I've used both E-Gain and Kana and perfer Kana. While both are equally expensive for a smaller company, they are well worth their costs if you have a high mail volume.
Actually, 2 years ago - when I was there, the accounts where inact'd for fraud as soon as something was found out of the ordinary. They typically tried to mail the address to try to get money back, but normally couldn't get a response (wonder why...). Reporting the crime was put onto the original owner of the credit card - which is how we typically found out about the fraud. Other times, when a user was connecting from several different POP's at a time (like 20 or so), the account was flagged and someone would look at it. If the logs showed all sorts of access, and such - we nailed the account.
Users that found fraudulent charges where told to contact their credit card company to report it - since we couldn't do it on their behalf. If its big enough, we took snapshots of the account in our DB, grep the logs for the ANI info (sometimes we couldn't get this), lookup generic usage logs and package it all up and send it to the CC company. Sometimes we did this on court orders too.
Also, tracing is a thing of the past. Technically speaking - law enforcement knows where the other phone is from right when it rings since the phone company puts that information right in front of the ring notification. This was technically created for the 911 system in the US, but has proved useful in other situations. The consumer version - caller ID has to wait to figure out if the customer has blocked the information from public use - thus the info not showing up until the second ring. If you really wanted to test this you could use the code for Caller ID block and call 911 - they'll still tell you who you are and your location. But I wouldn't try it because they'll send a nice policeman over to explain the proper uses of the system and he may even be nice enough to fine you.
Even though I loved MindSpring - this came from them. Their Customer DB stored passwords in plain text. Earthlinks shitty (by design standards) Customer DB only showed the last 2 chars (if I remember right). They had to reset passwords if someone forgot them. And yes, they are using a hybrid version of the MindSpring DB, so passwords are still plain text.
While I understand the implications of storing passwords in plain text, its wasn't that big of an issue. All views on a customers account - including the Credit Card (also stored in plain text while I was there - MAY still be) are logged. BTW, during my 4 years with the company, I never heard a rep using stolen CC's - so it either didn't happen or anyone that tried and got caught was fired immediately. Heck - I can only remember the managers in our Customer Service dept really complaining about 1 customer who found out the reps knew his password. The manager saying "the reps don't care because they have their own account, with their own email" pretty much shut the guy up.
The employees may know your password, but they have their own accounts, so there is no reason for them to really care. The other thing is, support reps knowing the passwords really helped when we needed to clear out a mailbox that was full. We could get into the mailbox with a rep-created tool and kill messages based on size or subject/sender (we couldn't read the messages). Without this, we would have had to tell the customer to log into webmail and kill their own messages, which your average customer would get confused about since they think just reading it will delete it from the server.
As for your comment on how spammers should create random passwords - don't have to. The accounts are assigned random passwords at setup (sometimes sales associates are nice and change them immediately for you). So this idiot spammer just decided that he would change them himself.
AND... in reply to your signature - one word: Brightmaild
I've actually done the whole desktop bitmap image thing and its pretty funny. It usually stumps the IT people for awhile, or in my case - until Ghost gets done;-) I hated that supervisor anyway - he lost a lot of pr0n that day.
Like another reply, there is a difference. I can speak VERY basic German for right now (been in country for, um...3 months now. I spoke it fluently as a kid, but its gone now. I actually speak more Dutch than I do German due to being stationed there for 2 years. I can understand German if I think about it, but usually the blank look while I think about what they're saying just frustrates the Germans.
Floor space can be relevant if you are a rep that likes to spread out. Its also a pain for the IT guys to crawl under the desk every time something goes wrong. On top of that, vacuuming, floor cleaning and flooding (I've seen machines fried due to it) can cause issues too. I'm just not a tower person anymore and I like my deskspace.
Dell has been used by many a corporate customer, including the government, which is why I used them for pricing. IBM honestly didn't cross my mind. I may add them in over the next few days, but I honestly don't see anything changing between myself and the founders of the company - the Thin Clients fit too well.
Hardware failure and warranty issues are something that takes technicians to handle. In a larger environment like a major call center, I don't need 4 to 5 people running around fixing machines all day. I also don't want them handling server side issues all day either. The Thin clients offer the best of both worlds by allowing a smaller number of admins with more desks being served.
Smartcards - I can understand the security point, but all reps have the same level of access in our scenario. Anyone with more access (manager, programmer, etc) will be using a PC (but thats a different report that hasn't been written yet). I've never lost my badge in an employers building before, I've lost it outside my house once. Besides, part of being a reasonable employer is to trust your employees, but we could offer a bounty for turned in cards as well.
I'm also using the feedback, both public and via email to beef up the doc as well. I've got some good suggestions that would help the argument on both sides of the line.
I normally don't feel a need to justify my decisions, but I figured I might as well since so many people where interested in this. While he made the point, I didn't inflate the price on purpose and I admitted that.
1. Didn't know about the 50 licenses for Norton. I'll correct that as soon as I can dig out of my email.
2. I didn't bloat the price of Norton to justify it. In my report, I priced PC's that where less than half the price of the Thin clients but still suggested the Thin Clients based upon a few things. - Less power consumption and noise (probably the smallest bonus - also helps in case of power failure, more reps still active) - Easy access to move across the network without having to drag the profile and personal stuff (email) across it with you. - Extra security by allowing the smart cards to be used as employee badges - Less of a need for IT staff (biggest money saver) - Access to support. I don't need my staff to spend 20 minutes on staff to explain why they need an RMA number.
3. Dell has lowered the price since I've written this report (approx 3 weeks ago). I reconfigured on Dells site just for grins and the outcome was about the same. I also chose the SX270 due to its small footprint, therefor, I don't really want a full desktop taking up floor space or a CRT monitor taking up desk space.
Oh, and one last thing. I did the report for a company where I'm sharing the decisions on the support floor. I have two other people that share this responsibility and they are not your average CTO or manager types - they can read for themselves and do the same research everyone else did to make sure I was correct. I honestly went into this report thinking about desktops running FreeBSD or RedHat - changed my mind when I thought about the Sun Rays after awhile.
I've gotten too many replies to respond to each one individually.
The above post was cut and pasted parts of a report that I did for a company I'm working on getting funded.
The PC's need to be able to last at least 3 years in a call center environment before being passed down. While I agree that a library doesn't need this much power, if they went with it, they could probably get 5 years+ out of them without a problem. The need for 3+ years is due to cost of replacement. The other thing is, power for the reps. I'm an ex-technical support rep and have grown long tired of IT groups trying to reuse old machines. Too many applications to run, too many browser windows for different tools costs time to help customers. If the info isn't in front of the reps within 2 to 3 clicks, its too slow in my opinion.
Someone brought up an opinion on the SUN LCD's - they where priced as a package, not as a solution. Again, this was a report about the boxes, not monitors. The bulk of the sun price is actually the monitors. We could bring the price down a heck of a lot by choosing new ones. I'm also not pricing low end LCD monitors because in most instances, you get what you pay for. I need a monitor that can remain on for hundreds of hours at a time.
The reason for 19 inchers - reduced eyestrain. I've worked on 15's, 17's, 19's and a 21 inch screen. 19 was perfect. Some people can have lots of deskspace, others can have font the size of lego bricks if they want it.
"Aside from maintenance and support, the PCs are definately cheaper for the library. Which proves you (and most other slashdorks) just don't get it. Do you really (and I mean really) think that the cost of a solution is the purchase price of the equipment (hardware + software)?? Did you consider the maintenance of 40+ individual machines vs. 1 server? A sun ray deployment (even on Linux when this becomes available - if you absolutely MUST use Linux somehow, somewhere) is perfect for this." ---- exactly.
"Full cost: US$54,858, wich is 70% of your original price, not including volume discounts." -- I was going off of the Dell website at the time for that particular price. I also went off of Gateway and Compaq/HP - Dell was just what I chose to post.
"Symantec Corporate Anti-Virus: 50 licenses - US$1818 [symantecstore.com]" - I actually didn't see this on their website. I used their wizard which gave me the exact amount for 40 licenses instead of just giving me 10 extra for a discount - figures. Something to update.
The main thing here is that, in all situations that we could think of, the Sun Rays fit our needs better than PC's. We even considered building our own PC's for this situation. The bottom line is, if we want to be ultra affordable, we can get Windows boxes for around 40k'ish if we try, but then we need to hire IT types to handle the problems, that happen - its just not worth it to us.
I'm in germany and I don't know if it would be a good idea to attend because I don't know what langage they speak. The website is in German, but if all the speakers speak German, I'm screwed...
I did a report on your average computer vs the Sun Rays:
Dell: P4 2.8GHz, 512 memory, 20G HD (5400 rpm), 24x CD, Win 2k, Ultrasharp 19inch Flat panel that is height adjustable, standard keyboard, wheel mouse, bottom line external speakers, DVI-VGA video adapter, mouse pad, no floppy, no consumer anti-virus software, no Microsoft Office offered.
Cost: $1,797 per unit
Required Software: 40 licenses each of Norton Anti-Virus ($3,219.65) and Ghost (1,207.63), Corp Editions.
Full cost: $76,307.28 for first initial order
Support: A test call to their support line prompted advertisements for spyware removal programs, antivirus programs, network hardware to up sell customers as well as the standard "Your call is important to us." The call lasted 17 minutes before giving up the test call.
Sun Thin Clients: Configuration Details: The SUN thin clients are, effectively, modern dumb terminals. There is no local processing, everything is done on the server side. A representative would need to insert their smart card, used as a username and password, into the thin client and their session would be brought up immediately, right where they left off before. This enables "hot desking", which means a representative can get up from one terminal, walk across the building and sit down at another terminal and begin working where they left off - zero configuration. The thin client works off of a central server, called a SUN Fire, that can house anywhere from 1 to 80 clients, depending on server type and load. These are normally very fast machines that have their memory maxed out.
The Server runs the only copy of Solaris, so there is only 1 upgrade point and since it runs Solaris, it is impervious to roughly 99.9% of the viruses that attack computers. A major benefit is that the SUN Fire server requires, roughly, one System Administrator for 2000 thin clients.
The Sun Ray 1G Thin Clients do have audio in and out jacks, giving representatives to listen to music over the network. This would require a CD collection somewhere, a network storage server dedicated to music, etc.
Cost: $359 per unit + SUN Fire server ($12,995 - $29,490) + 19 inch monitors ($1,100 each)
Required Software: None. The SUN Fire server has licenses for 20 to 40 users using Solaris with Gnome, a Windows like operating system as well as other software package like StarOffice (a Unix/Linux version of MicroSoft Office) and GAIM, a Unix/Linux version of AOL Instant Messenger.
Required Hardware: The Sun Thin Clients require a monitor. While Sun offers 19inch LCD displays for $1,100 each, the Thin Clients do support any monitor that supports Display Identification Standard (DDC) ver. 1.2 or 2.1. There is more documentation on monitor needs on Sun's website. Other 19-inch monitors that appear to support the standard are priced at $800 to $1,100. I have also noticed that the Sun Monitor appears to support higher frequency ranges (60-80Hz) vs the low end competition. This can help reduce eyestrain for those that can see monitors flickering at anything below 70Hz, such as myself. The Sun monitors also support 1920x1200 with 24 bit color (2d rendering, no 3d).
Full cost: $74,935 for first initial order
Support: A test call to their support line was greeted with a simplistic menu. After the menu prompt was picked, a "Southern type" SUN technician greeted the caller after a short wait. Total call time to live rep: 2 minutes.
Since the library isn't going to actually use them like we would, you can probably run around 60 per server since it would just be a browser and maybe a terminal window.
Basically, after spending about a week on the issue of workstations for a call center environment, we found that the Sun Ray Thin Clients came out on top and we'll be deploying them ASAP. Hope this helps.
I recently did a study on Sun Rays and think I can share some data...
For 40 Sun Thin Clients with 1 Server: $74,935 (for Library use, you can probably add up to 60 Thin Clients on one server due to usage)
For 40 Dells (with required antivirus and Ghost):$76,307.28 (with small business discount)
Upside of thin clients is - no work locally, its all on the server. Good technical support (they answered our test call within 2 minutes) will help out with any issues you can't take care of.
If you want an 8 page report on the pro's and cons between the average windows workstations and thin clients (as well as 3 PC manufacturers compared to Sun's Thin clients), feel free to email me.
Due to Military housing regulations, we couldn't drill through the walls and we have 1 phone jack in the entire house. We ended up buying flat 5e cable for the job. Fits snugly up against the walls and we don't have to worry about the doors pinching the cable. VPI didn't give us any problems and worked with us very closely to ensure it would go out with a non standard shipper to get to Europe.
I created my own S-Corp by doing this. Was pretty harmless and after a few fees later, I have my own company, and extra Tax ID. Granted, just like a regular person, I have to file taxes for the corp, but I'm legally protected off of anything that comes out of it.
There is another odd rule in Europe as well - Stress Leave. Its a treatable illness here and you can take paid time off from work for it. Unfortunately, the US Military or GS's stationed here can't take advantage of such a rule...
When I was younger, a bus load of American kids put on of their Dutch bus drivers on stress leave for 6 months... Unfortunately, I wasn't riding the bus the day it happened, but heard it was a blast.
Funny, I thought the same thing when I first read this rule...
There where things like concrete signs in the other challenge, but they did not succeed in stopping any vehicles when run over. The new rules specifically state that running over something is no longer an option (the red team was exceptionally good at this). I honestly see them placing anti-tank obstacles in the way. Then again, fireworks - I mean landmines would be cool, not to mention the reaction of the team when their vehicle gets blown up.
I had talked to my dad (an old LTC in the Amry that started with Armor) about the original Darpa Challenge and he was actually really interested in it. He mentioned the 10 hour time limit specifically. Normal operating time for any vehicle in the Army is 10 hours - thats how all Tanks, APC's (Armored Personnel Carrier), etc are rated.
We also had an in depth conversation and wondered why no one was using an APC for this. It has an enclosed area for rack mounting of hardware, plenty of room for cabling, enough power from the Diesel to run electronics and air conditioning, sealed environment to keep out dusk particles and such. Its also a very light (by armor standards), tracked so it can take on obstacles easier, higher than most vehicles for easier views of whats around and doesn't have a lot of electronics in it to interfere with much as well as the fact that they are extremely cheep by military costs.
Frankly, if I weren't in Germany due to my wife being in the Military and if I had a little more than pocket change to my name, I just might try such a thing. (if anyone picks up this idea and runs with it, i'd like to be in on the loop;-)
Re:the story is -1: irrelevant
on
Sun Rays For Linux
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
If you actually look at pricing between the Sun Ray's vs someone like Dell, with required software like Antivirus and Ghost (for a larger networking environment) and add them all together, you'll see that you're wrong.
Don't believe me? Price 40 machines at the small to mid level business pricing bracket at Dell, Gateway, Compaq/HP, IBM, etc with Enterprise licenses of Ghost and Antivirus and you'll find that you actually save money by buying the Sun Building blocks.
As for portability - sun also has a laptop version of these things with wireless capability. Oh yea, they have batteries that actually last 6-8 hours compared to your normal laptops...
Just another AC thats shooting their mouth off on something they know nothing about...
If his boss was such a poor performer, his failures would have made themselves evident over time.
Sadly, you are mistaken. You've obviously never worked for the Government, Military or even some major corporate environments...
When I worked for Earthlink, I had a boss that would download pr0n all the time and management was told about it but never did anything about it. Sadly, one of his employees that had homemade pr0n on his webspace was canned.
This boss also had some interesting pictures of fellow employees, employees wives, etc on his computer and he some how managed to kiss ass enough to stay till the end. Did he do his job right? Nope...
This supervisor decided that he was not going to give me a raise because I was not at 100% production for the department, even though I was a full time employee, pseudo supervisor and DB admin for a major CMR platform. I mouthed off and it got around to him - he redid my whole 1 year review in 1 hour - he copied another employees review and change the name. Needless to say, while reading through it, some sections would say "Justin has been an extreme help to the team. She has been...."
Oh, and one last thing - its almost impossible to lose your job when working for the government, which is why people normally fight for even the low positions. Apparently, he didn't kiss enough ass to the main boss - which is also why they ignored him. I refuse to kiss ass in any environment and while I may get left behind on some positions, I also refuse to keep workplace friendships with those that kiss ass - can't stand people that do that.
I wouldn't purchase anything from them. Support and service are pretty much nonexistent. My then fiance bought one for $799 (package deal) since we where going to Germany. 6 months later, they dropped the price by $300 and we have to buy an external antenna for the thing to even work here. Needless to say, we contacted them several times and nothing has come about of it.
Garmin is Ok in the states. Out East it works perfect but they have some glitches on the west side of the nation that tell you to turn right when you can only go left, etc. Other than that, its decent. Our next one will be an in the car system with voice prompts. We used one in a rental here and loved it better than our Garmin.
Oddly enough, my wife plugged her 120v printer into an adapted 220v without thinking... Needless to say, a pop, click, fuzz and bad smell later, the printer no longer works... Now she's mad at me because I put the adapters in, in anticipation of my machines showing up in the next few days...
I had explained to her several times that the little plastic things are not the big converters that make noise and generate heat several times - just didn't listen. Now I own the only printer in the house Muhahaha!
Technically speaking, there are several ISPs that do this. For instance, Earthlink blocks port 25 on all of its connections and refuses mail from dynamic IPs...
I have a Win2k box with VMWare running several other OS's - each with thier own browser lists, a FreeBSD box running all browsers I can test in (including Lynx) as well as two laptops running XP and Win98 with their own list of browsers.
On top of that, I use Dreamweavers compatibility script and use the W3C Validator.
Its really a pain when you think you've got something perfectly done and you find a small bug in 1 browser...
If they've ever read the horror stories of other people using Satellite, they'll never sign up.
Its slower than standard bandwitch, its a pain to support, it fails a lot the ads on regular cable (wind = fail, snow = fail, etc) and it pretty much takes an act of god to get it to VPN into anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, Earthlink currently uses Brightmail for its "Spam Blocker".
To me, its a overpriced, but if they're making money from it - so be it.
I've used both E-Gain and Kana and perfer Kana. While both are equally expensive for a smaller company, they are well worth their costs if you have a high mail volume.
Actually, 2 years ago - when I was there, the accounts where inact'd for fraud as soon as something was found out of the ordinary. They typically tried to mail the address to try to get money back, but normally couldn't get a response (wonder why...). Reporting the crime was put onto the original owner of the credit card - which is how we typically found out about the fraud. Other times, when a user was connecting from several different POP's at a time (like 20 or so), the account was flagged and someone would look at it. If the logs showed all sorts of access, and such - we nailed the account.
Users that found fraudulent charges where told to contact their credit card company to report it - since we couldn't do it on their behalf. If its big enough, we took snapshots of the account in our DB, grep the logs for the ANI info (sometimes we couldn't get this), lookup generic usage logs and package it all up and send it to the CC company. Sometimes we did this on court orders too.
Also, tracing is a thing of the past. Technically speaking - law enforcement knows where the other phone is from right when it rings since the phone company puts that information right in front of the ring notification. This was technically created for the 911 system in the US, but has proved useful in other situations. The consumer version - caller ID has to wait to figure out if the customer has blocked the information from public use - thus the info not showing up until the second ring. If you really wanted to test this you could use the code for Caller ID block and call 911 - they'll still tell you who you are and your location. But I wouldn't try it because they'll send a nice policeman over to explain the proper uses of the system and he may even be nice enough to fine you.
Even though I loved MindSpring - this came from them. Their Customer DB stored passwords in plain text. Earthlinks shitty (by design standards) Customer DB only showed the last 2 chars (if I remember right). They had to reset passwords if someone forgot them. And yes, they are using a hybrid version of the MindSpring DB, so passwords are still plain text.
While I understand the implications of storing passwords in plain text, its wasn't that big of an issue. All views on a customers account - including the Credit Card (also stored in plain text while I was there - MAY still be) are logged. BTW, during my 4 years with the company, I never heard a rep using stolen CC's - so it either didn't happen or anyone that tried and got caught was fired immediately. Heck - I can only remember the managers in our Customer Service dept really complaining about 1 customer who found out the reps knew his password. The manager saying "the reps don't care because they have their own account, with their own email" pretty much shut the guy up.
The employees may know your password, but they have their own accounts, so there is no reason for them to really care. The other thing is, support reps knowing the passwords really helped when we needed to clear out a mailbox that was full. We could get into the mailbox with a rep-created tool and kill messages based on size or subject/sender (we couldn't read the messages). Without this, we would have had to tell the customer to log into webmail and kill their own messages, which your average customer would get confused about since they think just reading it will delete it from the server.
As for your comment on how spammers should create random passwords - don't have to. The accounts are assigned random passwords at setup (sometimes sales associates are nice and change them immediately for you). So this idiot spammer just decided that he would change them himself.
AND... in reply to your signature - one word: Brightmaild
Thats if you can get through to their outsourced agents that can't understand or speak Engrish very well.
They're actually proud of how much of their system is outsourced because they save $XMillion.
I've actually done the whole desktop bitmap image thing and its pretty funny. It usually stumps the IT people for awhile, or in my case - until Ghost gets done ;-) I hated that supervisor anyway - he lost a lot of pr0n that day.
Like another reply, there is a difference. I can speak VERY basic German for right now (been in country for, um...3 months now. I spoke it fluently as a kid, but its gone now. I actually speak more Dutch than I do German due to being stationed there for 2 years. I can understand German if I think about it, but usually the blank look while I think about what they're saying just frustrates the Germans.
Floor space can be relevant if you are a rep that likes to spread out. Its also a pain for the IT guys to crawl under the desk every time something goes wrong. On top of that, vacuuming, floor cleaning and flooding (I've seen machines fried due to it) can cause issues too. I'm just not a tower person anymore and I like my deskspace.
Dell has been used by many a corporate customer, including the government, which is why I used them for pricing. IBM honestly didn't cross my mind. I may add them in over the next few days, but I honestly don't see anything changing between myself and the founders of the company - the Thin Clients fit too well.
Hardware failure and warranty issues are something that takes technicians to handle. In a larger environment like a major call center, I don't need 4 to 5 people running around fixing machines all day. I also don't want them handling server side issues all day either. The Thin clients offer the best of both worlds by allowing a smaller number of admins with more desks being served.
Smartcards - I can understand the security point, but all reps have the same level of access in our scenario. Anyone with more access (manager, programmer, etc) will be using a PC (but thats a different report that hasn't been written yet). I've never lost my badge in an employers building before, I've lost it outside my house once. Besides, part of being a reasonable employer is to trust your employees, but we could offer a bounty for turned in cards as well.
I'm also using the feedback, both public and via email to beef up the doc as well. I've got some good suggestions that would help the argument on both sides of the line.
I normally don't feel a need to justify my decisions, but I figured I might as well since so many people where interested in this. While he made the point, I didn't inflate the price on purpose and I admitted that.
1. Didn't know about the 50 licenses for Norton. I'll correct that as soon as I can dig out of my email.
2. I didn't bloat the price of Norton to justify it. In my report, I priced PC's that where less than half the price of the Thin clients but still suggested the Thin Clients based upon a few things.
- Less power consumption and noise (probably the smallest bonus - also helps in case of power failure, more reps still active)
- Easy access to move across the network without having to drag the profile and personal stuff (email) across it with you.
- Extra security by allowing the smart cards to be used as employee badges
- Less of a need for IT staff (biggest money saver)
- Access to support. I don't need my staff to spend 20 minutes on staff to explain why they need an RMA number.
3. Dell has lowered the price since I've written this report (approx 3 weeks ago). I reconfigured on Dells site just for grins and the outcome was about the same. I also chose the SX270 due to its small footprint, therefor, I don't really want a full desktop taking up floor space or a CRT monitor taking up desk space.
Oh, and one last thing. I did the report for a company where I'm sharing the decisions on the support floor. I have two other people that share this responsibility and they are not your average CTO or manager types - they can read for themselves and do the same research everyone else did to make sure I was correct. I honestly went into this report thinking about desktops running FreeBSD or RedHat - changed my mind when I thought about the Sun Rays after awhile.
...plus the cost of monitors...
Besides, minimum rollout was 40 clients - need a bigger server to handle it.
I've gotten too many replies to respond to each one individually.
The above post was cut and pasted parts of a report that I did for a company I'm working on getting funded.
The PC's need to be able to last at least 3 years in a call center environment before being passed down. While I agree that a library doesn't need this much power, if they went with it, they could probably get 5 years+ out of them without a problem. The need for 3+ years is due to cost of replacement. The other thing is, power for the reps. I'm an ex-technical support rep and have grown long tired of IT groups trying to reuse old machines. Too many applications to run, too many browser windows for different tools costs time to help customers. If the info isn't in front of the reps within 2 to 3 clicks, its too slow in my opinion.
Someone brought up an opinion on the SUN LCD's - they where priced as a package, not as a solution. Again, this was a report about the boxes, not monitors. The bulk of the sun price is actually the monitors. We could bring the price down a heck of a lot by choosing new ones. I'm also not pricing low end LCD monitors because in most instances, you get what you pay for. I need a monitor that can remain on for hundreds of hours at a time.
The reason for 19 inchers - reduced eyestrain. I've worked on 15's, 17's, 19's and a 21 inch screen. 19 was perfect. Some people can have lots of deskspace, others can have font the size of lego bricks if they want it.
"Aside from maintenance and support, the PCs are definately cheaper for the library. Which proves you (and most other slashdorks) just don't get it. Do you really (and I mean really) think that the cost of a solution is the purchase price of the equipment (hardware + software)?? Did you consider the maintenance of 40+ individual machines vs. 1 server? A sun ray deployment (even on Linux when this becomes available - if you absolutely MUST use Linux somehow, somewhere) is perfect for this." ---- exactly.
"Full cost: US$54,858, wich is 70% of your original price, not including volume discounts." -- I was going off of the Dell website at the time for that particular price. I also went off of Gateway and Compaq/HP - Dell was just what I chose to post.
"Symantec Corporate Anti-Virus: 50 licenses - US$1818 [symantecstore.com]" - I actually didn't see this on their website. I used their wizard which gave me the exact amount for 40 licenses instead of just giving me 10 extra for a discount - figures. Something to update.
The main thing here is that, in all situations that we could think of, the Sun Rays fit our needs better than PC's. We even considered building our own PC's for this situation. The bottom line is, if we want to be ultra affordable, we can get Windows boxes for around 40k'ish if we try, but then we need to hire IT types to handle the problems, that happen - its just not worth it to us.
I'm in germany and I don't know if it would be a good idea to attend because I don't know what langage they speak. The website is in German, but if all the speakers speak German, I'm screwed...
I did a report on your average computer vs the Sun Rays:
Dell: P4 2.8GHz, 512 memory, 20G HD (5400 rpm), 24x CD, Win 2k, Ultrasharp 19inch Flat panel that is height adjustable, standard keyboard, wheel mouse, bottom line external speakers, DVI-VGA video adapter, mouse pad, no floppy, no consumer anti-virus software, no Microsoft Office offered.
Cost: $1,797 per unit
Required Software: 40 licenses each of Norton Anti-Virus ($3,219.65) and Ghost (1,207.63), Corp Editions.
Full cost: $76,307.28 for first initial order
Support: A test call to their support line prompted advertisements for spyware removal programs, antivirus programs, network hardware to up sell customers as well as the standard "Your call is important to us." The call lasted 17 minutes before giving up the test call.
Sun Thin Clients:
Configuration Details: The SUN thin clients are, effectively, modern dumb terminals. There is no local processing, everything is done on the server side. A representative would need to insert their smart card, used as a username and password, into the thin client and their session would be brought up immediately, right where they left off before. This enables "hot desking", which means a representative can get up from one terminal, walk across the building and sit down at another terminal and begin working where they left off - zero configuration. The thin client works off of a central server, called a SUN Fire, that can house anywhere from 1 to 80 clients, depending on server type and load. These are normally very fast machines that have their memory maxed out.
The Server runs the only copy of Solaris, so there is only 1 upgrade point and since it
runs Solaris, it is impervious to roughly 99.9% of the viruses that attack computers. A major benefit is that the SUN Fire server requires, roughly, one System Administrator for 2000 thin clients.
The Sun Ray 1G Thin Clients do have audio in and out jacks, giving representatives to listen to music over the network. This would require a CD collection somewhere, a network storage server dedicated to music, etc.
Cost: $359 per unit + SUN Fire server ($12,995 - $29,490) + 19 inch monitors ($1,100 each)
Required Software: None. The SUN Fire server has licenses for 20 to 40 users using Solaris with Gnome, a Windows like operating system as well as other software package like StarOffice (a Unix/Linux version of MicroSoft Office) and GAIM, a Unix/Linux version of AOL Instant Messenger.
Required Hardware: The Sun Thin Clients require a monitor. While Sun offers 19inch LCD displays for $1,100 each, the Thin Clients do support any monitor that supports Display Identification Standard (DDC) ver. 1.2 or 2.1. There is more documentation on monitor needs on Sun's website. Other 19-inch monitors that appear to support the standard are priced at $800 to $1,100. I have also noticed that the Sun Monitor appears to support higher frequency ranges (60-80Hz) vs the low end competition. This can help reduce eyestrain for those that can see monitors flickering at anything below 70Hz, such as myself. The Sun monitors also support 1920x1200 with 24 bit color (2d rendering, no 3d).
Full cost: $74,935 for first initial order
Support: A test call to their support line was greeted with a simplistic menu. After the menu prompt was picked, a "Southern type" SUN technician greeted the caller after a short wait. Total call time to live rep: 2 minutes.
Since the library isn't going to actually use them like we would, you can probably run around 60 per server since it would just be a browser and maybe a terminal window.
Basically, after spending about a week on the issue of workstations for a call center environment, we found that the Sun Ray Thin Clients came out on top and we'll be deploying them ASAP. Hope this helps.
I recently did a study on Sun Rays and think I can share some data...
For 40 Sun Thin Clients with 1 Server: $74,935 (for Library use, you can probably add up to 60 Thin Clients on one server due to usage)
For 40 Dells (with required antivirus and Ghost):$76,307.28 (with small business discount)
Upside of thin clients is - no work locally, its all on the server. Good technical support (they answered our test call within 2 minutes) will help out with any issues you can't take care of.
If you want an 8 page report on the pro's and cons between the average windows workstations and thin clients (as well as 3 PC manufacturers compared to Sun's Thin clients), feel free to email me.
Due to Military housing regulations, we couldn't drill through the walls and we have 1 phone jack in the entire house. We ended up buying flat 5e cable for the job. Fits snugly up against the walls and we don't have to worry about the doors pinching the cable. VPI didn't give us any problems and worked with us very closely to ensure it would go out with a non standard shipper to get to Europe.
I created my own S-Corp by doing this. Was pretty harmless and after a few fees later, I have my own company, and extra Tax ID. Granted, just like a regular person, I have to file taxes for the corp, but I'm legally protected off of anything that comes out of it.
There is another odd rule in Europe as well - Stress Leave. Its a treatable illness here and you can take paid time off from work for it. Unfortunately, the US Military or GS's stationed here can't take advantage of such a rule...
When I was younger, a bus load of American kids put on of their Dutch bus drivers on stress leave for 6 months... Unfortunately, I wasn't riding the bus the day it happened, but heard it was a blast.
Funny, I thought the same thing when I first read this rule...
There where things like concrete signs in the other challenge, but they did not succeed in stopping any vehicles when run over. The new rules specifically state that running over something is no longer an option (the red team was exceptionally good at this). I honestly see them placing anti-tank obstacles in the way. Then again, fireworks - I mean landmines would be cool, not to mention the reaction of the team when their vehicle gets blown up.
I had talked to my dad (an old LTC in the Amry that started with Armor) about the original Darpa Challenge and he was actually really interested in it. He mentioned the 10 hour time limit specifically. Normal operating time for any vehicle in the Army is 10 hours - thats how all Tanks, APC's (Armored Personnel Carrier), etc are rated.
We also had an in depth conversation and wondered why no one was using an APC for this. It has an enclosed area for rack mounting of hardware, plenty of room for cabling, enough power from the Diesel to run electronics and air conditioning, sealed environment to keep out dusk particles and such. Its also a very light (by armor standards), tracked so it can take on obstacles easier, higher than most vehicles for easier views of whats around and doesn't have a lot of electronics in it to interfere with much as well as the fact that they are extremely cheep by military costs.
Frankly, if I weren't in Germany due to my wife being in the Military and if I had a little more than pocket change to my name, I just might try such a thing. (if anyone picks up this idea and runs with it, i'd like to be in on the loop;-)
If you actually look at pricing between the Sun Ray's vs someone like Dell, with required software like Antivirus and Ghost (for a larger networking environment) and add them all together, you'll see that you're wrong. Don't believe me? Price 40 machines at the small to mid level business pricing bracket at Dell, Gateway, Compaq/HP, IBM, etc with Enterprise licenses of Ghost and Antivirus and you'll find that you actually save money by buying the Sun Building blocks.
As for portability - sun also has a laptop version of these things with wireless capability. Oh yea, they have batteries that actually last 6-8 hours compared to your normal laptops...
Just another AC thats shooting their mouth off on something they know nothing about...
If his boss was such a poor performer, his failures would have made themselves evident over time.
Sadly, you are mistaken. You've obviously never worked for the Government, Military or even some major corporate environments...
When I worked for Earthlink, I had a boss that would download pr0n all the time and management was told about it but never did anything about it. Sadly, one of his employees that had homemade pr0n on his webspace was canned.
This boss also had some interesting pictures of fellow employees, employees wives, etc on his computer and he some how managed to kiss ass enough to stay till the end. Did he do his job right? Nope...
This supervisor decided that he was not going to give me a raise because I was not at 100% production for the department, even though I was a full time employee, pseudo supervisor and DB admin for a major CMR platform. I mouthed off and it got around to him - he redid my whole 1 year review in 1 hour - he copied another employees review and change the name. Needless to say, while reading through it, some sections would say "Justin has been an extreme help to the team. She has been...."
Oh, and one last thing - its almost impossible to lose your job when working for the government, which is why people normally fight for even the low positions. Apparently, he didn't kiss enough ass to the main boss - which is also why they ignored him. I refuse to kiss ass in any environment and while I may get left behind on some positions, I also refuse to keep workplace friendships with those that kiss ass - can't stand people that do that.
I wouldn't purchase anything from them. Support and service are pretty much nonexistent. My then fiance bought one for $799 (package deal) since we where going to Germany. 6 months later, they dropped the price by $300 and we have to buy an external antenna for the thing to even work here. Needless to say, we contacted them several times and nothing has come about of it.
Garmin is Ok in the states. Out East it works perfect but they have some glitches on the west side of the nation that tell you to turn right when you can only go left, etc. Other than that, its decent. Our next one will be an in the car system with voice prompts. We used one in a rental here and loved it better than our Garmin.
Oddly enough, my wife plugged her 120v printer into an adapted 220v without thinking... Needless to say, a pop, click, fuzz and bad smell later, the printer no longer works... Now she's mad at me because I put the adapters in, in anticipation of my machines showing up in the next few days...
I had explained to her several times that the little plastic things are not the big converters that make noise and generate heat several times - just didn't listen. Now I own the only printer in the house Muhahaha!
Technically speaking, there are several ISPs that do this. For instance, Earthlink blocks port 25 on all of its connections and refuses mail from dynamic IPs...
I basically do the same thing.
I have a Win2k box with VMWare running several other OS's - each with thier own browser lists, a FreeBSD box running all browsers I can test in (including Lynx) as well as two laptops running XP and Win98 with their own list of browsers.
On top of that, I use Dreamweavers compatibility script and use the W3C Validator.
Its really a pain when you think you've got something perfectly done and you find a small bug in 1 browser...
If they've ever read the horror stories of other people using Satellite, they'll never sign up.
Its slower than standard bandwitch, its a pain to support, it fails a lot the ads on regular cable (wind = fail, snow = fail, etc) and it pretty much takes an act of god to get it to VPN into anything.