U-NITED Warranties
Michael Dale
One of the computers we purchased for a customer came with a 3 year onsite warranty. The extra 2 years of warranty was provided by U-NITED Warranties (aka United Warranty) (http://www.u-nited.com.au/ or http://www.unitedelectrical.com.au/).
As of today I am still waiting for a response as to where the machine is.
Update:
March 4th Update:
March 7th. Still no update.
March 14th. After a lot of bitching I was finally able to get a part refund on the computer so that I can replace it myself! So crap, but I can get a new machine much faster than this company can return phone calls!
I will never use this company again for anything.
IPManager Invoicing
Michael Dale
Invoicing is just about complete! There are two more things that are not finished yet, PDF invoices and emailing the invoicing. Both will be pretty easy.
There were a few complex SQL queries to handle the tax calculations (and to have the total on the view all invoices page).
Here is what it looks like (click to see full size).
Fun with JQuery
Michael Dale
I am in the process of writing in invoicing support for IPManager (need to change the name of this app!). I've looked at Xero and Saasu but I'd still need to work out their API, and I don't like the idea of companies having access to my data, so I'm doing it myself :)
To do it nicely I need to use a bunch of JQuery so that you can easily add new line items on the fly (and calculate tax etc).
I've got it working just the way I want it, using a very long JQuery command!
Here are a couple of screen shots:
And here is the basic design that the clients will see:
I am pretty happy with it so far, lots of work to go though.
New IPManager Design
Michael Dale
This theme will be out for version 2.6 (no time frame for this release yet).
Bluetrait Money
Michael Dale
New version of Bluetrait Money is finally out!
You can purchase it from here:
codecanyon.net/item/bluetrait-money/458252
Google hired some graphic designers
Michael Dale
....only took 13 years.
The new google design is much much better than the crap they've been feeding us....
....speaking of designers, new Dalegroup website coming soon :) Should be sweet.
Kaseya + Ninite
Michael Dale
Automatically patch 250+ computers with all the latest apps in a couple of clicks. The wonders of having remote scripting control over all computers we look after (Windows, Mac and Linux).
Although Kaseya is a very heavy program (my server has 5gb of ram just for it!) it does so much useful stuff.
Handles windows event log collection, patch management, application deployment, alerting, remote control, silent scripting, remote command line, registry editor, reporting, anti-virus and malware and a bunch of other things. Basically means I can manage any machine from a web browser without needing to login to the actual computer (also no VPN needed). Yay!
Only issue is that I cannot remote control from an iPad.
I take my recommendation back. Ninite are now charging much much more per month than before. I have yet to work out what the new cost gives me, so at this stage I cannot recommend it.
IPManager 2.2 tickets sql improvements.
Michael Dale
Primary tickets query in IPManager, working very nicely (110,000 tickets in a slow VM).
SQL result
Host: localhost
Database: ipm_test
Generation Time: Jun 21, 2011 at 01:10 AM
Generated by: phpMyAdmin 3.2.0.1 / MySQL 5.1.36-community-log
SQL query: EXPLAIN SELECT tickets.* , c.id AS `source_client_id`, c.client_name AS `source_client_name`, c.email AS `source_client_email`, c2.client_name AS `assigned_user_name`, c2.email AS `assigned_user_email`, comp.name AS `source_company_name`, p.name AS `priority_name`, t.name AS `ticket_state_name` FROM tickets LEFT JOIN clients c ON c.id = tickets.source_client_id LEFT JOIN clients c2 ON c2.id = tickets.assigned_user_id LEFT JOIN priorities p ON p.id = tickets.priority_id LEFT JOIN ticket_state t ON t.id = tickets.ticket_state_id LEFT JOIN companies comp ON comp.id = tickets.source_company_id WHERE 1 = 1 AND tickets.ticket_state_id = 1 ORDER BY last_modified DESC LIMIT 50 OFFSET 0;
Rows: 6
id | select_type | table | type | possible_keys | key | key_len | ref | rows | Extra |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | SIMPLE | tickets | index | ticket_state_id | last_modified | 8 | NULL | 50 | Using where |
1 | SIMPLE | c | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | ipm_test.tickets.source_client_id | 1 | |
1 | SIMPLE | c2 | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | ipm_test.tickets.assigned_user_id | 1 | |
1 | SIMPLE | p | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | ipm_test.tickets.priority_id | 1 | |
1 | SIMPLE | t | const | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | const | 1 | |
1 | SIMPLE | comp | eq_ref | PRIMARY | PRIMARY | 4 | ipm_test.tickets.source_company_id | 1 |
Expensive HP
Michael Dale
So the cheap dell was nice for the price.
This server was much more expensive.
2x6 core Xeon (24 total including HT), 24gb Ram, 1.1TB SAS 10K Raid 10, VMware.
Still only 24gb of ram.....haha. It's a nice server though.
Cheap Dell
Michael Dale
You can purchase some really cheap computers these days. Makes me wonder why cloud computing is so popular (hint people are lazy).
Dell T310
Xeon 2.5GHz Quad
2x500TB Raid 1 HDDs (SATA so not great, but should be fine)
24gb Ram (yeah sweet)
Windows SBS 2011
3 year onsite warranty.
1gb ethernet link with unlimited transfer between server and workstations :p
$2800/inc GST.
24gb Ram and SBS for less than $3k, seriously nice.
It has been interesting to see my clients thoughts on cloud computing. Some are all for it, while others won't touch it. Long term it seems like the only solution, but for many customers they simply don't trust these cloud providers (and I'm mostly in agreement).