In contrast to Microsoft Office 2003? About a year ago my regular laptop was a P-III 600MHz/512Meg RAM and OpenOffice.org 2.0 ran just fine after the initial load time. Microsoft Office on the same machine wasn't much faster.
Besides, I have been a teacher in middle/high school. What they do there, is frankly, not very high level and can be done in OpenOffice 2.x as well as in Microsoft Office. As a matter of fact, it would be better to adopt OpenOffice for the simple reason that if you give assignments, you never know what results you get. One kid might have Microsoft Office XP in French at home, the other Microsoft Office 97 in German and a third Microsoft Office 2000 in Portugese (Sorry, I live in a very much multilingual country) Giving assignments in the IT classes was always fucked up. So with OpenOffice you could simple hand out CDs and tell them to install that. Well, I could have, if I the educational system in my country wasn't Microsofts Bitch.
So, you have to tell them to pirate it (For some people, the 150€ that the Student edition costs, is a lot of money)... Two lessons later when you catch a kid downloading MP3s illegally, you're supposed to give them a stern talk about how bad piracy is. No wonder I quit and went back to programming. Be damned the buckets of vacation I lost.
No, my paranoia is real... I've had a few CD's that tried to install stuff (if I let it) and some that are simply unrippable. I learnt my lesson. I do not pirate. I personally now sponsor people whose music I like. Examples would be Jonathan Coulton and Mr Pitifulmusic. I do not appreciate at all that you're calling me a pirate. I haven't pirated anything since my college days and that's 10 years ago. I put my money where I think it is founded. DRMed CD's arent worth supporting.
Besides, as said: I did not buy any CDs in the last three years. During that period I only bought iTunes music and independent musicians.
Finally, it's "affect" not "effect" in that context.
You're welcome. I go every twe weeks to the recycling centre to get rid of my paper, glass and plastics. I just can't help it to check the electronics bin.;-)
Okay, granted on the software level, you're right. However, if you own a small business, wouldn't you like to at least have a grasp of what the accountants whom you give your information are doing? At least to avoid being butt-raped by them. In that light, it isn't even a software issue, it's a common sense issue.
Since you're on slashdot, you must be halfway competent... Take an afternoon on a clean Debian install (that isn't hard) and install SQL Ledger. At least try it instead of whining, that won't get you anywhere. SQL Ledger seems to be perfect for small business.
If I could do the technical install, so can you as a slashdot user. Since you seem to be a small business owner, you ought to be able to do do basic accounting. It is a learning curve, sure... That there isn't a drop-in solution for any small business owner, okay... However you made clear that (for a non-technical person) Quickbook is going to suck and be a data hazard. This is why in my country you are required to hire accounting services if you do not have an accounting degree. I asked my father in law, who is a business owner, if he was interested in SQL Ledger. He wasn't. Want to know why? Not because he uses Quickbooks because the service company who manages his books provides him with the software at no charge. Accounting as a service and software as a tool. RMS would like it (if it were Open Source, I doubt it is...).
Why? There is no reason. I have a cron job which mounts a external USB harddisk and which backup up every night. Results are sent to email. It isn't that hard, and not that costly.
I've got a P-III 800MHz/768Meg and an AMD Athlon64 2800+/2Gig... Both run OpenBSD, a plethora of services (actually they do exactly the same thing in different locations) and in "felt performance" is the same. For a small home server, anything beyond 800MHz is overkill.
I also have a 800MHz/512Meg Duron that plays database server and runs SQL Ledger. That's it. Anytime I ask uptime, I get 0.0 usages. It essentially doesn't do shit.
My old servers were P-I 166MHz class machines. Those did choke on IMAP. But that's about it. (Never ran a database on them though)
You're of course, entirely right. That's why I mentioned the two conditions. Now, I know this anecdotal evidence, but I haven't seen a motherboard that couldn't boot from USB that was manufactured in the last three years. I know that isn't a long time, I know there are a lot of PCs out there that can't. In my "computer parc" there are only four out of ten (don't ask) computers that can boot from USB. Those that can't are simply "older", but do come with an optical drive which is bootable.
So, in the end the only thing that matters is that this particular 200$ PC can boot from USB. If it can, there are simply no worries. That was the main point of my post.
IMHO any person running a small business should at least take a course in accounting. (As a matter of fact, I know that any "Master" of a trade in my country had accounting as a mandatory subject) That said, I live in Europe. I've never heard of anyone using Quickbooks. Accounting isn't that hard, my dad explained me a few things.... Most of it was easy and logical.
Besides, what do you know what SQL Ledger can export... May be quite a few formats. I haven't looked into the export functions. If it doesn't exist, and my sister would need it... I've written SAP Export procedures for large accounting systems. Can't be that hard.
I can imagine that many here will have a hard time seeing the utility of a device like this because it doesn't have the horsepower for gaming or 3D rendering.
Are you new here? Most of us see a use in such machines. Heck, I'm a notorious dumpster diver, and specs like this are a "gem find" for me. Consider this: it's a kickass small server for the price. Sure, it won't run a whole corporate network, but if it's relatively quiet, I could run a fileserver on it (replace the 60Gig with something bigger)... A nice firewall (not sure if one can add a second NIC), or simply a nice computer for the kids. After all it comes in cheery colours, and they can run an x-session to the home server for more heavy duty stuff.
People around here love things like Soekris boards or Gumstix modules and you should have read the enthousiasm about the EEE PC. For 200$ (135€), I'd buy one without thinking. Heck, I'll take three!
Why? My sister became a freelance last year. I set her up a Debian Box with postgesql and SQL Ledger. I did the technical side. Both my dad and my sister have quite extensive accounting experience and they set the business side up in no time. Works like a charm and her invoices look great.
Now she can do her accounting at home, while the server stays in my dads basement. SSH tunnels are lovely.
Some people buy four by fours because they think that even though they haven't ever gone off road,
Who says that 4x4 means offroad? I have one word for you: Quattro. (Along with 4Motion [Same as Quattro], Subaru, BMW where in the model name there is an X without being an X3 or X5, or serveral Volvos.)
They were marketed here as luxury cars, and have always been loaded to the gill with electronics that go bad
I think you just pinpointed the problem. The US just saw a tiny amount of the available cars. You only get the "very high end" and back in those days electronics were not ready for prime-time in cars. My Audi had no electronics. The S in 1.8S means "Standard" and as such it had a carburetor, not injection. Even the windows were not electric. My father had a 1983 Audi 100 which ran for 13 years before a tree fell on it. No rust, no engine problems ever.
I once talked to the Volkswagen representative of US sales. Back then (a good ten years ago), he said that the only Jetta sellable was the R32, because a 1.8l 4-cylinder petrol engine was just not in demand. It had to be "big-blcok". The R32, being the only V6 3.2l engine in the Jetta series was as such the only car in demand. Of course, that's the most expensive model and comes with quite a few "extras" standard. In a similar vein, I assume that's why Audis of that period were loaded with tons of gimmicks that weren't really ready for prime time. Similar to the BMW series 7 iDrive fiasco.
Anyway, to me Audi means reliability. In the 3 years, I had the 80, I never had a problem. In the 8 years I had to TT, I had a problem once. A sensor went haywire and erroneously reported that the engine was overheating. It wasn't, but if the board computer flashes "overheating", you can believe me that you stop at once.
However, I'm not here to defend Audi.... It's just anecdotal evidence in the first place.
The reason I post is to explain the perceived inversion in fuel efficiency. We Europeans (perhaps not the people in the UK) do indeed use litres per 100km.
I think it's mainly a cultural difference: to us, it matters how much it will cost to get somewhere. Imagine I want to drive to my mother in law, who happens to live exactly 50km from where I live. As mentioned my car has a 10l/100km fuel efficiency. That means to get there, I have to sacrifice 5l of gas, or at current price of 1.3€/l (Unleaded 98oct RON) I have to spend 6.5€ to suffer her presence. Another 6.5€ to get back home.
In the US, fuel price doesn't (didn't) matter but the distance is very important because the US is very vast. (I went road tripping in the US, you have to see it for yourself if you're European) The priority lies thus on distance. So, if you know that you have a 25mpg car, and you have 15 gallon tank you know you can drive 375miles and as such you know your range, which is very important in a sparsely populated area where you might have to drive for hours before finding a gas station.
Of course, that's my interpretation. Now, there is also the idea that l/100km (or gallons/mile) is a better unit for comparing fuel efficiency. To me miles per gallon is completely unintuitive, so I'm not going to defend either. However, I found some interesting explanations by Googling around.
As for the multiplication by 100, I guess, that's to avoid having to use decimal points. I mean, 0.05l/km does sound a bit silly.;-)
Well, I couldn't do it myself (I could have learned, I guess). However, you are right: I could bring it to any mechanic and they could do work on it. I did give it regular maintenance and it wasn't all that expensive.
Hmmmm... Perhaps buy an older European made car? My second car was an 1987 Audi 80 (1.8S). It was 11 years old when I bought it and paid a whopping 2875€ for it in 1998. I had it while I was a student, and it did 7.5l/100km (31mpg) on the highway and a comfortable 9l/100km for city driving.
My current car does 10l/100km when driving responsibly. It's considered a gas-guzzler where I live (Europe), but with the current prices it's still manageable.
Especially that I calculated that switching to a 5l/100km Diesel such as the one my wife has, would only start to pay back after 15 years. (With my yearly mileage, selling my current car, and assuming the price difference between Diesel/Gas stays the same)
I question your knowledge.... You say XP followed ME. That isn't remotely true. There was a consumer line which went 95, 98, ME. All of those were worthless. The professional line on the other hand went NT 3.51, NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP. None of those were worthless. They all were great within the time the lived. XP was NEVER a decendant of ME. Learn your OS history, please.
Up until recently, I used a 15" LCD flatscreen which I bought in 2000 when they were so rare that they cost a fortune. I retired it last year so, I don't use it anymore, but then I use my Athlon MP 2400+ 4Gig RAM machine anymore either (retired at the same time). Why? Because we needed the space and my wifes computer (which is a mere P-IV 2.6GH HT with 2Gig RAM) is more than sufficient and quieter.... Her monitor is a nice 19" LCD.
From my experience monitors, when not buying the bottom bargain, tend to last ages in comparison to computers.
It entirely depends where you live. I drive an Audi TT and it's considered a common car. You see at least half a dozen a day. Porsches? Dayly routine. Ferraris, yes, in the summer.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides, I have been a teacher in middle/high school. What they do there, is frankly, not very high level and can be done in OpenOffice 2.x as well as in Microsoft Office. As a matter of fact, it would be better to adopt OpenOffice for the simple reason that if you give assignments, you never know what results you get. One kid might have Microsoft Office XP in French at home, the other Microsoft Office 97 in German and a third Microsoft Office 2000 in Portugese (Sorry, I live in a very much multilingual country) Giving assignments in the IT classes was always fucked up. So with OpenOffice you could simple hand out CDs and tell them to install that. Well, I could have, if I the educational system in my country wasn't Microsofts Bitch.
So, you have to tell them to pirate it (For some people, the 150€ that the Student edition costs, is a lot of money)... Two lessons later when you catch a kid downloading MP3s illegally, you're supposed to give them a stern talk about how bad piracy is. No wonder I quit and went back to programming. Be damned the buckets of vacation I lost.
No, my paranoia is real... I've had a few CD's that tried to install stuff (if I let it) and some that are simply unrippable. I learnt my lesson. I do not pirate. I personally now sponsor people whose music I like. Examples would be Jonathan Coulton and Mr Pitifulmusic. I do not appreciate at all that you're calling me a pirate. I haven't pirated anything since my college days and that's 10 years ago. I put my money where I think it is founded. DRMed CD's arent worth supporting.
Besides, as said: I did not buy any CDs in the last three years. During that period I only bought iTunes music and independent musicians.
Finally, it's "affect" not "effect" in that context.
You're welcome. I go every twe weeks to the recycling centre to get rid of my paper, glass and plastics. I just can't help it to check the electronics bin. ;-)
Okay, granted on the software level, you're right. However, if you own a small business, wouldn't you like to at least have a grasp of what the accountants whom you give your information are doing? At least to avoid being butt-raped by them. In that light, it isn't even a software issue, it's a common sense issue.
Since you're on slashdot, you must be halfway competent... Take an afternoon on a clean Debian install (that isn't hard) and install SQL Ledger. At least try it instead of whining, that won't get you anywhere. SQL Ledger seems to be perfect for small business.
If I could do the technical install, so can you as a slashdot user. Since you seem to be a small business owner, you ought to be able to do do basic accounting. It is a learning curve, sure... That there isn't a drop-in solution for any small business owner, okay... However you made clear that (for a non-technical person) Quickbook is going to suck and be a data hazard. This is why in my country you are required to hire accounting services if you do not have an accounting degree. I asked my father in law, who is a business owner, if he was interested in SQL Ledger. He wasn't. Want to know why? Not because he uses Quickbooks because the service company who manages his books provides him with the software at no charge. Accounting as a service and software as a tool. RMS would like it (if it were Open Source, I doubt it is...).
I've got a P-III 800MHz/768Meg and an AMD Athlon64 2800+/2Gig... Both run OpenBSD, a plethora of services (actually they do exactly the same thing in different locations) and in "felt performance" is the same. For a small home server, anything beyond 800MHz is overkill.
I also have a 800MHz/512Meg Duron that plays database server and runs SQL Ledger. That's it. Anytime I ask uptime, I get 0.0 usages. It essentially doesn't do shit.
My old servers were P-I 166MHz class machines. Those did choke on IMAP. But that's about it. (Never ran a database on them though)
You're of course, entirely right. That's why I mentioned the two conditions. Now, I know this anecdotal evidence, but I haven't seen a motherboard that couldn't boot from USB that was manufactured in the last three years. I know that isn't a long time, I know there are a lot of PCs out there that can't. In my "computer parc" there are only four out of ten (don't ask) computers that can boot from USB. Those that can't are simply "older", but do come with an optical drive which is bootable.
So, in the end the only thing that matters is that this particular 200$ PC can boot from USB. If it can, there are simply no worries. That was the main point of my post.
I don't get it, but English isn't my native language.
IMHO any person running a small business should at least take a course in accounting. (As a matter of fact, I know that any "Master" of a trade in my country had accounting as a mandatory subject) That said, I live in Europe. I've never heard of anyone using Quickbooks. Accounting isn't that hard, my dad explained me a few things.... Most of it was easy and logical.
Besides, what do you know what SQL Ledger can export... May be quite a few formats. I haven't looked into the export functions. If it doesn't exist, and my sister would need it... I've written SAP Export procedures for large accounting systems. Can't be that hard.
Are you new here? Most of us see a use in such machines. Heck, I'm a notorious dumpster diver, and specs like this are a "gem find" for me. Consider this: it's a kickass small server for the price. Sure, it won't run a whole corporate network, but if it's relatively quiet, I could run a fileserver on it (replace the 60Gig with something bigger)... A nice firewall (not sure if one can add a second NIC), or simply a nice computer for the kids. After all it comes in cheery colours, and they can run an x-session to the home server for more heavy duty stuff.
People around here love things like Soekris boards or Gumstix modules and you should have read the enthousiasm about the EEE PC. For 200$ (135€), I'd buy one without thinking. Heck, I'll take three!
Why? My sister became a freelance last year. I set her up a Debian Box with postgesql and SQL Ledger. I did the technical side. Both my dad and my sister have quite extensive accounting experience and they set the business side up in no time. Works like a charm and her invoices look great.
Now she can do her accounting at home, while the server stays in my dads basement. SSH tunnels are lovely.
- Format them that way
- Have a motherboard that supports booting from USB
That's it, really...That was pretty much the whole point of Swampash....
I think you just pinpointed the problem. The US just saw a tiny amount of the available cars. You only get the "very high end" and back in those days electronics were not ready for prime-time in cars. My Audi had no electronics. The S in 1.8S means "Standard" and as such it had a carburetor, not injection. Even the windows were not electric. My father had a 1983 Audi 100 which ran for 13 years before a tree fell on it. No rust, no engine problems ever.
I once talked to the Volkswagen representative of US sales. Back then (a good ten years ago), he said that the only Jetta sellable was the R32, because a 1.8l 4-cylinder petrol engine was just not in demand. It had to be "big-blcok". The R32, being the only V6 3.2l engine in the Jetta series was as such the only car in demand. Of course, that's the most expensive model and comes with quite a few "extras" standard. In a similar vein, I assume that's why Audis of that period were loaded with tons of gimmicks that weren't really ready for prime time. Similar to the BMW series 7 iDrive fiasco.
Anyway, to me Audi means reliability. In the 3 years, I had the 80, I never had a problem. In the 8 years I had to TT, I had a problem once. A sensor went haywire and erroneously reported that the engine was overheating. It wasn't, but if the board computer flashes "overheating", you can believe me that you stop at once.
However, I'm not here to defend Audi.... It's just anecdotal evidence in the first place.
The reason I post is to explain the perceived inversion in fuel efficiency. We Europeans (perhaps not the people in the UK) do indeed use litres per 100km.
I think it's mainly a cultural difference: to us, it matters how much it will cost to get somewhere. Imagine I want to drive to my mother in law, who happens to live exactly 50km from where I live. As mentioned my car has a 10l/100km fuel efficiency. That means to get there, I have to sacrifice 5l of gas, or at current price of 1.3€/l (Unleaded 98oct RON) I have to spend 6.5€ to suffer her presence. Another 6.5€ to get back home.
In the US, fuel price doesn't (didn't) matter but the distance is very important because the US is very vast. (I went road tripping in the US, you have to see it for yourself if you're European) The priority lies thus on distance. So, if you know that you have a 25mpg car, and you have 15 gallon tank you know you can drive 375miles and as such you know your range, which is very important in a sparsely populated area where you might have to drive for hours before finding a gas station.
Of course, that's my interpretation. Now, there is also the idea that l/100km (or gallons/mile) is a better unit for comparing fuel efficiency. To me miles per gallon is completely unintuitive, so I'm not going to defend either. However, I found some interesting explanations by Googling around.
As for the multiplication by 100, I guess, that's to avoid having to use decimal points. I mean, 0.05l/km does sound a bit silly. ;-)
Well, I couldn't do it myself (I could have learned, I guess). However, you are right: I could bring it to any mechanic and they could do work on it. I did give it regular maintenance and it wasn't all that expensive.
Hmmmm... Perhaps buy an older European made car? My second car was an 1987 Audi 80 (1.8S). It was 11 years old when I bought it and paid a whopping 2875€ for it in 1998. I had it while I was a student, and it did 7.5l/100km (31mpg) on the highway and a comfortable 9l/100km for city driving.
My current car does 10l/100km when driving responsibly. It's considered a gas-guzzler where I live (Europe), but with the current prices it's still manageable.
Especially that I calculated that switching to a 5l/100km Diesel such as the one my wife has, would only start to pay back after 15 years. (With my yearly mileage, selling my current car, and assuming the price difference between Diesel/Gas stays the same)
I'd take my old Audi 80 back any day....
I question your knowledge.... You say XP followed ME. That isn't remotely true. There was a consumer line which went 95, 98, ME. All of those were worthless. The professional line on the other hand went NT 3.51, NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP. None of those were worthless. They all were great within the time the lived. XP was NEVER a decendant of ME. Learn your OS history, please.
Up until recently, I used a 15" LCD flatscreen which I bought in 2000 when they were so rare that they cost a fortune. I retired it last year so, I don't use it anymore, but then I use my Athlon MP 2400+ 4Gig RAM machine anymore either (retired at the same time). Why? Because we needed the space and my wifes computer (which is a mere P-IV 2.6GH HT with 2Gig RAM) is more than sufficient and quieter.... Her monitor is a nice 19" LCD.
From my experience monitors, when not buying the bottom bargain, tend to last ages in comparison to computers.
It entirely depends where you live. I drive an Audi TT and it's considered a common car. You see at least half a dozen a day. Porsches? Dayly routine. Ferraris, yes, in the summer.
10$/day.... @ 30 per montrh...300$/month. Perhaps not 600$/month, but if he's got more lights...
I never said anything else. I do believe it was in the Win95 best-practices to follow the Company/Product structure.
True, true... Even AMD64 or EM64T is a hack. You're absolutely right.