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.

1. They rarely answer their support phone in under 10 minutes. 
2. The URL that they provide while waiting on hold to check the status of the job is incorrect and takes you to a server error page. I even emailed them about it, no reply.
3. It took over a week before the machine was even collected.
4. The computer has now been with them for over 2 weeks.
5. They stopped updating their job status website (I found it even though it isn't even linked on their website, FYI it is https://www.u-nited.com.au/registrations/) weeks ago so we now need to call each time to get any information.
6. We still haven't been given any information as to when the computer will be returned.
7. Either the computer has been formatted (the drive was fine) or they have never connected it to the internet as it has not checked in to our Kaseya system.

Update:

• Their phone system now seems to lock up and reboot, kicking me off the line and out of the queue! The amount of time I have wasted with this company is crazy.

March 4th Update:

• Still no machine or any update on when it will be returned. Awful awful service.

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.

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.

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).

iMac

Michael Dale

So after upgrading my Core2Duo 2.4GHz MBP to have an SSD, my i7 iMac is basically unusable now....

Sure having an i7 chip is nice (I run a bunch of VMs, xcode, bloated iTunes and the famous ram hog Safari) but 8gb isn't enough ram and the slow HDD just kills it.

Basically I need at least 16gb of ram or an SSD (both would be nice!).

Same issue with the MacBook Air (not that I own one), just needs 8gb of ram and it would be sweet, 4gb isn't enough at all.

Happy IPv6 Day!

Michael Dale

traceroute6 to ns3.dalegroup.net (2001:470:1:41:a800:ff:fe59:ad77) from 2001:44b8:73f3:30a0:223:6cff:fe87:d1b0, 64 hops max, 12 byte packets

MacBook Pro SSD

Michael Dale

So my old MacBook Pro has been working pretty well for 2 years now, but it was sloooow.

So I purchased an SSD for it, and wow. It now feels faster than my 27" i7 iMac!

Any new computer I purchase now will need an SSD, I am very impressed with the speed increase.

So yeah, SSD for the win!

Gmail Sucks

Michael Dale

We're finally moving one of our clients away from Gmail. We have be using Gmail there for the last few years and it has been painful.

The product is bad. We have had a number of times where email accounts will be locked out for no reason, passwords will be rejected and the stupid capture is impossible to read (required to unlock the account).

The email threading confuses most people I've talked to and it doesn't work correctly with many email clients.

The web interface isn't designed well and I don't like the idea of an advertising company having access to my email.

On the iPhone gmail is also really slow at sending/receiving emails compared to my email server.

The only good thing about Gmail is the search, but Mail.app on the mac seems to work just as well.

In fact most of the google products I have used aren't that good. Postini has the worst admin interface I have ever seen, it is really slow and again another bad design.

I don't understand why so many of googles products are so lacking. I would say that they offer just enough features to get people locked into their system.

I don't think I'll ever recommend a business use Google for anything.

Remote Control Car

Michael Dale

I've always wanted an awesome remote control car, so I picked up a netduino a couple of weeks ago and have decided to build a remote control car.

So far the parts I have:

• Netduino
• Breadboard
• RP5 Tracked Chassis Gray (link)
• Pololu Qik 2s9v1 Dual Serial Motor Controller
• Arduino ProtoShield Kit

I'll need to get some more stuff for the remote control.

Anyway this is how it looks so far:

All the parts were ordered online from here.