Corrections or additions?
This article by Barbara Fox was prepared for the April 30, 2003 edition of U.S. 1 Newspaper. All rights reserved.
On the Move: PC Help Desk
Arsen Areyan and Allison Charles have opened a telephone-based
help desk to solve software and hardware problems for home and business
users. For $99 per year ($79 for home users) businesses can get expert
technical support for any hardware or software that attaches to a
PC.
Those who choose to use per-incident pricing will pay $7.95 for an
E-mail question and will be guaranteed a response in four hours for
business users, 12 hours for home users. A phone-based call will be
$14.95 for an unlimited time, with no charge per minute. The service
is available from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
"We thought support should be affordable to everyone, not just
to business users," says Areyan, when asked to comment on the
unusually low price. "We offer expert technical support for most
major software titles, operating systems, business applications, hardware
components, PC systems, laptops, scanners, PDAs, printers, dial up
and networking applications — anything attached to a computer.
And we will make recommendations on equipment."
Areyan, an immigrant from Russia, graduated with honors in 1996 from
Brooklyn College, having majored in psychology and minored in computers.
He studied psychology at the graduate level at New York University,
"but computers interested me more." Then, working for IBM
in PCs and networking, he did desktop support for the 3,200 Lucent
end-users at Murray Hill.
Allison Charles, the marketing director, went to College of Staten
Island, Class of 1978, and has an MBA from New York University. Allison
is an unusual name for a man, he admits "I’m big enough that no
one bothered me," says Charles, "but people often switch my
first and last names." His father worked in hospital support services,
and his career in health care management for hospitals involved supporting
PC-based laboratory information systems. He met his business partner
through a hospital contact — Areyan’s mother, a DNA researcher
who manages an oncology department.
Areyan says his firm wants to eliminate hold times. "We will structure
end user calls differently from the way that corporations do."
Most product-based help desks require users to jump many hurdles on
the first tier of questions. "People end up spending a considerable
amount of time explaining their problem, then they have to explain
it again on tier 2. But we will have only two tiers, tier 2 (advanced)
and tier 3. We will ask 1 or 2 questions and proceed to the diagnosis,
not wait for a tier 2 engineer to call back."
"In our opinion, the cost is very affordable," says Areyan.
"Business users can have up to 50 people on an account. Users
can take advantage of our incentives — members get 10 percent
off the following year, and a member who refers a client get 15 percent
off the next year."
The company’s business model is based on three employees who work
virtually. "To talk you through setting up something — this
kind of stuff is my passion," says Areyan. "I live it. People
are always going to get stuck and they would rather talk to someone
on the phone than get their problem solved by E-mail."
Arsen Areyan, partner. 609-799-7997; fax, 609-799-4576. Www.fastpcsupport.com
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Property Sold
Peter Blicher has sold Pennington Point, a 30,000 square
foot office center, for $5.25 million. The two two-story buildings
were constructed five and seven years ago and are fully leased.
The new owners are Sheri and Robert Costantini, principals in MBHK
Properties LLC, and the company name represents the initials of their
children — four children under six years of age. The Costantinis
began their real estate endeavors by buying and renovating a house
in Trenton seven years ago. Robert Costantini has a Quakertown-based
construction company, Sycamore Construction.
Al Toto, of Commercial Property Network, brokered the deal for both
seller and buyer.
A-20, Pennington 08534. Peter Blicher, president. 609-737-8383; fax,
609-737-0051. Home page: www.penprop.com
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Under Contract
08540. Donald L. Drakeman, president and CEO. 609-430-2880; fax, 609-430-2850.
E-mail: information@medarex.com. Home page: www.medarex.com
Medarex announced an April 25 agreement with the University of Massachusetts
to co-develop antibodies for severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).
Medarex will supply its UltiMAb mouse to develop the fully human antibodies.
The contract calls for Medarex and the university to share development
costs and future revenue.
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Jobs Commission
Princeton University President Shirley M. Tilghman will
co-chair the new Commission on Jobs, Growth and Economic Development,
which will have its first meeting on Thursday, May 1.
The commission was created by the James McGreevey administration to
bolster the state’s economy and create jobs. "The commission will
set forth a blueprint to enable New Jersey to not simply compete in
the new economy, but to thrive and prosper in the coming decade,"
McGreevey said. "We have the ability to make New Jersey the premier
state for research, development and innovation — and to encourage
companies to build facilities here and create high-paying jobs for
skilled workers."
Tilghman’s two co-chairs are the governor and Roy Vagelos, retired
chairman of Merck & Co.
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New in Town
1 South, North Brunswick 08902. Peggy Walters, branch manager. 732-530-8100;
fax, 732-530-2027. E-mail: pwalters@utcu.org. Www.teletechfcu.org
United Teletech, a not-for-profit financial cooperative chartered
in 1967 to serve Bell Labs employees has a new shopping center office
in North Brunswick. Based in Tinton Falls, it now has more than 220
member companies and 27,000 members.
Membership qualifications can include having an immediate family member
as an employee of AT&T, Lucent Technologies, or Telcordia Technologies
in Monmouth County or Piscataway. Or a family member can works for
a firm that provides contract services to one of those companies.
Or you can be a retiree from, or have a deceased spouse who worked
for, one of the companies.
Another membership category are those who work for, or have an immediate
family member that is employed by, one of the more than 100 employee
groups listed on the website, everything from a lawn service to a
day camp.
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In the News
Montgomery Professional Center, Princeton 08558. David Fein MD,
director. 609-430-0752; fax, 609-430-8470.
Princeton Longevity Institute electronic beam tomography scanner was
featured in the April 22 Wall Street Journal in a full page essay
by Kevin Helliker, chief of the WSJ’s Chicago bureau.
Helliker visited the Institute as a journalist to experience the battery
of exams that would reveal his biological age, versus his chronological
age, but the scan showed that he had an aortic aneurysm that could
require eight-hour aortic replacement surgery.
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Stock News
Road, Windsor Business Park, Building 2-A, Box 7528, Princeton 08543-7528.
Robert V. Tarantino, president and CEO. 609-799-0071; fax, 609-936-1369.
Dataram will close its manufacturing facility in Aarhus, Denmark,
reducing its workforce by 28 percent, but no jobs will be lost in
the United States, says Robert Tarantino, president and CEO. "In
light of the general economic uncertainty and with no indication of
a dramatic upturn in corporate IT spending, we can no longer justify
maintaining two production facilities with the associated overheads,"
says Tarantino. "Our production capacity in the U.S. is more than
sufficient to meet current levels of demand."
Dataram offers gigabyte-class memory for high-end workstations and
servers and specialized memory products for OEM customers. To consolidate
all manufacturing into a Bucks County facility, which has 50 employees,
is expected to save $7 million annually, says Tarantino. The Princeton-Hightstown
Road headquarters has 62 employees. The firm will maintain sales offices
in Denmark, France, Germany and the U.K.
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Expansions
Princeton 08540. Koushik Roy, vice president. 609-520-0564; fax, 609-520-8849.
E-mail: sales@checkspert.com. Www.checkspert.com
Checkspert moved a four-person office from 650 College Road across
the highway to Forrestal Village, where it has enough room, 1,900
square feet, to expand its staff to 15 people. Thomas March of Colliers
Houston represented the tenant and Greg Lezynski represented the landlord.
The company is an online verifiable certification provider, and it
has a product that will monitor students taking online tests (U.S.
1, February 26).
08542-. Derek Smith, president. 609-921-1188. Home page: www.edivise.com
Derek Smith moved his consulting company from a home office on Farber
Road to 145 Witherspoon Street and has a new phone number. He consults
in three areas: software, and solutions. "Strategy — identifying
and planning for the best use of technology in order to achieve business
goals. Software — providing software tools and enhancements that
allow employees to be more effective with their time, and solutions
— assisting companies with the implementation of technology into
their business."
A computer science major at Whitworth College in Spokane, Washington,
Class of 1997, Smith had been an IT manager in Atlanta, for the Injoy
Group. He moved to Princeton with his wife, a student at Princeton
Theological Seminary.
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Deaths
expert with more than 100 patents, he was retired from the Sarnoff
Corporation.
at Princeton University.
owned DC’s Gallery in the Southfield Shopping Center.
Corrections or additions?
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