Compaq revitalises depressed disclaimer market

Those readers who remember the result of our astounding 2001 email disclaimer contest, will doubtless enjoy the following effort from Compaq, courtesy of our man in the land of coffee and maracas.

The company recently donated 10 PCs to an Indian community centre in Chiapas, Mexico. Very laudable, but the subsequent press release regarding this piece of IT munificence had a couple of notes attached:

Founded in 1982, Compaq Computer Corporation is a world-class leader in the supply of technology and solutions. As industry leader, Compaq designs, develops, manufactures and markets hardware, software, solutions and enterprise services, in addition to critical business solutions. It also supplies communications products, desktop and laptop computers in over 200 countries. Compaq is a market leader in Latin America. Here it offers products by direct sale through its Internet stores and customer service centers, and through the distribution channel. More information about Compaq, its products and its services is available at clac.compaq.com.

Compaq and the Compaq logo are trademarks of Compaq Information Technologies Group, L.P. All reports, excluding those of historical fact, may be considered speculative. Risks, unforeseens and presumptions include: the posibility that the Hewlett-Packard/Compaq merger might not be fulfilled; that the companies be required to modify aspects of the proposal in order to achieve the approval of the regulatory bodies; that before the close of the proposed merger the business of both companies suffer due to unforseen circumstances; that the markets for certain products and services will not behave according to projections; that Compaq and Hewlett-Packard are not able to sell the transition to their clients, succesfully execute their integration strategies or achieve the planned synergies; other risks as described in the Securities and Exchange Commision reports regarding Compaq and Hewlett-Packard (including, but not limited to, the general ledgers of Compaq in the 10-K form for the year ended 31 December 2000, and the general ledgers of HP in the 10-K form for the year ended 31 October 2000 and other reports filed later). If any of these risks or unforseens became reality, or if it were to be proved that any of these projections is incorrect, Compaq's results may materially differ from Compaq's expectations in these reports. Compaq assumes no liability whatsoever and does not intend to revise the same.

Yup, that just about covers it. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Now, if that corporate caveat really rattled your cage, there's more bad news. In a move that has a ring of horrible inevitability about it, US company Red Earth Software has released Policy Patrol. Apparently, this NEW DISCLAIMER SOFTWARE IMPROVES EFFECT OF DISCLAIMER NOTICE (their caps, btw), offering advanced disclaimer functionality such as user-based disclaimers, formatting and merge fields. These features increase the relevancy of disclaimers and thus improve their efficacy.

But how, you gasp, is this possible? Well, Policy Patrol allows companies to add more specific disclaimer notices by offering user-based and context sensitive disclaimers. The user-based disclaimer functionality enables companies to adjust statements according to a particular user or department, therefore increasing the relevance of the disclaimer.

Magnus Andersson, technical director of Red Earth Software, continues: "We designed Policy Patrol because the current offer of disclaimer functionality is very basic. Larger companies cannot settle for the same disclaimer for everyone within their organization. They need a flexible, professional disclaimer solution that can be adjusted to their exact needs. With the increasing use of disclaimers, non-specific disclaimers are simply not having the desired effect any more."

Spot on. And when people start to ignore html formatted disclaimers, we can look forward to Flash pop-up disclaimers and DHTML drop-down caveats. Onwards and upwards.®

Bootnote

Since you're no doubt now fired up with renewed enthusiasm for the future of email disclaimers, why not download the Red Earth Software's 'Email disclaimers' white paper here.

Disclaimer: We have not in fact ourselves downloaded this disclaimer white paper and can therefore not be held responsible for its content or any side-effects resulting from exposure to same. Your statutory rights are not affected. May contain traces of nuts.