MadOnion's SupportMark enhances NVIDIA partner's customer support capabilities

Saratoga, CA – October 8th, 2002 – MadOnion.com™, the leading provider of PC performance information and web services, today announced a strategic partnership with NVIDIA Corporation, the worldwide leader in visual processing solutions, which will result in enhanced customer support experience and drive down costs for NVIDIA system builders.
By utilizing MadOnion’s expertise in PC information collection and processing, NVIDIA now offers its system builders the ability to collect critical data on individual PC configurations – before spending time with the end-user. MadOnion’s service enables real-time capture of respondents’ hardware and software configurations. This results in substantial cost savings for customer support organizations. Until now, attempts to determine reliable configuration data by asking end-users resulted in increased time on the phone and higher customer support costs.
“SupportMark provides immediate and personalized support information for our system builders,” said Oliver Baltuch, Director of Strategic Marketing at NVIDIA. “This new service can help reduce our customers service costs, while providing a unique online help experience for the end users.” The main goal of NVIDIA and its System Builders is to deliver worldwide support services that ensure the highest level of customer satisfaction and loyalty.
"As businesses continue to leverage the power of the Internet to provide customers with optimal support, companies must adapt to meet full-time support expectations, while reducing costs," said Tero Sarkkinen, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at MadOnion.com. “The typical end user has no idea about a PC’s exact configuration and settings. SupportMark is targeted specifically for system builder’s needs. It scans users PCs and sends critical information to customer support, while slashing the time it takes to handle a customer’s case. The service has proven to reduce customer support costs by as much as 70%”.
The service set-up requires only minimum configuration, and can be enabled in as little as 30 minutes. In order to enable seamless integration with existing enterprise applications, such as CRM and ERP systems, SupportMark uses XML as its data format. The service also uses XSL styling for flexible formatting of data for display to various parties.
A detailed white paper that outlines SupportMark's technology and benefits is available online at here.
The SupportMark customer support tool is the first of its kind provided by a major component manufacturer to its partners worldwide. MadOnion.com expects that SupportMark will become a ubiquitous tool for a significant number of IT customer support organizations, including software publishers, PC integrators, component manufacturers, retailers and corporate IT support organizations.

Pricing and Availability
The new SupportMark service is available immediately to customer support organizations worldwide via MadOnion’s web site at www.madonion.com. Pricing is based on number of cases processed, starting at $149.95 per month.
For NVIDIA System Builders, the service is available via the NVIDIA Select Builder program with an exclusive offer. For information on NVIDIA’s Select Builder program visit www.nvidia.com/selectbuilder.

About NVIDIA
NVIDIA Corporation is a visual computing technology and market leader dedicated to creating products that enhance the interactive experience on consumer and professional computing platforms. Its graphics and communications processors have broad market reach and are incorporated into a wide variety of computing platforms, including consumer digital-media PCs, enterprise PCs, professional workstations, digital content creation systems, notebook PCs, military navigation systems and video games consoles. NVIDIA is headquartered in Santa Clara, California and employs more than 1,400 people worldwide. For more information, visit the company’s Web site at www.nvidia.com.

About MadOnion.com
MadOnion.com™ is a leading provider of PC performance information and web services. MadOnion.com™ is known around the world for its benchmark products, including the 3DMark® Series and PCMark™2002 (with more than 30 million copies distributed worldwide) and value-added services powered by a database of over 4 million real life benchmarking results. MadOnion.com™ has offices in Saratoga, California and Helsinki, Finland. For more information, please visit www.madonion.com.

Company Contacts:
MadOnion.com Inc.
Tero Sarkkinen
Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing
+1-408-517-0131
tero@madonion.com
NVIDIA
Derek Perez
Director of Public Relations
+1-408-486-2512
dperez@nvidia.com

Agency Contact:
TechWire International
Leo Pot
+1-831-429-6288
information@ezwire.com