Almost as confirmation of an 'ask Slashdot' question of mine a while back, there still seems to be a big hole in the area of Employee/Human Resources Management.
Having experienced Pivotal, I hope SugarCRM doesn't follow that path - maybe it was the fault of those who implemented it, but I found it ugly, slow, unintuitive, lacking in good workflow practices and unnecessarily complex, with no concept of click-minimisation: we used it to register students for training courses we ran on behalf of another company (it was their system and we had a remote Citrix login for it) and it took roughly 5 minutes to navigate back and forth between the 'student details', 'company details' and 'course details' sections - ie: approx 50 mins to register a class of 10 students.
Now we 'work alone', we have implemented pretty much all the same functionality within SugarCRM. And then there's Pivotal's licence/software costs!!!
Yes, I have put about 7 together from off the shelf parts from various sources - my last P4 2.8GHz cost me around £220 - it does have 2 fans but you cannot hear it in a normal living room. It's not rocket science and this case is nothing new.
Yeah, but it's not exactly 'news' or 'stuff that matters' is it? What we have seems nothing more than a blatant promo for a product and a Web site.
/. should be aiming to provide topical, interesting, innovative and informative stuff that might otherwise escape our notice without us trawling through half a ton of other sites. As it is, after a few years of frequenting this site I am finding it less and less 'cutting edge' and more and more driven by people who want to shift tin; if someone has developed some radical new cooling technique using hitherto unused methods, that's fine, but to get an article accepted because you've launched a new case - big deal - go look at the stuff available from people like Asus and AOpen etc. etc..
You hit the nail on the head when you said "There is a good reason to look for [my italics] high quality cooled and silent PC's" - the original article seems nothing more than feed for those who cannot be ar*sed to use Google for specific product needs.
Just start downloading/sharing a 'blockbuster' and if you get a cease and desist email from a law frim, forwarded to you by your ISP, you are downloading 'the real thing'.
"The reenactments available from this page feature individuals who are actors and locations that are sets. The servers depicted are intended to represent IBM S/36, AS/400 and other models that are precursors to today's IBM eServer iSeries. Servers depicted in the "Story Behind the Legend" represent the IBM eServer iSeries family of products, including the eServer i5 server. The experiences shown do not reflect results that you will likely achieve, so do not expect your own experience to produce similar results under similar circumstances. Hardware and hat wear shown may differ from those present at the time of the event. Do not try any of this at home."
In order to get updates now, you have to download and run this new code:
10 INPUT "Are you using a legitimate copy of Windows(TM) - (Y)es or (N)o", A$
20 IF (A$ = "Y") or (A$ = "y") GOTO 60
30 PRINT "Sorry, your copy of Windows cannot be updated."
40 PRINT "If you wish to purchase a legitimate copy, please call (555) 555 5555"
50 GOTO 100
60 PRINT "Thank you for purchasing a genuine copy of Windows"
70 PRINT "To download important security patches please type the following address"
80 PRINT "into your Web browser: http://www.updates.microsoft.com/"
100 STOP
I have an Aopen XC Cube PC on my desk with some fairly run-of-the-mill components inside (Celeron D 2.6GHz, Seagate SATA hard disk, Pioneer DVD-DL writer, DTT TV tuner card and 1GB RAM) and it is virtually silent. My desk fan on the shelf is much noisier. The boxes are small, easy to work with and are great for everything, perhaps bar gaming because they only have a 275W PSU and might not cope with a high-end graphics card in the AGP slot.
Agreed - the room is much quieter every time I send a Vaio back for repair and it's away for two weeks. The last one I sent back was 10 days old and had a complete motherboard failure. In my experience (and that goes back to when Compaq luggables were all the rage and as one who formerly worked for a Tosh/Sony dealer/distributor), you don't buy a Vaio if you plan to do anything but keep it on your desk and treat it like eggs as they break if you so as much sneeze at them.
Amen...I've just had to use a Knoppix CD on a colleague's laptop: they were installing AOL's software (I know - they never learn!) and it crashed half way through. The laptop had to be powered down and when it started up again, it made it to the desktop but all icons were blank and absolutely nothing would run, not even commands in the 'run' box - ALL file associations were lost - a major registry screw-up.
Having booted from an XP CD, I tried to do a system recovery to get the registry back to a restore point, but the software just kept rebooting the machine!
I found some 'fixes' on a third party site but these required you to run regedit - no could do.
I thought about doing a Windows reinstall but this failed with a known error to do with reinstalling on a FAT32 disk (M$ KB official fix is to reformat the disk and start from scratch!)
In the end, I booted Knoppix and used it to copy back the registry from a restore point copy - hey presto, problem solved in 10 mins.
SueThemBack(TM) is a process patented by SCO Corporation as "A device/method of generating revenue by claiming damages from the new employers of former employees"
When I walk around a stately home I don't fancy wearing headphones, I don't want to have to fiddle with buttons, and I am quite capable of looking around me and reading the catalogue or notes in the room. Staring at a small LCD screen when I am in 'the great room' seems like going to a brewery and drinking from a can!
I also wonder what effect all the additional multimedia presentations will have on throughput - if many people start to linger to watch the material then it may cause a build up of people in certain areas.
I can also see people bumping into each other as they focus on the screens rather than where they are going!
Hire cost will also be a factor - what if a family is touring and mum, dad and the kids all want a look-see - are we sharing headphones? Will all the tugging and pulling give the headphones a short life - fair enough they only cost around 30p a set trade price (for generic stereo headphones), but it soon adds up.
I'm sure this gadget will be useful for people with visual or audio impairment but the whole business of charging, cleaning, maintenance etc. for a fraction of the overall visitor base seems excessive for the ROI. Oh, and how many are going to get nicked by/. geeks (only the dishonest ones, of course!).
I'll take the random-access guide book with beautiful pictures and descriptive text that I can take home and look at again and again at my own pace.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but we still have to provide them with some apps!
Almost as confirmation of an 'ask Slashdot' question of mine a while back, there still seems to be a big hole in the area of Employee/Human Resources Management.
Having experienced Pivotal, I hope SugarCRM doesn't follow that path - maybe it was the fault of those who implemented it, but I found it ugly, slow, unintuitive, lacking in good workflow practices and unnecessarily complex, with no concept of click-minimisation: we used it to register students for training courses we ran on behalf of another company (it was their system and we had a remote Citrix login for it) and it took roughly 5 minutes to navigate back and forth between the 'student details', 'company details' and 'course details' sections - ie: approx 50 mins to register a class of 10 students.
Now we 'work alone', we have implemented pretty much all the same functionality within SugarCRM. And then there's Pivotal's licence/software costs!!!
Yes, I have put about 7 together from off the shelf parts from various sources - my last P4 2.8GHz cost me around £220 - it does have 2 fans but you cannot hear it in a normal living room. It's not rocket science and this case is nothing new.
Yeah, but it's not exactly 'news' or 'stuff that matters' is it? What we have seems nothing more than a blatant promo for a product and a Web site.
/. should be aiming to provide topical, interesting, innovative and informative stuff that might otherwise escape our notice without us trawling through half a ton of other sites. As it is, after a few years of frequenting this site I am finding it less and less 'cutting edge' and more and more driven by people who want to shift tin; if someone has developed some radical new cooling technique using hitherto unused methods, that's fine, but to get an article accepted because you've launched a new case - big deal - go look at the stuff available from people like Asus and AOpen etc. etc..
You hit the nail on the head when you said "There is a good reason to look for [my italics] high quality cooled and silent PC's" - the original article seems nothing more than feed for those who cannot be ar*sed to use Google for specific product needs.
Look for the blinkenlights of course!
The amount of articles on silent PCs is getting tedious - does someone on the ed. team have shares in a relevant company or something?
Just start downloading/sharing a 'blockbuster' and if you get a cease and desist email from a law frim, forwarded to you by your ISP, you are downloading 'the real thing'.
"...sensibilise.."
They are also mangleiseing the English language
Just a few nybbles and bytes!
Love the disclaimer at the bottom:
"The reenactments available from this page feature individuals who are actors and locations that are sets. The servers depicted are intended to represent IBM S/36, AS/400 and other models that are precursors to today's IBM eServer iSeries. Servers depicted in the "Story Behind the Legend" represent the IBM eServer iSeries family of products, including the eServer i5 server. The experiences shown do not reflect results that you will likely achieve, so do not expect your own experience to produce similar results under similar circumstances. Hardware and hat wear shown may differ from those present at the time of the event. Do not try any of this at home."
In order to get updates now, you have to download and run this new code:
10 INPUT "Are you using a legitimate copy of Windows(TM) - (Y)es or (N)o", A$
20 IF (A$ = "Y") or (A$ = "y") GOTO 60
30 PRINT "Sorry, your copy of Windows cannot be updated."
40 PRINT "If you wish to purchase a legitimate copy, please call (555) 555 5555"
50 GOTO 100
60 PRINT "Thank you for purchasing a genuine copy of Windows"
70 PRINT "To download important security patches please type the following address"
80 PRINT "into your Web browser: http://www.updates.microsoft.com/"
100 STOP
Imagine a Beowulf orgy of those. There, I said it!
Bob: "Hey, Rick, what the hell is that?"
Rick: "That's my car, Bob"
Bob: "No, not the CAR, that thing on the front wing.."
Rick: "Oh, that - it's my home-built radio antenna"
Bob: "But it looks kinda dumb - it's an old coat hanger, Rick"
Rick: "Well, many people use coat hangers for antennas, Bob"
Bob: "Not WOODEN ones, Rick!"
I suppose it's fair to say that every manufacturer has their share of bad ones but, in the trade, Sony laptops did have a bit of a 'reputation'.
I have an Aopen XC Cube PC on my desk with some fairly run-of-the-mill components inside (Celeron D 2.6GHz, Seagate SATA hard disk, Pioneer DVD-DL writer, DTT TV tuner card and 1GB RAM) and it is virtually silent. My desk fan on the shelf is much noisier. The boxes are small, easy to work with and are great for everything, perhaps bar gaming because they only have a 275W PSU and might not cope with a high-end graphics card in the AGP slot.
Agreed - the room is much quieter every time I send a Vaio back for repair and it's away for two weeks. The last one I sent back was 10 days old and had a complete motherboard failure. In my experience (and that goes back to when Compaq luggables were all the rage and as one who formerly worked for a Tosh/Sony dealer/distributor), you don't buy a Vaio if you plan to do anything but keep it on your desk and treat it like eggs as they break if you so as much sneeze at them.
It's now a ringtone (sigh)
Since we haven't had "all-time" yet I think the list is a bit premature!
Amen...I've just had to use a Knoppix CD on a colleague's laptop: they were installing AOL's software (I know - they never learn!) and it crashed half way through. The laptop had to be powered down and when it started up again, it made it to the desktop but all icons were blank and absolutely nothing would run, not even commands in the 'run' box - ALL file associations were lost - a major registry screw-up.
Having booted from an XP CD, I tried to do a system recovery to get the registry back to a restore point, but the software just kept rebooting the machine!
I found some 'fixes' on a third party site but these required you to run regedit - no could do.
I thought about doing a Windows reinstall but this failed with a known error to do with reinstalling on a FAT32 disk (M$ KB official fix is to reformat the disk and start from scratch!)
In the end, I booted Knoppix and used it to copy back the registry from a restore point copy - hey presto, problem solved in 10 mins.
What will the FCC do - see previous article about death ray!!
America - land of the fry.
Careful now...
SueThemBack(TM) is a process patented by SCO Corporation as "A device/method of generating revenue by claiming damages from the new employers of former employees"
When I walk around a stately home I don't fancy wearing headphones, I don't want to have to fiddle with buttons, and I am quite capable of looking around me and reading the catalogue or notes in the room. Staring at a small LCD screen when I am in 'the great room' seems like going to a brewery and drinking from a can!
/. geeks (only the dishonest ones, of course!).
I also wonder what effect all the additional multimedia presentations will have on throughput - if many people start to linger to watch the material then it may cause a build up of people in certain areas.
I can also see people bumping into each other as they focus on the screens rather than where they are going!
Hire cost will also be a factor - what if a family is touring and mum, dad and the kids all want a look-see - are we sharing headphones? Will all the tugging and pulling give the headphones a short life - fair enough they only cost around 30p a set trade price (for generic stereo headphones), but it soon adds up.
I'm sure this gadget will be useful for people with visual or audio impairment but the whole business of charging, cleaning, maintenance etc. for a fraction of the overall visitor base seems excessive for the ROI. Oh, and how many are going to get nicked by
I'll take the random-access guide book with beautiful pictures and descriptive text that I can take home and look at again and again at my own pace.
How do computers work without Windows?
Better.