The book GO FOR BROKE! Tales of Technopreneurship, edited by veteran Malaysian technojournalist and new media advocate Oon Yeoh, is a rich and highly readable resource for those who want to learn about the various approaches, philosophies, trials and tribulations of 21 prominent entrepreneurs who have made their mark on the local, regional and international technology scene.

The term “technopreneur” is most likely a uniquely Malaysian construct to mean a technology entrepreneur or an entrepreneur involved in technology, since the term can neither be found in Wikipedia nor the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, hereinafter referred to as "the dictionary."

According to the dictionary, an entrepreneur is “a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risk in the hope of profit,” which can be any business person, including a street vendor selling char koay teow, nasi lemak or roti canai -- popular Malaysian roadside cuisine.

However, many in Malaysia’s information technology circles tend to regard an entrepreneur as someone who starts an enterprise, which according to the dictionary is “a project or undertaking, especially a bold one,” so perhaps a more accurate term would be an enterpriser, though in line with the popular understanding, so semantics aside, we’ll stick with entrepreneur for now.

Large screen projectors bring back fond memories of my days as a customer service engineer with Rediffusion Malaya.

Back then those Electrohome ECP 2000 and ECP 3000 projectors which our Special Systems Division sold in the 1980s had three cathode ray tubes (CRT) as the projection element, and we sold the ECP 3000 for around RM80,000 to RM90,000 apiece in 1980s ringgits.

Hence, they were mostly affordable to government agencies, universities, big corporations and perhaps a few millionaire pioneers of home cinema, while lower end competitors' three-gun CRT offerings were used in karaoke lounges.