UBCD4Win needs your help, please

A slight situation has occurred and we need your help. Last year my finances were pretty good and donations were at a level where I knew I would get my money back so I paid for a full year of hosting for the site. Now you guys/gals all know that when I make a mistake I have no problems being honest about it. We all make mistakes or mess up and I actually like to tell you all about them so you do not make that same mistake and to let you all know I am just a normal person like all of you.
So, I thought I had made the payment in July but after an email on Friday I found out it was this month! I called them quickly and checked to see how much time I had until everything went down. Our hosting company gave me until this Friday, the 3rd to make a payment. This year things are much more tight and I honestly don’t even have the $99 to pay for a month. However I would much rather have us save money and pay the $1020 for a full year. Sure it’s only a little over $100, but every little bit helps!

So this is forcing me to start a new “donation rally.” I am very happy with the fact that we haven’t had to hold one in very close to 2 years, donations and such have kept us a float. In the past you all have been very supportive and we have always reached our goal and I have always been very appreciative of that!

Please, if you can afford it….help us out with this donation rally and keep our UBCD4Win and UBDVD sites up. As always I will keep you all updated on the progress and will end the “rally” as soon as we reach our goal. Thank you very much for your past, present, and future support!! If you happen to have any questions or anything, feel free to email me anytime.

Please use this special donation button so I can track the hosting donations easier:

<7/5/09 edit: removed PayPal donation button because we reached our goal. If you would still like to donate, go over to http://www.ubcd4win.com/donations.htm>

Server video

Ok, I’ve mentioned this before: I do not like to post more than once a day but sometimes I have to make exceptions.  Sure we could go with losing 2 big 70′s and 80′s icons today, but I’m not gonna go there.  I want to keep talking about servers!!

My post earlier today was to provide more information and respond to one comment made about Dell servers.  Then a comment was made to the older post after I had posted the new one today.  A simple response probably could have been well enough, but I wanted to have a little fun and do a video.  I haven’t done one in a long time!!

The question was about the IBM Serveraid card I installed on the server, asking about the initialization time.  In the video you will receive the answer to that question and see me quickly showing off the server a little.  One thing I failed to do at the end though, was show off the shut down time.  I almost redid the video but did not have time.  Just take my word on it, this server shuts down in only 4-8 seconds!  You’ll have to watch the video below to see initialization times and boot times for the MS Server 08 OS.

More servers!!

I appreciate all the comments about the SSD drive in my last server setup.  Not really many tips but good comments about the build.  One comment really caught my attention and required me to do some digging.  The server I mentioned in the previous post I had quoted at about $4700.  The customer had mentioned that the server they were looking at from IBM cost $8000!!  I wanted more information and detailed specs but the customer never provided them so I really couldn’t compare them to see if my price was really that much better.

I had another pending quote for a cheaper server and that was ordered yesterday.  My price for that configuration is about $3800.  Like I had mentioned though, a comment to the previous post made me curious.  So I just ventured over to Dell.com to see if their servers and prices are that much better.  Now I will mention that there are a few things that I really can not do with their configurer.  They seem to use more expensive enterprise drives in their servers, while I use the slightly lower end RE2 and RE3 Enterprise drives from Western Digital.  In my test configuration I only chose 2 160GB SATA hot swappable hard drives because each were $289!!  My quote includes 2 RE2 160GB SATA and 3 RE3 500GB SATA drives and honestly my price for those 5 drives is about $100 less than their $578 just for 2 drives!!  Mine are SATA2, 7200RPM, and are hot swappable like theirs, so why are they so much more expensive??  Don’t know and don’t really care.  To be fair in their quote I only chose 2 of their drives.  The other thing that can’t really be considered is the RAID card.  I am using an IBM Serveraid card that costs about $425!  They have an option for some other RAID card and their add on price is $398, so I guess that is fair?

Bottom line.  I would not buy a Dell server, I would much rather build them myself because I can offer a much better price.  Their server price was about $4100 and it was not completely configured as the one I had quoted.  Mine has much better and more hardware.  They may be able to catch us with support, but not by much.  If we sold a server every month, then we could invest in holding on to extra hardware for emergencies but right now all we can rely on is over night shipping.  I think over night shipping should be good enough?

So I would encourage you to check out some of your local shops if you are in the server market.  You may have a good shop in your area that will research their products and be able to provide good support should something bad happen.  Finding a good and honest shop is hard though, so spending an extra $1K or $2K on a mission critical server from the “big boys” may offer better piece of mind?

Solid State Drive suggestions??

I’ve read many posts, faq’s, and other information from searches but really haven’t seen what I expect from a SSD install in a new server I just built at work.  This thing rocks, or at least I think it does??  We really do not build many servers at work and I appreciate the experience but honestly am still not completely sure about myself and the decisions I’ve made with this build.  Generally they go with Server 03 and lower cost builds.  They wanted to go “all out” with this build so I went a little crazy?  Here is what I suggested and built.

• Chenbro case: 5.25″ bay, 3.5″ bay, slim DVD bay, 2 USB ports, and 16x 3.5″ hot-swap drives
• Zippy 350w 2+1 redundant and hot swappable power supply
• SuperMicro Intel X58 board; socket 1366, 6x DDR3, 4x PCIe slots (variety), 2x PCI slots
• Intel Xeon 2.4GHz quad core E5530
• Kingston Triple Channel DDR3 ECC 6GB kit memory
• Intel X25-E 32GB SSD (Kick ASS!)
• 4x 1TB WD RE3 SATA hard drives (RAID 5, one hot spare)
• Promise SCSI PCIe card (for tape backup)
• IBM Serveraid 8x SAS/SATA2 PCIe card
• MS Server 2008

As you can see this cost quite a bit of money, so I was expecting great performance.  It did install pretty quickly and the performance is good, but I was expecting more?  I expected the SSD to really, really kick ass?  It does perform well, but that’s what I would expect from a quad core processor and 6GB’s of fast memory.

Like I had asked, do you have any suggestions or tips?  Their IT guy comes back from vacation on Wednesday and I’d like to have everything “buttoned up” before then.  I would greatly appreciate any help!  One final note, it has me rethinking the prospect of using some of my hard earned money on a SSD for my laptop.  Although some of the new lower cost MLC second or third generation drives promise some fast speeds.  Actually for about half the cost of the SLC Intel drive, they promise about double the speeds?  This SSD market is still in it’s infancy and I don’t know if I can personally afford to try out these drives myself.

It took them long enough!!

Thanks to emails from NFL Shop, I have been informed about the PERFECT product for myself!!  Finances have been quite tight over the past few months so it will probably take some digging, but by the end of the week I should find myself ordering this awesome shirt!  Hopefully wearing it every other day by the end of next week!  I saved a picture of it from the site because I had to post it here.  If you are interested in purchasing the shirt for yourself, just click on the graphic.  It will take you to the NFL Shop website.

Penguins & Steelers Rock!!

Ok, I think I am done gloating now??  I’ll get my focus back onto Burrows Solutions and other computer stuff starting tomorrow!

Pittsburgh Rocks!!

Really, is there a better city or state to be in?  With the Lombardi trophy and Lord Stanley’s Cup both residing in Pittsburgh what more can you ask for?  Well if you like baseball you could go for a quick drive to Philadelphia and check out the Commissioner’s trophy (World Series).  I’ve gotta say the Commissioner’s trophy does look kinda cool with all the flags.  Even though I am more of a die hard football fan rather than hockey, Lord Stanley’s Cup is pretty awesome.  It has to be my favorite trophy.  It is kind of cool that there is only ONE true trophy that has all the winners names inscribed.  The Lombardi trophy does look cool, but is kind of plain?  Maybe I need to take a trip to Pittsburgh and see the Steeler’s SIX trophies and that’ll change my mind a little?

Have you seen the pictures of the Steelers Super Bowl rings???  Oh my gosh, they are crazy!  I can’t bad talk my guys but I personally think that is a little too much, but they do look cool!!  I also LOVE in the story about the ceremony where they mention Ben was the first to hurry off and leave.  Where was he headed??  To the Igloo for game 6!!  I love the support Big Ben has shown for the Penguins over the last two years.  I just hope to see Sidney and maybe Geno at a Steelers playoff game next year!!  These guys love Pittsburgh!

Either way you look at it, Pittsburgh is the HOME of champions this year.  Within the next few weeks I’ll have to take some new pictures of my office.  So you can see all my championship hats, footballs, pucks, and various other items.  I really wish I had a few hundred dollars to buy up a bunch more stuff, but that will come over time.  I encourage any fans to make a trip to Pittsburgh this fall because it will be the final chance for you to see Mellon Arena.  I plan to save up the money and go to at least one game.  In conclusion I must say to all football and hockey fans: Pittsburgh ROCKS!!!!

MacBook Air killer??

Dunno if Acer is really trying to do this, but this device could come close to accomplishing that feat.  The biggest negative to this light laptop is the single core Pentium processor.  Impressive though considering it only burns 10 watts of power!!  I really doubt Acer is trying to compete with Apple but with a small (and expensive) modification it can come close.  Consider also that after that expensive modification it is still about $325 cheaper than a MacBook Air!  Oops, sorry I didn’t tell you what I’m talking about yet!  I’m talking about the Acer TimeLine 38070 A3810-4880. I honestly never really recommend Acer laptops, don’t get me wrong they make nice budget LCD Monitors…..but I’m not too sure about their laptops. However this one interests me quite a bit. So interested I’m thinking about spending $850 on one just to test it out and if works well I would recommend it and possibly sell them on my Burrows Solutions website. I haven’t been able to find a good review on these little laptops just yet and that’s what really has me thinking I need to do a good review on one.
Let’s go over some specs quick. There are two models to chose from and I’m going with the system that has 4GB’s of memory instead of the one with 3GB’s of memory and a DVD burner, I’d rather have the memory! The good: 4GB’s DDR3 memory, 320GB hard drive, 13.3″ screen, wireless G & Draft N, and finally an 8 hour battery! The bad: 1.3GHz single core Pentium processor, and no SSD drive. BUT, that’s why I’m saying I would spend $850 on this laptop. The laptop itself sells for about $650 and I would add a decent SSD to the system to help speed it up and compensate for the “slow” processor. So what do you think? Should I get one and give you all a good review of it?

Finally I want to quickly add that I should be showcasing a new video on Sunday or Monday.  I’m putting together a $4800 server equipped with a new Xeon processor, triple channel DDR3, and the icing on the cake is the OS drive.  A kick ass Intel Enterprise SSD drive!!  I plan to play test it more on Sunday or Monday.  Let’s see how quickly we can do a UBCD4Win build on it??!!

BurrowsSolutions.com

When I originally launched the 19″ LCD monitors I lost focus on what I want Burrows Solutions to be.  There are thousands of places that you can get good prices on stuff, but Burrows Solutions will be different.  I do not have the buying power of those bigger guys either but I will sell things because I can offer better service.  How many other sites out there off a 100% guarantee against dead/stuck pixels when you buy an LCD?  I really do not know if anyone other than me does that.  Then of course there is price.  I’ll admit I was a bit greedy when I started the 19″ Acer LCD’s at $94.95.  It was a combination of losing focus and fear.  Now the fear and losing focus work hand and hand.  Whenever you sell something you are at risk for DOA’s and RMA’s, so generally you have to have your prices cushioned to absorb that.  That is why I started the LCD’s out at $94.95.  However the focus I want from Burrows Solutions is to provide prices you almost never see!  I received a great deal when I bought these LCD’s so that great deal is carried on over to you, the new price is $84.95 plus shipping.  Head on over and order one before they are sold out.

$94.95 19″ Acer LCD!!

Would anyone like a great deal on a very nice 19″ Acer LCD?

I’ve got bad, good, and great news on this deal.

First the good, they are brand new with a full 3 year warranty. The bad, I only have 3 in stock. But finally the great news, I am offering a NO dead/stuck pixel guarantee on these! I opened each up to make sure they were in good condition and to check for dead/stuck pixels and they all look great!

My BurrowsSolutions.com site is still not perfect yet but it is functional enough for you to place orders.  So if you are interested please head over to http://www.burrowssolutions.com and pick one up before they are gone!  While you are there you could even pick up a lifetime license of Super AntiSpyware at a great price if you need it.  If you have any questions feel free to email me.

Trillian Astra……too late?

Finally received a beta “invitation” for Trillian Astra yesterday and I anxiously installed it.  First I want to mention that you need to exercise caution when installing.  Even if you unclick the “install Ask Toolbar” option, it will still INSTALL it!!  This was very annoying to me, I control what is installed on my system and I do not want or need this type of garbage!

Too little, too late?  Many people have moved on to Pidgin and Miranda.  Astra has been in alpha and beta for years now and still is?!  Have they lost a lot of users or potential users?  I don’t know the answers to those questions but I will say that I’ve held on for the new version.  However I am still a bit disturbed at the fact that I had requested to beta test over a year ago and never heard a thing from them.  The beta seems ok so far but I haven’t really tried to push it much yet.  The interface is very “pretty” and helpful.  Now I just need to find the time to test it’s audio and video capabilities.

Have you tried it yet?  What do you think?