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Knightrous
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Joined: 15 Jun 2004
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MBP Retina tricked out with 32GB RAM and the best SSD you can buy. Plenty of people use these for rendering and movie production on the fly (literally on planes...).

If you want a portable computer, I'd look into the NEW Mac Pro, it's insanely priced, but I've yet to see anything close the the amount of grunt (4 to 12 cores, dual video cards, oodles of RAM, PCI SSD) in such a tiny package.

http://store.apple.com/us/buy-mac/mac-pro
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Post Sun Nov 03, 2013 4:24 pm 
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Valen
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Was screwing around with other stuff when I came across this
https://fetlife.com/users/201210/pictures/15988366

I remember miles & jules were wanting some sort of high performance network storage type system.
ebay up some cheap infiniband cards (can be had for $40 if you look for them) + that switch and a handful of (kinda spendy in longer lengths) cables and you have a 10gbit network *designed* for high speed disk access ;->

10gbe stuff is getting cheaper, NIC's on ebay look like $300 a pop and switches look like ~$1000.
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Post Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:03 am 
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Knightrous
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Alternatively, it looks like Apples Ethernet over ThunderBolt could certainly progress to being a worthy solution.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/os-x-10-9-brings-fast-but-choppy-thunderbolt-networking/
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Post Tue Nov 12, 2013 1:07 pm 
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Valen
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external serial PCI-E is always going to be good ;->
Though overheads seem higher


quote:

Update: by popular demand, I also tested with iPerf, which tests raw TCP performance, without reading or writing to disk. iPerf transfers data without the overhead incurred by actual file-sharing protocols, and these numbers won't be representative of actual performance in most cases. Sending from the MacBook Pro to the MacBook Air happened at 5.3Gbps, in the other direction slightly faster at 5.7Gbps.


infiniband iperf test nets me around 7-8gbit.

Only other down side is tbolt is daisy chain, I don't think it can be switched?
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Post Tue Nov 12, 2013 1:59 pm 
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dyrodium
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Joined: 24 Aug 2004
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Random tech challenge.. I'm wanting to build several pc's to run an online CAD program called 'tinkercad', it's webGL based, runs on the cloud and aimed at beginners. Because it uses their servers to do the grunt work, you don't need a powerful PC at all.

So, I've been scoping ways to build a machine to run a chrome browser and webGL for the LOWEST COST possible. I'm taking >$300 not including peripherals, hopefully. I'd like to get it down below 200... NUC and barebones pc builds don't quite get it low enough. I could go 'old stock' but need several identical systems.

It's tested and works on chrome books, so they're the fallback but start at $350. Just wondering if anyone knows of a super budget method... Doesn't have to run windows, webGL should work fine on linux and Chrome OS. I haven't found an android device as yet that works. Smile
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Post Thu Apr 03, 2014 10:02 pm 
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Knightrous
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Have you looked at the new Asus ChromeBox

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7850/asus-chromebox-review

You can get them for $299 at The Laptop Factory - http://www.lfo.com.au/index.php/clearance.html?page=shop.product_details&flypage=flypage-vmbright.tpl&product_id=1057&category_id=50

As per Anandtech, these are advertised as RRP US$179, so you can probably grab them from the US for cheaper and ship them over.
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Post Fri Apr 04, 2014 8:13 am 
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dyrodium
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Haha I was thinking that if that kind of thing didn't exist already I'd try to make one... Got to love the Australian tax though, for $300 you can just get NUC. Laughing

Can't see many of them around online, will have to see how prices go as they get released. Razz Due date for this project is May so have a fair amount of time to play around.
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Post Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:24 pm 
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Valen
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by then stuff will probably be cheaper or higher performance anyway
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Post Mon Apr 07, 2014 7:18 pm 
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dyrodium
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The quest continues - Chromebox still is either non-existent or overpriced, and I still can't put together a system that is better value than a nuc. Best I've found are...

http://www.mwave.com.au/product/mwave-intel-essential-hdmi-2014-pc-ab53639

or

http://www.mwave.com.au/product/mwave-intel-everyday-nuc-mini-pc-ideal-for-home-or-htpc-ab53922

EDIT: This ex lease thing looks pretty tempting too for $200 http://www.dealsdirect.com.au/hp-elite-8000-ultra-slim-desktop-core-2-duo-4gb-160gb-sata-ex-lease/

Probably leaning towards nuc for efficiency and quietness... Rolling Eyes
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Post Thu Apr 24, 2014 10:56 pm 
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Spockie-Tech
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Joined: 31 May 2004
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These guys usually have lots of stock of identical ex-corporate systems nice and cheap..
http://budgetpc.com.au/refurbished-products/refurbished-computers.html
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Post Fri Apr 25, 2014 11:57 am 
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dyrodium
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Awesome link, cheers Brett. Smile
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Post Fri Apr 25, 2014 3:05 pm 
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marto
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Yeh that looks pretty cheap. Old but it's like they are giving them away.
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Post Fri Apr 25, 2014 3:07 pm 
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dyrodium
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Haha had forgotton posting that question ^ Turns out after target brought the 8" windows tablet out it solved the problem!

Now for another one - this is going to sound 'completely' n00b, I have not the slightest clue when it comes to websites, only that when you pay people to design them you will often get taken for a ride and get shite results (aka the new '3dpstudios site which has been about to launch for a year now').

I'm wanting to steal much of the new google play layout for a mostly ecommerce site - big icons and nice ui for touchscreens and portable devices. One thing I've never seen work so well is the fluidity of it. https://play.google.com/store

How does one even begin to go about that? I'm not doing this off my own back so realistic costs and expectations are in place. Obviously the google site would have cost probably hundreds of thousands, I just want to replicate the general layout and feel, or get an idea of where to pursue. Wink Ta IT gurus.
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Post Fri Oct 17, 2014 6:53 pm 
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Nick
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Joined: 16 Jun 2004
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I can't really help you with the front-end web stuff but after going to a bazillion meeting on the technical support side of e-commerce applications, I can cherry-pick some things you need to consider:

1) Before you talk to anyone about developing the site, you need a really detailed brief. You need to have a good idea about the number of products, the categories they fit into, the expected number of customers, the $ turnover per day, the expected growth rate, seasonal variations in traffic, special features (BBS, online support chat, etc) and lots more.

2) there are several different business models you could use:

in-house (high start-up costs but the most control and flexibility) probably not the best choice for a smaller business.

co-located, where you have your own servers in a data centre and use their infrastructure. Also expensive to set up and sometimes high running costs. You really need to check the fine print for the cost of any special services; where I worked, it cost the equivalent of $500 per for a guy to change a backup tape in our co-located gear!)

Shared services, where the data centre owns all the servers and infrastructure and you rent a certain amount of capacity on it to run your own code. This is very popular but you need a very detailed SLA with meaningful penalties if the provider does not meet the service levels. You also need to know what the provider charges for unusual requests like extra capacity, code changes, audits, site visits, etc.

Complete service providers, where you walk in with a business proposal and (in theory) walk out with an e-commerce site. I haven't dealt directly with this type of vendor and I am a bit sceptical. There may be hidden charges for code maintenance, capacity upgrades and all sorts of reoccurring running costs. You need to be sure the vendor is the right size to match your needs; smaller operators may not be able to provide support for rapid growth, while very large vendors may not give smaller customers the attention level and support they need.

3) Security: for any hosted site, you want to know any security reporting, accreditations the vendor can provide. what their policy is on breaches, any penalties they will pay for breaches of your site. That goes for both software and hardware if there are separate vendors.

4) Business continuity and disaster recovery: You want a guaranteed minimum up-time % and in case of hardware failure, a guaranteed recovery time. That should include cutting over to a secondary data centre if you plan to do much business volume. There should also be a well defined backup plan for both the site code and the back-end database.

5) confidentiality agreements for the code development. Where I worked, an Indian development company was found auctioning off some of our proprietary ATM code - we had to sue them for a large damages claim.

6) Intellectual rights: I hear that some full service vendors keep the rights to your site so that you are locked-in to the vendor.

I will probably think of more stuff, this just what came to mind in 10 minutes Smile
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Post Fri Oct 17, 2014 8:59 pm 
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Valen
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I'd suggest that you not worry too much about all the slide in/out gadgets, that kinda stuff makes things expensive and fussy, you need different code for pretty much every browser/OS combo out there, keep the look, but don't bother too much about the chrome.

The most important thing as nick said is a detailed brief.
Most likely with your budget you are going to get an open source product re-skinned, or themed or something like that. If you can sketch out the screens you want to see in some detail it'll help a lot.

Keep in mind that people making the site make their money on you changing your mind.

At the sort of scale you are talking about your website creator is probably going to be your host. You will pay a bit more for this than you would if you hosted it yourself but its probably going to be worth it, (expect something in the $30 a month range, you can get your own VPS for $7 a month) so you don't need to know maintenance.

What is really important though is that you guys buy the domain name, don't buy it through the creator/host, you need to buy it and own it and manage it then you can direct it at the host. Part 2 is make sure you get a copy of the source code and get the whole website running on something you own/control at least once. When the hosting/creation business goes tits up you don't want them taking your website with them. If you own the domain and you can re-create the website if your provider dies or your host kicks it you can be back up and running in a matter of hours.

Perhaps ask if you can get the backups of your site sent to you, or if you can get access to take your own backups just in case (I'm mostly thinking database here).

I'm estimating you would probably be up for something in the $5-10K range for that kinda thing and you will get a front-end for something like oscommerce or perhaps a joomla/wordpress/whatever skin plugging into some commerce engine.

I'd specify though that you want to get a minimum standard of say 90/100 in google pagespeed particularly in server response time as that has an impact on your page rankings and the user experience. Plenty of times these guys will make a website that looks ok, but it'll load like a dog. Try it on a slow adsl connection or busy 3g service then ctrl+shift+R on it to see what its like for a first time visitor to your site, the slower it loads the less likley customers are to put their credit card info into your site.
Make sure they don't have java that hits google and twitter and all that crap if you aren't actually using said services, half the time they are just there by default and they don't take them out, then your page will hang on loading until it hits a twitter server for no reason.

Specify responsiveness as part of your spec, people don't trust slow websites.
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Post Sat Oct 18, 2014 8:43 am 
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