•Acer wins largest server contract this year with Department of Education, Employment and Training, Victoria •Acer to provide 1,660 Intel Xeon-based servers •Acer wins position on DEET PC panel

Sydney, 16 October 2003 – Acer Computer Australia, the number three PC brand in Australia*, has today announced the Victorian Department of Education, Employment and Training (DEET-VIC) has selected Acer server technology to deliver the power and manageability required for its ongoing data management. Continuing to demonstrate Acer’s leadership in the education market, Acer will provide 1,660 Intel Xeon-based servers to the department, and is estimated to be the largest server contract awarded this year.

Set to be fulfilled over an eight-month period, the first delivery of Acer Altos G510 servers is scheduled for immediate delivery. The Acer Altos G510 server makes up the majority of the contract, a server that is not only scalable and flexible enough to support current operations, but is ideal to accommodate future growth potential.

"This is an exciting opportunity to assist DEET-VIC to further improve IT facilities to the education network by delivering Acer customised solutions," said Michael Cefai, National Education & Government Sales Manager, Acer Computer Australia. “This win confirms Acer’s position as number one in the Education sector. It is estimated that the size of the Server panel business for Acers nominated Education dealers is at least double the amount of the cases rollout in the state government school market. Thus, the panel business fulfilment will be handled by the Acer Education reseller channel.”

"Further to this, Acer has also secured a position on the DEET PC panel contract of three where 100% of fulfilment will be done by the Acer nominated education reseller channel"

“In 2002, Acer won the largest PC contract In Australia to deploy over 22,000 desktop PCs to 1,700 DEET-VIC schools in the metro and regional area’s of Victoria. In 1998, Acer succeeded in securing the deal to provide over $98.75million of notebook technology to DEET-VIC a deal that, at the time was the second largest in the notebook PC deployment in the world, “ continued Mr. Cefai. “The successful of deployment of the 33,000 notebooks and 22,000 desktops certainly demonstrated to DEET-VIC Acer’s expert capabilities in delivering successful rollouts.”

* Source: Gartner Dataquest, July 2002 -ends-

About Acer Computer Australia Established in 1990, Acer Computer Australia has 250 employees, a head office in Sydney and sales and service offices in Melbourne, Perth, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane and Hobart. Uniload, an award winning build-to-order facility located in Sydney, enables Acer to efficiently deliver high-quality customised systems such as ultra powerful multimedia desktop computers, ultra portable notebooks and industry-leading servers directly to its customers.

In line with its commitment to the Australian market, Acer made a property investment of approximately A$15 million in Homebush Bay, where the head office building is located. These premises include a 1,200-sqm-assembly plant, which has a current capacity of 24,000 PCs per month and a 3,000-sqm-warehouse facility.

Acer is dedicated to being a good corporate citizen in the Australian marketplace. With this in mind, Acer established a $30M dollar Venture Capital Fund to invest in innovative Australian IT companies.

Acer is a world leading PC manufacturer, with a strong commitment to total customer satisfaction. Acer continues to strengthen its reputation as an industry leader by consistently delivering high-quality products and services. *According to Gartner Group’s Dataquest July 2002 report, Acer was the number three PC brand in Australia, number one in Government, number two in Education, and the fastest growing brand, recording 189% year-on-year quarterly growth for Q2, 2002.

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