Welcome to Userful, Managed Desktops Done Right. This is our website for our new proposal, Penguin Friends.

Firstly, What is Userful?

We developed Userful because we saw a problem with the current computer market. Userful is a company that sells three main products, Userful Desktop, Userful Multiplier, and Userful Manager. These products help customers to have worry-free computers through a secure managed desktop, as well as expand one computer into 10 different work stations. For more information on our products, click here.

Privately held and founded in 1999, Userful has been experiencing rapid growth and was recently named Alberta's 10th fastest growing company under $20 million in revenue. (Userful.com)

We're continuing to grow. Our platform is delivering affordable desktop computing worldwide through an expanding network of partners and resellers, and we are excited about the future. (Userful.com)

Want to know more? Or meet our Management Team? Visit the main Userful website!

Penguin Friends Executive Summary:

What is Penguin Friends?

• An investigation into the possibility of remaking our products for Windows and Macintosh, from a solely Linux based line

Why Penguin Friends?

• Schools provide a large potential market for our products

• Many school computer labs run on Windows or Macintosh operating systems

Penguin Friends Needs:

• Funding to hire a consultant to analyse the possibilities and write a report on the feasibility of remaking our products for Windows and Macintosh

• We are requesting a total amount of $50,000 from our investors in order to hire a consultant and complete the research within a 6 month period

Userful and Penguin Friends:

Userful has recently had much success in the education market, and we want to continue that success. Our current line of product, Userful Desktop, Userful Multiplier, and Userful Manager are extremely effective and useful for schools today. Thus far we have partnered with OMNI and Novell to create the Free the Penguins Initiative.

The problem that many schools experience is that computers are expensive to buy, to maintain, and to upgrade, but they only have a limited budget. Userful products help to make computers much more cost effective in schools, as well as safer for our children. We can do this with Userful Multiplier (which allows you to use one computer as 10) and Useful Desktop (which allows you to easily block web sites, and will automatically delete session info such as downloaded files, so you don't have to worry about viruses). So far Userful has experienced great success in countries such as South Africa (see a case study by Omni Technology Solutions, a Userful Partner).

However, our current line of products are based on the Linux operating system. While we have begun initiatives to encourage schools that already operate on Linux to adopt our products (Free the Penguins), there are many schools in North America that are based on Windows, and many computer labs with Macintosh operating systems. By limiting ourselves to Linux machines, we are greatly limiting the potential market for our products.

This pitch is asking for investment funds to look at the possibility of remaking our products for Windows and Macintosh operating systems. We are realistic: Rome was not built in a day, and our products will not be remade for Windows or Mac easily. We are not asking for funding blindly. We are simply asking for funding to investigate whether or not it is possible to remake our products, because if it is, we would open our company up to a very large market in North America. Please take a few minutes to view our pitch below.

Penguin Friends Proposal Pitch:

Note: If you are having trouble with the video, there are different options available for download below the video.

If you'd like to know more about investing in our company at large, please visit our investor page here.

Read about our recent project, Green PC's, for which we received a one-million dollar investment.

To learn more about Userful's existing partners, or to learn more about becoming a Userful Partner, please visit our Partner Page.

"Windows XP, the seven-year-old predecessor to Vista, continues to be a preferred option for many schools, because it allows them to run applications that don't always work with Vista. Switching to Vista also would force school systems to spend thousands of dollars to update hardware that has proven incompatible with Microsoft's new OS." - By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

"Trey Litel, a marketing manager for HP, said many school district IT managers have hesitated to embrace Windows Vista, because it could require an overhaul—or at least a significant upgrade—of a district's computer infrastructure." - By Dennis Carter, Assistant Editor, eSchool News

Penguin Friends Proposal Pitch Downloads:

• Powerpoint File, Powerpoint 2007 (Above powerpoint minus video) Download
• Powerpoint File, Powerpoint 1997-2003 (Above powerpoint minus video) Download
• Flash Video File (Above video, full resolution) Download
• Flash Video File (Above video, full resolution) Video. It will open in a new window. Recommend viewing at Fullscreen
• Flash Video File (Above video, same resolution - what is shown above) Download
• Flash Video File (Above video, same resolution) Video. It will open in a new window

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