Ubuntu - First Impressions

Well I once again god fed up with Windows so decided to move back to Linux as I just prefer the power and flexibility. The last major issue I had when I loaded up Centos was my graphics setup just didn’t work. I’ve got an NVidia with Twin view on two monitor and an ATI onboard graphics card on the MB and I just couldn’t get them to all work together.

With Ubuntu I did however manage to get it to finally work though a bit contrived. By using a custom kernel and the NVIDIA binary module I’ve got 95% of what I want. I’ve only got OpenGL on one screen but I can live with that but I’ve got 3 monitors and stable. The full config is here.

So anyway once over that a series of apt-get to install things like XFCE to get the intereface I like I was happy. However then came the test of my scanner which is notorisly unsupported by anything but I just plugged it in and Xsane picked it up and I just happily went alon.

Of course now I need to sort out the IPOD but overall definitly a 8/10 so far but still a lot to customise

329Mb of updates on a new Windows 2003 install…

Well just installing a new W2K3 server for a customer and found myself in update hell with 329Mb of updates which is just SP1. Surely wouldn’t is just be easier now for them to ship a boot ISO and then let people update over the wire….Prehaps this is why Mr Gates is just thinking about moving to web based apps

A way to impact phising?

I just got a phising email for Bank of America and for once had a look at the source code for it to check if it was real or not (as I’ve spoken to them about opening an account) and noticed the following code

How this code is pulling images straight from their main website so I was thinking surely it would be possible for them to check the referrer of the images as someone who hasn’t visted the site directly and replace the image with a warning message, or do laptop batteries something with deep linking..

Just me thinking out loud..

Live Update from Steve Jobs keynote

Via engadget live updates from the keynote. Lets hope for the MiniMac Intel

Getting a break away from the office

Well today I learnt a lesson that I thought that I already knew is that you need to balance everything in life so that one thing doesn’t get on top of you. For the last week or so I’ve been working my little socks off for the bsiness and taken very very little time for myself just to sit back and relax. So anyway this morning I once again hit that wall where you just feel that its not wrth trying as it all goes wrong. However this time I realised that its not worth fighting it so I took me, my new laptop (review to come shortly) and my car into town just to sit down and relax for a bit.

First stop was Starbucks just for a coffee and a bit of a relax and then once done moved onto Nero to get another coffee. overall a bit of a break and a run into town has relaxed things and made it so things don’t need to be all that hard. You just have to rember its worth taking time for yourself and then everything else will fall into place. Of course thats not an excuse to be selfish and you do have to think of others.

A quick look over digg/slashdot however has shown some nice stuff to blog about as its software I use yay for content

Been really Ill ( by male standards )

Last few days I’ve been having some pretty bad side effects from a Hepatitis A booster shot which managed to leave mefeeling quite rough and dehydraed which explains the lack of posts. However after a few days R+R I’m back to about 80% so can at least function although my concentration still is a bit lacking .. .. ooh shiny thing …. sorry back now. However I’ve got some great ideas for the site so watch out for things ni the next few weeks

Learning to podcast

Well recently I’ve been trying to get into podcasting with my own Podcast (BofhCast) and I have to say its proving to be quite hard. A hell of a lot of learning over things like volume control and which software to use is starting to get the better of me. I’ve managed to get 12 shows out and the quality has been getting a bit better but I’ve now dedicded to kick it up a gear. So I’m starting to do deeper reasearch as well as pad outmy show notes.

For the easy shows going by the “seat of your pants” is ok but when trying to put across a techinical discussion on something it can be quite hard if you’ve not run it through in your head.

For example I’m currently trying to work on show 13 and I think I’ve got some much better content as I’ve sat down and thought about what to say. Also taking some people comments on about things being quite I’ve got a new mike which just sounds so much better and it was a reasonable price as well. I really do want to make a go of this as by now I would of normally given up and moved onto something else but even with all the false starts I am feeling just a bit better about. I still feel that I need to get a much more natural flow going with it all but that will come with time.

Every step forward is getting a bit close to the goal and with any luck might even start turning out some money one day

Where do you want to go today? I dunno I’m confused

From mobilitytoday.com it appears there is a huge choice of Windows Vista available

Windows Starter 2007 (Previously Windows Vista Starter Edition) or as I read it the basic version that doesn’t do enough and for the 32bit systems is aimed at will run light a dog so people will have to upgrade hardware so they can run Vista Home Basic,

Windows Vista Home Basic (and Home Basic N)- Consumer grade that will work for most people

Windows Vista Home Premium - The lets get the PC into the living room version and add in the Plus(c) pack varient just to make the hige price seema little bit justified

Windows Vista Business (and Business N) - Should be reasonable and work on decent hardware without all the stupid fluff

Windows Vista Enterprise Optimized - High end enterprise but the Virtual PC support should rock. Definitly something to look forward to esp if coupled with the new AMD / Intel Virtualisation hardware

Windows Vista Ultimate - Everything above so this is what I’m waiting for and then will see the price and stick to Linux

Why setup fees are good for (some parts) of the hosting industry

Setup fees have long been a bone of contention between consumers and companies. Companies obviously want to get a much profit as they can out of customers, as customers want the best value for money deal that they can get. So with this constant struggle where do setup fees come in and how can they be used by both sides to get a good deal for everyone involved?

Firstly if we split the hosting world down into two large generic sections. The first section we can automate (shared hosting and reseller hosting) and the seconds that do require manual work ( colocation , dedicated servers and VPS ) from the host. VPS as a catagory itself can be argued in a couple of ways if the host has setup an automatic provisioning however normally its done manually and require post setup work.

For the first group it is possible for the entire setup process to be automated from end to end. This automation is relativly cheap and as long asthe software being used is one of the main players most billing systems support it. From the website to emailing the account login details to the user its possible for most modern software to do without any interaction from the host. The only time that a host might want to do things manually is if they are doing fraud checking. This will normally take 30 seconds per order and if the number of orders is low then its not a major issue for one person to do. So as such the setup fee in this case would cover 30 seconds of someones time if the package is a standard offering.

Most end users expect that setup of hosting accounts is automated so the setup fee for them is bascially looking like the hosting company trying to get extra money and can be a major stumbling block to them signing up. For the customers where custom packages are deployed they are more willing to pay the setup fee as they understand that manual work that must be done. Again if the setup fee is a deal breaker it can be wise for the host to waive it as manual account setups normally don’t take more than a few minutes.

However at the end of the day its down to the host to charge what they feel they can and should the host, of any size, feel that the process of account creation is taking to much time and they wishto try to reclaim some money on it then its their choice to do that. There are of course some companies that don’t gater for the low to middle part of the hosting market and their target market will actually happily pay setup fees.

When we start looking at the higher end part of the market such a dedicated and colocation its not unreasonable for setup fees to be applied as the amount of work / expendature of cost that goes into the product is a lot higher. For example if a customer orders a dedicated server then the host has to go through a number of steps to get it ready. These include (but aren’t limited to)

• Order the hardware
• Assemble (if necessary) and test it for 24 hours to make sure its stable
• Install the OS (which can be automated to some point but still require some level of manual work) and patch if necessary
• Install any contorl panels
• Physically install the machine into the datacenter, which might include shipping it to the datacenter depending on the company

At this point the login details are then sent to the customer even though the host might of spent a number of hours already going through the hardware and setting it up. As such the setup fee does cover the cost of all this which a lot of users don’t realise exists. Also the cost of the hardware itself can be quite high and the sooner that the host can recover the cost of the hardware the better for the long term stability of the host so the setup fee can be used to subsidise this.

For colocation there is a cost to the datacenter of having to get physical space ready for the end client and if they client themselves are not visting the datacneter to install it there is the time it takes someone to rack the server and then make sure its all up and working. Basically it does come down to each host and how much they think their employees time is worth.

One side effect of setup fees is also that it can be used to weed out the type of customers who only want to buy a server for one month or wil be high maitance. Customers who are willing to pay setup fees normally become better long terms customers in terms of re-occuring revenue as well as styaing with the one hosting company they signup with as long as they prove to give good, constant performance.