To say the least what Hewlett Packard (HP) had to offer was absorbingly fascinating. Whether it was supreme salesmanship or just plain statements of fact was not of importance. But, the HP MultiSeat Computing Solution demonstrated last week, gave out intense signals that energy savings were not merely clichés but actual pointers to save power.

Vice President & General Manager, Personal Systems Group, South East Asia, Taiwan & Korea, HP Singapore (Sales) Pte. Ltd. NG Tian Chong said South East Asia (SEA) is the third fastest growing IT market globally.

With a population base of some 600 million people and $1.47 Trillion GDP, SEA eclipses the US market The US capacity is 30 Billion Dollars.

The impact of Market Broad Head Spending is that most SEA counties were not devastated by the recent global monetary crash, he noted.

In context of peace in Sri Lanka, it would not be out of place to suggest that the IT market would grow significantly more in sync with consumer growth, particularly the education sector. He was confident although Sri Lanka was relatively small in size, financial outlook possibilities are substantial. Peace dividends are not insignificant and would have positive impacts on the IT market.

"It would not be long before the Sri Lanka market expands. We on our part have positive plans to sustain and expand our supply base. HP will look forward to be in place when IT applications will inevitably show upward movement with Sri Lanka as an important hub for such activity", he said.

The HP system on view that evening was that business options and savings on power were real rather than imaginary.

He also said growing trends are that Note Books are increasingly user- friendly. Convenient handling included thin and light weight convenience for use at most locations.

Indonesia is substantially big in market possibilities but that did not leave other countries in the SEA archipelago in a second best category. MultiSeat computing is the growing trend and realty in energy savings were factual.

Education Solutions, Business Development Manager, Personal Systems Group, South East Asia, Taiwan & Korea, HP Singapore, Anthony LIM said the Education sector, is appropriately the growing base for the MultiSeat computing. Personal computers in the classroom are in the Asian context, the student to computer ratio was 40:1. This, he said, is as good as not including IT in the school curriculum. The ideal would be that each student should operate an allocated desk top. But given that possibility heat generation alone would sharply rise within the class premises and could cause extreme discomfort. Most tropical countries are in warm atmospheric conditions, and heat generation because of desk tops would render an environment problem and also result in serious health hazards; let alone affecting concentration.

Wellington Perera of Microsoft itemised detailed interaction and confluence of HP and Microsoft. He said there were approximately 300 schools in the country already in the School PC programme; and about 15,000 students have taken advantage of such instruction.

According to the department of Education total number of schools in the country was approximately 9300. Most were in remote locations with no power to drive IT applications.