the "comedy of art." It was popular in the 15th and 16th Centuries when troops of actors performed traditional stock characters, mostly in three-quarter mask. The traits of these stock characters were familiar to the audience, the style of acting was improvisatory, but actors didn't start cold as they would in an improv game these days. The gist of each particular scenario was standard, but what exactly transpired was improvised. As these actors had worked together for years and knew each other's work and characters well there was a platform to work on, literally and figuratively. They performed wherever they could gain an audience's attention - whether it was on a platform or wagon. They didn't draw a highbrow audience paying lots of dollars to see them. They had to pull in an audience and then pass a hat to collect coins.

The influences of Commedia are here today. You can see it in The Marx Brothers. You'll even find Commedia's stock characters and plotlines in Shakespeare's comedies such as "Love's Labors Lost." All art forms either change with the times or die off, and in a sense, that's what's happened to Commedia. Very few companies still work in the Commedia style, but I think actors can learn a great deal from working in that style. I'm excited about an advanced Camp Shakespeare at the Shakespeare Theatre Company for teens this summer that I will teach. We'll work with a group of teenagers on improvisation, mask, and physical comedy and create a Commedia play.

Q: What distinguishes Commedia Dell'arte from other forms of performance?

A: Commedia Dell'arte is fifty percent physical and fifty percent verbal. Because it's in mask, it has to be incredibly physical, some of the actors might be tumblers or dancers. Broad physical gestures are integrated with witty speech so that actors aren't standing around talking or expressing their emotions through small gestures.

There was no such thing as a black box theatre during the Renaissance; audience members couldn't watch an actor's deep pain or joy through the actor's eyes. There was no - lights down on the audience and spotlights on the stage. This was the time of lit audiences. Finding ways of amplifying, communicating to the audience, what actors were doing or experiencing was necessary. There were no programs for the audience; they couldn't read in advance that this guy was playing this or that character. The things that we take for granted now didn't exist then.

Performers had to fight to get an audience in the Renaissance. They had to draw them in. If they were performing outside on a wagon, they had to get people's attention, they had to work with the audience. There were 2,000 people in the Globe. It was a very different audience than we have today. People walked around selling oranges and beer and if audiences couldn't hear, see, or understand the actors or story, they could lose interest and their attention. Today it's easy to keep the attention of the audience because there's nothing else to look at. The lights are out and the only place to look is straight ahead. But that wasn't always the case. There were a lot of distractions for the audiences, they were checking out what the royalty was wearing, or who was sitting with whom, or looking for someone to go out with. It was all very social.

Q: What about the stock characters?

A: Stock characters are archetypes - the old miserly man, the crafty servant, the braggart soldier, or the young lovers. They're with us even today - we can see them in the Simpsons" and they've been part of theatre for years. In commedia, each character had traditional costumes, mask, signature props, poses, stances, actions, plot function, relationship to the audience, relationship to other characters. When the audience saw the guy with the long, pointy, droopy nose, wearing tight trousers over skinny legs, they knew it was Pantalone. He was the misery old man of high social status. Arlechinno (Harlequin) was a servant, the spry one always looking for food. Each stock characters had signature lazzis

Q: What are lazzis?

A: Lazzis are the running gags, stunts, and pranks that were performed by the characters. Arlechinno might have a bit about a fly that is bothering him that he tries to catch and eat. It was another way to physicalize and display character to the audience. The stock characters can reach beyond the traditional fourth wall, as we know it.

Q: What do you mean about reaching beyond the fourth wall?

A: Today, while actors understand that the audience is there, the characters, themselves, don't. Realistic drama and realistic acting has a give and take with the audience, but it's subtle. Good actors can sense what's happening in the audience and work that, but it's much more overt in these earlier forms. When film started, and with it the beginning of realism, that distinction wasn't made. Characters then performed with an awareness of the audience. In Shakespeare, it's very clear at certain moments that the character is talking to the audience, and a lot of people believe that it's actually happening even more, it's just not as evident. Several Shakespeare companies take everything to the audience and actors make a lot of eye contact with the audience. Shakespeare and Company in Massachusetts and the American Shakespeare Center in Virginia approach their productions this way.

In clowning, audience contact is crucial. It's a give and take between the audience and the performer in a very direct way. Some people balk at that, like it's the audience participation thing, but it's different - it's not about dragging someone up on stage and making them do stupid things.

There are different worlds of clowning ranging from the traditional circus clown to the existentialist clown like with "Waiting For Godot." Clowns have a sort of resiliency. Tragic things can happen around them, but they bounce back, they are resilient, nothing crushes them for too long. They're not childish or stupid, but there is a naivety to them because the regular logic of our world doesn't necessarily apply. Clowns tend to be very physical and often many of them don't use language at all, so they have a universal form of communication.

Q: Are there skits or are the actors just performing improv?

A: Both, the actors have their clowns' personage that they've developed and they might have an outline of what happens in their skit, scene or production, but how they get from each point can change a lot each time they do it. It's similar to improv theatre today, the same skills are being used - it's about taking in and responding to what's given to you on stage, whether it's from your partner, or the audience, or the chair. Anything can be your partner in clowning, whether it's a human or inanimate object, and you take advantage of that. In regular theatre, if your shoes squeaked, you'd try to figure out a way to diminish it, whereas in clowning, you exploit it. You exploit your own faults in clowning. It's a challenging way to work. The history of clowning is huge and you can find clowns in most cultures. In America, we have a very definite circus clown archetype - the Bozo or the sad hobo clown of the circus - with heavy makeup, floppy shoes and the squirting flower. But clowning doesn't have to be about walking on stilts and juggling. 500 Clowns out of Chicago doesn't wear red noses; they paint their ears red and are sort of scarier looking. Bill Irwin, who is probably the best clown we have in this country, doesn't always work in a red nose. He did when he first started out with the Pickle Circus in San Francisco, and he started developing a theatrical movement that he called New Vaudeville with shows such as The History of Flight and Largely New York, which incorporated much of his clowning expertise and physical comedy.

Q: Why don't we see more of these types of performing now in Washington?

A: There's seems to be a reticence here for different forms of theatre. Street theatre and busking is illegal. In other cities around the world, there are international buskers' festivals, where all sorts of street performers do amazing things.

The growth of Fringe festivals has allowed artists to explore and experiment with different types of performances, and the Festivals allow the audience to experience theatre in ways they hadn't thought of or known about. In this city, people say there's no audience for different kinds of theatre, but I'm not sure that's true. Especially when you look at the success of the Capital Fringe Festival, and companies like Synetic. Other cities seem to foster physical theatre better than this area, but I have hope for DC. Chicago, San Francisco, and Philadelphia are probably the three biggest areas for more physical theatre, including puppetry, mask, clown, and multimedia and everything in between. Some of it's crap and some of it's amazing and a lot of it lies in between - that's great. We want all of that here, too.

Q: Would you talk some about your background and training?

A: I went to undergraduate school in New Mexico State and studied with Mark Medoff, the playwright, who was the head of our program, and I got my MFA from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. While in college, I interned at The Actors Studio in New York. That was before James Lipton and the establishment of the school. Back then, it was just actors in a room attending their American method of acting sessions twice a week. It was during that internship that I figured out that the traditional approach was not for me. That's not to say I didn't appreciate it; there are some brilliant method actors, but I knew I'd never be one of them. All I knew at that point was that method acting and realism were not for me, but I didn't know what was. Luckily, in graduate school I was introduced to a vast array of modern, nontraditional, nonrealism theatre which I really liked.

I was always interested in Shakespeare because it is so big and expressive, and like many people around here, I toured with Shenandoah Shakespeare in Staunton, Virginia. Everybody knows Shakespeare's good, people get that, but before I worked at Shenandoah Shakespeare, I didn't really understand why Shakespeare is so extremely good. When you're speaking those words every day for several years, you find so much more in it. You find out how amazing Shakespeare really is and the Shenandoah Shakespeare style of working, I think, helps illuminate the play and the text for both the actors and audience. But even then, I still knew that there was this whole other world of performance that I wasn't really tapping into.

I later worked in a company in New York called the Collapsable Giraffe which is sort of a devised theatre group or ensemble. We would be in a room, have some inspiration or text and just create. Most of the people there, besides me, had worked or were still working for The Wooster Group in New York, which is a theatre which uses new forms and techniques in producing new and established works. The Collapsable Giraffe and The Wooster Group share a similar esthetic that I find interesting and exciting. From there, I trained at the Dell'arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, California, where I was taught clowning, commedia, and overall physical theatre.

Q: What was that training like?

A: It was great, but it was difficult. They were hard on us students and we probably collectively cried more than laughed during training. We laughed too, but we all separately and collectively cried a lot. One teacher was scary. At times, he yelled and threw tennis balls at us while we were on stage - with the best of intentions. He wasn't trying to hurt us - his goal was to keep us in the present and reactive on stage. Some people tried to stay in character and dodge the tennis balls and that made him throw even more balls and yell even louder. As actors, we were so ingrained in our method of acting and training that even in clowning we put blinders on and refused to react to outside things. In clowning, that's really what it's all about. It's being present and taking in what's happening in the space, whether it's in the audience, in the air ducts, or a squeak in your shoe. We all experienced frustration in trying to find that unexplainable place of fully living in that clown personage. We wanted it so badly, and the more we wanted it, the more it seemed to elude us and the more frustrated we got. We didn't speak on stage for months because their belief is that the movement comes first and the voice comes after. Like children, we learn to walk before we learn to talk.

Q: What's so difficult about clowning?

A: Clowning is about going to a very scary place. A lot of people in clowning pick what they find most humiliating about themselves and exploit it. When you really push on those places you avoid, it opens you up to a lot of new and exciting places and freshness. You've got to have a thick skin and be really resilient in clowning. When I started in clowning I thought I was resilient, but in retrospect, I don't know if I really was. This kind of training is not for everybody, but it is very valuable. Mask and clowning skills are incredible tools for traditional modern realist actors to have. Jackie Chan is very clowny and very funny. It's genius how he understands physical comedy in an elevated way in the midst of violence.

Q: What do students learn in your clowning and physical theatre classes?

A: It's sort of unlearning everything that we've learned about acting in some ways. Students in acting classes have been told not to make audience contact, that when it's done, it seems faked or contrived. But with clowning, that's the trick, connecting with the audience and making the performance real. The actor is still in character and has the same objectives, but is sharing and interacting with the audience and the environment instead of performing for the audience.

This is where a whole connection happens, part of which is indescribable. When the mask connects with the audience, it's riveting and dynamic, a kind of magic happens that is inexplicable. Clowning is more traditional than modern acting, but in our modern view of acting, actors can get away with not being in the moment. With clowning, it's really what it's all about - the actors have to be open and respond to whatever is happening.

Actors can feel vulnerable because they can't rely on techniques they're comfortable with. People communicate a lot through their eyes and facial expressions. Actors tend to act a lot with their faces because they've learned that from watching movies and television. By putting on masks, we've cut off that method of communication and that leaves us with having to find other ways to communicate. The mask becomes the translator, the transducer of the character, and those emotions that would otherwise be expressed through our faces are sent through our bodies.

Sometimes an actor on stage may pull back, and if that actor has on a mask, that pulling back is magnified. Things that worked without the mask, don't translate, they're not large enough to communicate to the audience what's going on. Working with a mask becomes second nature with practice. It's not a big effort forever. Any technique becomes easier with practice, it's just a matter of getting used to using your body to express the characters and make contact with the audience.

Q: Would you talk about your approach to teaching clowning and physical theatre?

A: Good teachers of these forms don't necessarily teach, they provoke, they set up circumstances for actors to work through and learn by doing, as opposed to lecturing about it. I can tell students to be in the moment and play with their surroundings until I'm blue in face, but they won't get it until they experience it. The actual doing of it is where they're going to start to learn it and experience it.

The beauty of the teaching and learning of acting is that there are a million different approaches and what most people get taught is that you will learn a lot of things, some of which will work for you and some won't. There are brilliant method actors in this world who are amazing, breathtaking. They found a path that works for them. That doesn't mean it works for everybody.

For instance, I don't like the separation of voice and movement, where the physical work happens in one class on one day and the voice work happens in another on another day. Even in my studies, we learned voice a couple times a week, for an hour, that was it. I found a disconnect in learning how to match what we were doing vocally with what we were doing physically. We were making these big dynamic shapes with our bodies and feeling our hearts out, but some people had never had any voice training and they couldn't be heard or understood because they couldn't elevate their voices up to what they were doing with their bodies. One of my goals when I get my Ph.D. and become a professor is to develop pedagogy where actors' voices and bodies are trained simultaneously.

Q: What would the Avery technique be?

A: I'm still developing it and that's why one of the reasons I'm hoping to begin a Ph.D. soon. Right now, it's all in notes and ideas. There were some really wonderful moments at Dell'arte where we studied Tai Chi. For the most part, Tai Chi is fairly silent because it's a meditative martial art, but a couple of times the teacher played music, which took us to another level. One day, in voice class while working on harmony and singing together, we practiced Tai Chi and that helped us find different connections. Many people have a tendency to hold their breath while doing something strenuous. In acrobatics class, we did forward rolls, cart wheels, or whatever, down the mat, while humming or singing. It's hard to do, but it's serves actors in two ways - it keeps them breathing and in touch with their voice, while exerting themselves physically. Things like that are key.

Q: When did you get into the arts?

A: I was always around the arts as there are a lot of musicians in my family. My grandmother is an incredible jazz pianist and she still plays in her jazz band that jams every month at her house. My uncle has been a singer/entertainer for at least thirty years. My mother is a musician and an incredible singer. She studied music in college, teaches music, and plays standup bass. As a small child, I attended the rehearsals of shows for which she directed the music. My father, though not trained in any particular one, was a great appreciator of the arts. My sister is a visual artist, and as with me, her interests have moved around. She went to the Parsons School of Design and while she's worked in a lot of different media, she now has her own business making custom mosaics and doing tile installation.

As a kid I wanted to take ballet lessons and to learn how to dance. I grew up in a very small town in New Hampshire so there wasn't much opportunity for that, but as soon as opportunities for acting came around, I jumped right in. I was also very lucky. An incredible performer and puppeteer named Dan Hurlin, who is also from New Hampshire, is a professor at Sarah Lawrence. When I was a teenager, he ran a children's theatre in New Hampshire so I got to train with him. We loved him, we thought he was amazing, but outside of our little world, we didn't know how respected and amazing he really was. His work, though I didn't know it at the time, formed part of what my aesthetic is now - looking for challenging and new ways of performance.

My father supported the arts and me in them. I was a biochemistry major in college studying to be a genetic engineer, but I remember as a child my father saying to me, you know, you might want to act and he used all kinds of little schemes to move me towards acting and the theatre knowing that's really where I'd end up. He always knew I'd be in the arts, even when I didn't know it.

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How To Repair Dell E173fpb LCD Monitor Easily

Troubleshooting DELL E173FPB LCD Monitor with power blink symptom is quite easy if you know the right procedure to test it. There are two sections in the monitor that can cause power to blink. It is either primary or secondary section or even sometimes both sections can be faulty. So to isolate as which section is giving problem. I used an automobile 12 volt light bulb (brake light) and connect it between the 12 volt supply line and cold ground with the fuse removed. If the bulb still blink chances is very high the power primary section have problem.

Do not overlook the other voltages line as well such as the 3.3 and 5 volts. If any components shorted that gets the supply from the 5 and 3.3 volts, the power also may blink. If the 12 volts bulb lights up we can assume that the power supply is working fine and something shorted further down the line that makes the power supply to blink. If the bulb lights and you continue to check the power section, it will be going to waste your time. You should now concentrate on the secondary section circuit such as the four transistors C5707 that drive the high voltage transformer in the inverter board.

Just think these transistors like horizontal output transistor (HOT) in the CRT monitor that drive the flyback transformer where it worked so hard and chances for it to breakdown is very high. Checking the four transistors off board found one of them have a shorted reading with an ohmmeter.. This transistor can get faulty by itself or it could be some others components that caused it to develop a short circuit such as a defective high voltage transformer but all of the four high voltage transformers checked to be okay with ringer and ohmmeter test.

Now, here is the secret that I'm going to reveal. If you just replace the defective transistor only, chances is very high the transistor or another C5707 transistor will breakdown again. Usually what a technician does is to test the other transistors with either an analog or digital meter. If you use both meters to test the transistors then you have missed out on the faulty transistor because both meters won't reveal to you the hfe reading of the transistors. Only some digital meters have the hfe checking feature. In other words, you have to use test the hfe reading of a transistor. Although you can replace the other three transistors directly, why not we do some detective work to find the cause of the problem?

Using the Peak electronic atlas component analyzer, I could clearly see the different between a good and a bad transistor. A good C5707 transistor has hfe reading from 320 to about 390 but the bad one reads 467! The other two C5707 transistors have reading about 350. In the above case only two C5707 transistors were replaced and you save the other two. I had burn in test this LCD monitor for many days and it worked perfectly fine.

Conclusion- Whether you repair the DELL E173FPB LCD Monitor or any other model such as the E172FPB or E171FPB, basically the testing method is the same. You could also use this testing procedure on other brand of LCD Monitor too.

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Southwest Airlines Operations - A Strategic Perspective

Background:

Southwest Airlines is the largest airline measured by number of passengers carried each year within the United States. It is also known as a ‘discount airline’ compared with its large rivals in the industry. Rollin King and Herb Kelleher founded Southwest Airlines on June 18, 1971. Its first flights were from Love Field in Dallas to Houston and San Antonio, short hops with no-frills service and a simple fare structure. The airline began with one simple strategy: “If you get your passengers to their destinations when they want to get there, on time, at the lowest possible fares, and make darn sure they have a good time doing it, people will fly your airline.” This approach has been the key to Southwest’s success. Currently, Southwest serves about 60 cities (in 31 states) with 71 million total passengers carried (in 2004) and with a total operating revenue of .5 billion. Southwest is traded publicly under the symbol “LUV” on NYSE.

Facts:

* The first major airline to fly a single type of aircraft (Boeing 737s)

* The first major airline to offer ticketless travel system wide including a frequent flier program based on number of trips and not number of miles flown.

* The first airline to offer a profit-sharing program to its Employees (instituted in 1973).

* The first major airline to develop a Web site and offer online booking. In 2001, about 40 percent (.1 billion) of its passenger revenue was generated through online bookings at [http://www.southwest.com]. Southwest's cost per booking via the Internet is about , compared to a cost per booking through travel agents of to .

Key competitive advantages:

* Low Operational costs / High Operational Efficiency

* Award winning customer service

* Human Resource practices / Work culture

Operations Analysis – Competitive Dimensions:

Southwest clearly has a distinct advantage compared to other airlines in the industry by executing an effective and efficient operations strategy that forms an important pillar of its overall corporate strategy. Given below are some competitive dimensions that will be studied in this paper.

1. Operational Costs and Efficiency

2. Customer Service

3. Employee/Labor Relations

4. Technology

1. Operational Costs and Efficiency

After all, the airline industry overall is in shambles. But, how does Southwest Airlines stay profitable? Southwest Airlines has the lowest costs and strongest balance sheet in its industry, according to its chairman Kelleher. The two biggest operating costs for any airline are – labor costs (approx 40%) followed by fuel costs (approx 18%). Some other ways that Southwest is able to keep their operational costs low is - flying point-to-point routes, choosing secondary (smaller) airports, carrying consistent aircraft, maintaining high aircraft utilization, encouraging e-ticketing etc.

Labor Costs

The labor costs for Southwest typically accounts for about 37% of its operating costs. Perhaps the most critical element of the successful low-fare airline business model is achieving significantly higher labor productivity. According to a recent HBS Case Study, southwest airlines is the “most heavily unionized” US airline (about 81% of its employees belong to an union) and its salary rates are considered to be at or above average compared to the US airline industry. The low-fare carrier labor advantage is in much more flexible work rules that allow cross-utilization of virtually all employees (except where disallowed by licensing and safety standards). Such cross-utilization and a long-standing culture of cooperation among labor groups translate into lower unit labor costs. At Southwest in 4th quarter 2000, total labor expense per available seat mile (ASM) was more than 25% below that of United and American, and 58% less than US Airways.

Carriers like Southwest have a tremendous cost advantage over network airlines simply because their workforce generates more output per employee. In a study in 2001, the productivity of Southwest employees was over 45% higher than at American and United, despite the substantially longer flight lengths and larger average aircraft size of these network carriers. Therefore by its relentless pursuit for lowest labor costs, Southwest is able to positively impact its bottom line revenues.

Fuel Costs

Fuel costs is the second-largest expense for airlines after labor and accounts for about 18 percent of the carrier's operating costs. Airlines that want to prevent huge swings in operating expenses and bottom line profitability choose to hedge fuel prices. If airlines can control the cost of fuel, they can more accurately estimate budgets and forecast earnings. With growing competition and air travel becoming a commodity business, being competitive on price was key to any airline’s survival and success. It became hard to pass higher fuel costs on to passengers by raising ticket prices due to the highly competitive nature of the industry.

Southwest has been able to successfully implement its fuel hedging strategy to save on fuel expenses in a big way and has the largest hedging position among other carriers. In the second quarter of 2005, Southwest’s unit costs fell by 3.5% despite a 25% increase in jet fuel costs. During Fiscal year 2003, Southwest had much lower fuel expense (0.012 per ASM) compared to the other airlines with the exception of JetBlue as illustrated in exhibit 1 below. In 2005, 85 per cent of the airline’s fuel needs has been hedged at per barrel. World oil prices in August 2005 reached per barrel. In the second quarter of 2005 alone, Southwest achieved fuel savings of 6 million. The state of the industry also suggests that airlines that are hedged have a competitive advantage over the non-hedging airlines. Southwest announced in 2003 that it would add performance-enhancing Blended Winglets to its current and future fleet of Boeing 737-700’s. The visually distinctive Winglets will improve performance by extending the airplane’s range, saving fuel, lowering engine maintenance costs, and reducing takeoff noise.

Point-to-Point Service

Southwest operates its flight point-to-point service to maximize its operational efficiency and stay cost-effective. Most of its flights are short hauls averaging about 590 miles. It uses the strategy to keep its flights in the air more often and therefore achieve better capacity utilization.

Secondary Airports

Southwest flies to secondary/smaller airports in an effort to reduce travel delays and therefore provide excellent service to its customers. It has led the industry in on-time performance. Southwest has also been able to trim down its airport operations costs relatively better than its rival airlines.

Consistent aircraft

At the heart of Southwest's success is its single aircraft strategy: Its fleet consists exclusively of Boeing 737 jets. Having common fleet significantly simplifies scheduling, operations and flight maintenance. The training costs for pilots, ground crew and mechanics are lower, because there's only a single aircraft to learn. Purchasing, provisioning, and other operations are also vastly simplified, thereby lowering costs. Consistent aircraft also enables Southwest to utilize its pilot crew more efficiently.

E-Ticketing

The idea of ticketless travel was a major advantage to Southwest because it could lower its distribution costs. Southwest became electronic or ticketless back in the mid-1990s, and today they are about 90-95% ticketless. Customers who use credit cards are eligible for online transactions, and today Southwest.com bookings account for about 65% of total revenue. The CEO Gary Kelly thinks that this idea would grow further and that he wouldn't be surprised if e-ticketing accounted for 75% of Southwest’s revenues by end of 2005. In the past, when there was a 10% travel agency commission paid, it used to cost about a booking. But currently, Southwest is paying between 50 cents and per booking for electronic transactions that translate to huge cost savings.

2. Employee and Labor Relations

Southwest has been highly regarded for its innovative management style. It maintains a relentless focus on high-performance relationships and its people-management practices have been the key to its unparalleled success in the airline industry.

Mission Statement

To Our Employees
“We are committed to provide our Employees a stable work environment with equal opportunity for learning and personal growth. Creativity and innovation are encouraged for improving the effectiveness of Southwest Airlines. Above all, Employees will be provided the same concern, respect, and caring attitude within the organization that they are expected to share externally with every Southwest Customer.”

The Southwest mission statement shows that the company has a strong commitment to its employees. The company affords the same respect to its employees that is provided to its customers. The Southwest mission statement is unique in that it recognizes the importance of its employees within the broader business strategy, which emphasizes superb customer service and operational efficiency. The employees reciprocate the respect, loyalty and trust that Southwest demonstrates. Southwest employees are known for their loyalty, dedication, attitude and innovation. The employees are the distinguishing factor between Southwest and the rest of the airline industry.

Hiring

Southwest hiring policy is unique not only within the airline industry, but also more broadly, and revolves around finding people with the right attitude that will thrive in the Southwest culture. Extensive procedures are employed to hire for positive attitude and dedication. Those who do not posses those qualities are weeded out. Colleen Barrett, a non-operational officer at Southwest, states that

“Hiring is critical, because you cannot institutionalize behavior. Instead, you must identify those people who already practice the behaviors you are looking for. Then you can allow Employees to be themselves and make decisions about Customer service based on common sense and their natural inclinations.” 1

Recruiting and interviewing at Southwest is a two-step process. The first step is a group interview, conducted by employees, where communication skills of potential candidates are evaluated. The next steps in this process are one on one interview, where the candidates' attitudes and orientation toward serving others are evaluated. These hiring criteria apply to all job functions since all Employees at Southwest play a customer service role. A critical part of Southwest operational strategy is that every job at Southwest is a customer service position, whether it directly applies to the customer or whether it is internal.

The table below shows that even though Southwest is the most heavily unionized airline, at approximately 80%, that contract negotiations between the unions and Southwest are much shorter in duration than of the other major carriers. This shows the quality of relationship that Southwest has with its employees and with the unions that represent them.

Culture

Southwest was created as a different kind of company and from its beginnings a unique culture was nurtured. In 1990 Colleen Barrett formed the Southwest Culture Committee. This is unique within the industry and among all large companies. The committee also has a mission statement:

“This group's goal is to help create the Southwest spirit and culture where needed; to enrich it and make it better where it already exists; and to liven it up in places where it might be "floundering". In short, this group's goal is to do "whatever it takes" to create, enhance, and enrich the special Southwest spirit and culture that has made this such a wonderful Company/Family.”

It is this unique approach to company values that has created a culture that differentiates itself from others. Southwest’s culture is the reason why it is successful.

3. Customer Service

The Mission of Southwest Airlines
The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit.

Approach

Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest, has been quoted as saying that "We're in the Customer service business; we just happen to provide airline transportation".2 Award winning customer service is a distinguishing characteristic of Southwest and it is referred to internally as “Positively Outrageous Service”. It means that from the top to bottom everyone does whatever he or she can to satisfy the customer. This includes Herb Kelleher, who has been known for helping out baggage handlers on Thanksgiving. It is through emphasizing the customer and employee that Southwest is able to differentiate itself from others in the airline industry. On a more technical level, each employee or group within Southwest has his or her own customer. This means that every employee ‘serves’ in one way or another despite not being directly involved with the passenger. The mechanic’s customer is the pilot and the caterer’s is the flight attendant.

Results

It can be said that the "Positively Outrageous Service" that is unique to Southwest “is not the result of a department, or a program, or a mandate from management. It is not secondary to the product; it is the product.” This approach creates the conditions where Employees are more likely to treat customers in ways that distinguish the company from others. There are numerous accounts of passengers who have received exceptional treatment from Southwest employees.

The question that needs to be answered is how Southwest’s customer service is different and why? Is it common for customers of other airlines to rave about their special service? The answer is that it is not. While Southwest does not have a monopoly on people who are kind and who are willing to go above and beyond to satisfy a customer, such behavior is nurtured at Southwest to a much greater extent.

It can then be concluded that the customer service that is inherent to Southwest is a part of its culture. This culture is supported through employee encouragement to do the extra to satisfy the customer. This approach inspires people who would ordinarily only on occasion go out of their way to help someone, to become consistent performers that offer exceptional service all the time. Southwest employees are what differentiate its customer service from the other airlines.

4. Technology

Southwest utilizes technology in many ways to fulfill its business objectives and maintain its efficient operations. According to its CEO, technology equals productivity. Launched in 1996, ticketless travel was first introduced by Southwest. On May 1st 2000, Southwest Airlines introduces "SWABIZ," a portal that assists company travel managers in booking and tracking trips made through its web site [http://www.southwest.com]. There are many new technology initiatives being undertaken currently and some are in the pipeline.

Bar codes in Boarding Passes

Southwest Airlines has invested million during the past three years to standardize corporate and terminal operations on about 10,000 Dell OptiPlex desktop and Latitude notebook computers according to its company executives. Southwest wanted to replace its well known, brightly colored plastic boarding passes with an electronic system with bar-code paper boarding passes. So it installed about 350 touch screen ticket readers powered by Dell OptiPlex desktops. The bar code gives Southwest more information to automatically reconcile the number of boarding passes with the number of passengers that actually board the plane.

Although the technology will help Southwest Airlines remain efficient by consolidating passenger information for the company's 3,000 daily flights, there were concerns it could lengthen the time to get travelers on board. However it was found that scanning each bar code on the boarding passes didn't increase or shorten boarding schedules, but it did take minutes from administrative processes, such as looking up customer records. The new paper bar code system is giving Southwest ticket agents the ability to match a customer record within having to scroll through and log into multiple software screens. The process is much more automated. Once the bar code on the boarding pass is scanned at the terminal gate it checks off the person from the passenger list in real time.

The old process was manual that involved finding the information, scrolling through several software screens from reservations to check-in to boarding. The bar code hardware to scan the boarding passes has been deployed. The company is in the process of replacing customer service back-office equipment at airports including at its headquarters in Dallas.

Software Upgrades

Software applications, such as those used by clerks to check in passengers, are being replaced. Southwest Airlines' internally written "Airport Application Suite" is expected to rollout next year as the company transitions from green screens to Window-based user interface. Similar to Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Southwest Airlines believes in developing in-house the software that runs its operations. The company uses very little off-the-shelf software. There are between 75 and 100 projects in the works each year supported by approximately 900 IT employees.

RFID

Radio frequency identification technology, a favorable alternative to bar-coding for luggage identification, is also on Southwest's radar. It plans to test RFID technology sometime in 2006. Even though, Southwest is playing a little catch-up with other airlines such as Air Tran, Alaska and Champion Airlines, in many cases they are able leapfrog to more sophisticated applications easily having waited longer.

Challenges:

Southwest has emerged very successful, despite the most troubled times in the airline market. However, it faces new challenges in the face of increasing competition from other low fare airlines such as JetBlue, ATA airlines, America West.

Reserved Seating

Due to increasing security guidelines since September 2001, Southwest would need to prepare for assigned (reserved) seating to track its in-flight passengers. This change will involve large technology investments and may impact its gate operations negatively since the current way of unassigned seating has helped in quick gate turnarounds.

Passenger Demand

The keep-it-simple philosophy has served Southwest well. But as its own business grows and grows more complex, with plans to purchase dozens of new aircraft and an expected upsurge in passenger traffic to about 80 million boarding’s a year, the simplicity strategy that has been reflected in the airline's IT philosophy is evolving. The CIO Tom Nealon says that "It's time to adapt our business processes for efficiency. As our airline scales for us to provide the same kind of high-touch customer service, we have to automate a lot of things we've been able to do without technology previously. The challenge is doing that without conceding the customer touch." Southwest is also aggressively pursuing customer relationship management (CRM) techniques and has applications to get insight into customer’s wants and dislikes. According to an interview with its CEO Gary Keller, Southwest has its focus on improving in two areas - customer’s airport experience and in-flight experience.

In-Flight Entertainment

In an overall effort to improve customer’s in-flight experience, in-flight entertainment is something that Southwest is currently evaluating and which JetBlue has been very successful at already because of its introduction in its long-haul flights. In comparison, Southwest has 415 airplanes to consider and that represents an investment decision at a whole new dimension. Additionally, Southwest has to consider how things may fit into their environment. At this point, 60% of its service is still very short haul. Southwest needs to be mindful of the fact that a certain approach that has been successful for its competitor may not be necessarily work to its advantage.

Summary:

Southwest has long been regarded as a benchmark in its industry for operational excellence. Southwest Airlines is a fine example of a company that is committed to its core competencies - efficient operations to drive its low cost structure, outstanding delivery of customer service and innovative HR management practices. We hope this paper provided a good insight into Southwest operations, as part of its overall strategy, to achieve success and gain competitive advantage.

References:

1. [http://www.southwest.com] (Southwest airlines official web site)

2. “Southwest keeps it simple” - Air Transport World, April 2005, Pg 36

3. “Around the World on (or So): How High Can Discount Airlines Fly?“ Strategy Management - Knowledge@ Wharton Newsletter Oct 5, 2005

4. TechWeb - [http://www.techweb.com/wire/ebiz/173601227]

5. “Southwest's Strategy for Success: Consolidate!” - Oracle Magazine (Sept/Oct 2004 edition) http://www.oracle.com/technology/oramag/oracle/04-sep/o54swest.html

6. “Southwest Airlines: High Tech, Low Costs” - Eweek.com, April 2005

7. “Jet Fuel Hedging Strategies: Options Available for Airlines and a Survey of Industry Practices” – Kellogg School of Management Research Paper, Spring 2004

8. Winning Behavior: What the Smartest, Most Successful Companies Do Differently, Terry R. Bacon and David G. Pugh, 2003

9. Time Magazine, Oct 28th 2002 issue, Vol. 160 Issue 18, p. 45

10. “Wings Of Change”,Information Week, March 28, 2005,

11. Labor Contract Negotiations in the Airline Industry, Monthly Labor Review, July 2003, page 24

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Acer Aspire 5542g Review

The Acer 5542G is the company's replacement model for it's very popular 5536/5536G series. The new model comes with an improved processor and a whole new Tigris platform. It was after more than a week's wait and phone calls that I got hold of one Acer Aspire 5542G. From the moment I read the specification sheet, I have been very thrilled to get the machine in my hands. The specs boasts about a AMD Turion II 2.2 Ghz, 3GB DDR2 Memory, ATI 4570 Dedicated graphics card with a 512MB DDR3 memory and a quite generous 320GB Hard disk drive for a price tag of less than RS 34000, which is quite a tempting deal.

In this detailed review we will see how these specs meet the real performance needs.

Key features:

In this section, we will look in detail at the key components that makes up this laptop. I will also try to include as much specifications and details as available from the manufacturer's source.

Processor:

Acer Aspire 5542G comes with the second generation AMD Turion Processor (AMD Turion II M500) clocked at 2.2Ghz which houses a 1MB L2 Cache. The Turion II M500 is fabricated using the 45nm technology. It belongs to the Caspian generation of processors and supports HyperTransport 3.0 and hardware virtualization.

The Turion is AMDs answer to mobile processors, which provides excellent performance while keeping the power consumption at the minimum. The Turion processors generates less heat compared to AMD's desktop work horses that have a bad reputation in heat emission department. The Turion II being the next version of the decent performer Turion, it sets high expectations in terms of competing with the Core 2 Duos in the market. We will see how it scores in real performance when we benchmark it down the road.

Graphics Card: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 512MB DDR3

One of the main attractions of this laptop is the graphics engine that lies beneath the hood. The Acer 5542G comes with a dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 with 512 MB of DDR3 memory.

For those of you who are not clear about the difference between an integrated and a dedicated graphics solution, I'm adding a few words. An Integrated graphics solution (eg: the Intel's X4500) doesn't come with dedicated video memory; it eats up your system memory for graphics processing and thus the slower path between the system memory and the graphics engine causes the biggest bottle-neck when it comes to performance. Also the integrated graphics processor would be less powerful than a mainstream dedicated one in raw processing power. On the other hand, a dedicated graphics card will usually have a high speed dedicated video memory (eg: DDR3) which is coupled to the graphics processor. This removes the bottle neck and gives the card superior performance. The graphics processor on a dedicated card would usually support high-end effects provided by the latest DirectX and OpenGL APIs which gives the realism and visual-candy in the latest games.

The HD 4570 is a faster clocked version of the Mobility Radeon 4530/4330. It has a 64 Bit memory bus and comes with a 512MB DDR3 VRAM. The 512MB should be adequate for most gaming and graphics needs, unless you play in the craziest resolutions. (As rendering resolution increases, the more memory it needs). The DDR3 memory will meet the needs for the fastest and huge volume texture processing that modern games demand. However the 64 bit bus stands inferior to the 128 bit bus that most mainstream cards offer.

The ATI Mobility Radeon 4570 is based on the RV710 chip and it provides 80 stream processors. The Mobility Radeon also provides the video technology called Avivo HD that provides an on board 7.1 sound chip. The graphics solution also features a 2nd generation Unified Video Decoder that supports full bitstream decoding of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC and VC-1 streams. The 4570 graphics unit is capable of handling all video tasks including HD video decoding.

Display:

The Acer 5542G comes with a 15.6" High Definition LED backlit TFT LCD display that provides 220-nit high brightness and Acer's Cinecrystal display technology. The pure widescreen (16:9) display supports a maximum resolution of 1366X768 and provides a 60% color gamut. It has a high-def response time of 8ms.

Memory: There is nothing much to boast about a 3GB DDR2 800Mhz memory that comes with the Acer Aspire 5542G when compared to the current line of laptops many of which sports a 4GB under the hood. The 3GB is sufficient for most of the computing needs which can later be upgraded to 4GB. However the 3GB deal would appear reasonable when we keep the price tag of the Acer 5542G in mind.

Hard Disk Drive: Again there's nothing jaw dropping in this department. But I would say that the 320GB that comes with the Acer 5542G is generous for most of your storage needs.

Processor performance and benchmark:

I was initially reluctant to switch from the Intel's proven workhorse Core 2 Duo to the AMD's Turion family of processors. It is a widely accepted fact that the Intel's processor outperforms the AMD counter part, provided that both runs on the same clock speed; the main culprit being the lower L2 cache in AMDs. But my reluctance to move on to the AMD Turion II was swept away by the performance benchmarks. The AMD Turion II M500 2.2 Ghz outperforms the Intel Core 2 Duo 6670 2.2 Ghz. When AMD Turion II M500 scores a decent score of 1426, the Intel Core2 Duo 6670 managed to get only 1379, though the margin is not huge.

The Turion II M500 also scored higher in the Windows 7 performance rating with a score of 5.7 against the score of 5.5 of the Intel's Core 2 Duo 6600.

The Turion II without doubt has improved it's architecture dramatically compared to the previous generation Turion, which helps it to achieve a higher performance benchmark, while competing head-on with the Intel's counterpart, even though AMD Turion II M500 houses only 1MB L2 cache compared to the 2MB offered by the Intel's variants.

The AMD Turion II M500 is doubtlessly an excellent performer and is commendable for being the first AMD processor model overtaking the Intel Core 2 Duo along the performance lines, both of which are clocked at the same speed. Though the Turion II has only 1MB L2 Cache it brings excellent performance and computing power on a budget. The Turion II M500 processor gives the Acer 5542G with great number crunching efficiency, that was much noticeable when we ran tests involving compressing/extracting, Gaming and Video rendering using 3D graphics tools. The Acer 5542G showed brisk performance during daily computing, and the Windows responsiveness and multi-tasking were significantly quick.

Graphics card performance:

The Acer 5542G with the ATI Mobility Radeon 4570 with 512MB Dedicated DDR3 VRAM is not an exceptional performer in terms of the latest gaming standards. But very few laptops comes with a high end graphics card that meets the high-end gamer's needs and those machines will burn a hole in your wallet for sure. The HD 4570 in the Acer 5542G is a decent graphics card to play a little older game titles in full detail whereas when it comes to the most recent games, you might have to tweak the detail level to a medium to get reasonable frame rates.

The Acer 5542G is an excellent choice for gamer's on a budget as well as 3D Graphics designers and Animators.

I found the Acer 5542G delivering very smooth frame rates on Test Drive Unlimited even at the highest settings, though a video review of the Dell Studio 15 housing the same graphics card showed significantly lower frame rates in YouTube. May be the performance boost is due to the DDR3 Video Memory as well as the better number-crunching done by the AMD Turion II M500. The card fared really well in older titles like Need For Speed Most Wanted, Need For Speed UnderCover, Unreal Tournament 2003, and Crysis Warhead even at the highest detail settings with 1024X768 resolution and FSAA turned on. The Acer 5542G also delivered consistently playable frame rates in Microsoft Flight Simulator which is a quite resource hungry game, due to the presence of huge textures and extensive terrain.

Display performance:

The 220-nit high brightness display of the Acer 5542G, gives excellent display quality with good sharpness and contrast. It also delivers very good and accurate color reproduction (60% gamut). The viewability from sides is not exceptional, but is adequate. The only major disadvantage of the display is that it's high glossy finish attracts glare. Hence it is not suitable while viewing against any direct light source.

Audio Performance:

The Acer 5542G sports a Dolby certified audio system. The Realtek chip provides 32bit audio decoding and provides SP-DIF and Dolby Digital output. It also supports Dolby Headphone and Dolby Virtual Surround modes. It means you will be in audio bliss, if you connect the Acer 5542G to a nice home theatre or high-end headphones.

The built-in speakers of the Acer 5542G clearly lacks the bass and was a disappointment during our tests. The sound clearly lacks the thump element in it. It doesn't mean that the speakers are worthless. The speakers give you very nice high and medium range frequencies quite well. The audio volume levels were loud enough and will be adequate if you are not in the middle of a very noisy environment.

Battery:

The Acer 5542G comes with a 6-cell battery pack. It would probably disappoint you, if you are looking for a laptop with 3+ hours battery backup. The lower battery backup can be attributed to the modestly big 15.6" display paired with the dedicated graphics card that can drain out quite a lot of battery power. With the screen brightness at low, I was able to obtain a 2 hours 50 minutes backup with no audio, video or games turned on. At highest performance setting, you can expect roughly two hours of battery backup.

Heating:

Being an AMD based laptop most of us who have used an AMD based sytem would have concerns about over-heating. Stay cool. The Acer 5542G handles heat well. When you use it for extended hours for your daily computing needs, it doesn't generate any significant heat. I found the heat near the palm rest regions less compared to some other Intel based competing laptop models. The Acer 5542G has adequate ventilation at the bottom and has a vent at the back, that blows the hot air out. The fan steps into high speed the instant things start getting hot.

It doesn't mean that the Acer 5542G won't generate heat at all. The moment you start playing games, the rosy picture changes. Though the Acer 5542G's body remained just warm, the vent at the rear end was blowing out really hot air, which obviously means heavy heat generation, though it gets displaced well. Though the Acer 5542G gets away with the heat quite well, it would be a good choice to get an efficient laptop cooling pad if you are into serious gaming.

Other components:

The Acer 5542G comes with a good DVD Writer, Bluetooth, Wireless LAN etc. These devices performs quite well and doesn't seem to have any specific points worth mentioning.

Accessories:

The laptop comes with a nice backpack from Targus with Acer logo on it. The backpack has adequate space to carry some extra stuff in it while you are on the move. It's build quality is good and provides adequate cushioning for the laptop compartment.

Conclusion:

Acer 5542G is a laptop that brings great value to those on a budget, who need excellent processing and graphics performance. I highly recommend it for all gaming enthusiasts and graphics designers, owing to the excellent performance of the processor and the graphics solution built-in. It's powerful processor can meet most of the extreme computing needs unless your needs target the ultra-high-end like an i7. The Acer 5542G equipped with it's Turion II processor competes really well with the Core2 Duos out there; no need for the 'Will AMD perform equally well?' question anymore. It delivers brutal processing power.

If you are an audiophile who would play music through the laptop's built-in speakers round the clock, Acer 5542G may not be the best suit for you. If that is not a top-priority for you or if you have a nice home theatre/headphone, then the Acer 5542G gives you great joy in the audio department too, through it's Dolby processing and digital outputs. It all depends on your needs.

The battery suits the home computing / gaming / designing needs. It's 2+ hours backup can handle your presentation, on-the-go needs too, though a 3+ hours backup would have been more recommendable.

The laptop model I purchased comes loaded with Linpus linux operating system (command prompt only) and eliminates the Windows dependency, which helps the Acer 5542G keep its price down. You might also get a version with Windows pre-loaded but for a higher price tag.

Pros:

Excellent processor

Excellent graphics for designers and budget gamers

Good Looks

Quite sturdy design

Good Audio processing and digital out

HDMI

Cons:

Built-in speakers do not match the good audio processing and lacks bass completely

Glossy screen difficult to work with in direct light

Volume control keys could have been softer to touch

Arrow keys needs refinement

Pricing and final words:

This laptop is available in India in many online shopping websites at a sub RS 35k price tag. I got hold of one for RS 33700/- (approximately 717 USD) through a local dealer. With such reasonable price tag and compelling set of features, I strongly recommend the Acer 5542G.

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