For the purpose of this article I will use the value of a custom system of at least 5k to classify it as a bespoke high end pc. Ok, many of us will never get even close to spending that much on a system, yet the market exists and it could potentially get bigger if some of its obstacles are to be removed.

Now, to define the market for such high end systems I would say that they are:

- Predominantly male individuals with sufficient disposable income, a ‘less than average’ attraction to real life socialisation and ‘higher than average’ attraction to computer games and competing.

Please note that there is no age mentioned above and it spreads from adolescents all the way to pensioners. There is also no specific pattern of occupation and can include pupils, students, young professionals, bankers, designers, accountants, company directors, stylists, retired people etc. (I won’t go into discussing the psychological differences between male and female however, I am yet to meet a female that spent 5k or more on a gaming system)

And now to define the product specifics it must be:

• An exclusively looking system.
• Very high end configuration – tomorrow’s technology delivered today.
• Superior customer service.
• Knowledgeable and able crafter.
• Business level service and repair support.

Nothing out of ordinary it seems for something that comes at a premium is there?

Very true, yet delivering all the above to a niche market in a single territory (country) cannot be a very scalable and profitable venture due to the market size which unfortunately is not very big and for now it has no prospects for substantial growth. I estimate currently the total UK high end luxury PC market at around 3-5mln a year and no single competitor can have more than 30-50% market share at any point in time. That translates to about 1-1.5mlnsingle company turnover, which for many wouldn’t be a venture worth of pursuing, unless there are other branding benefits.

Why the market is so small? In order to understand that, i will draw a few parallels with the luxury cars market in specific.

Further comments to the above and how can the market be increased? -

Tool to impress/build confidence/get recognition. I place the emphasis here on the fact that you don’t normally walk around with your beast workstation gaming system you just bought unless you go to a LAN party once in a while. Surely, a sports car does rarely utilise its true potential in terms of speed, nonetheless, you can see them every day in the smoke of London.   Hypothesis – if the Gaming High End PCs would become something you take outside at least once a week for other people to see, the market would grow at least 100-fold overnight. Not Feasible.

Can be serviced locally if it breaks down. Now this is the trickiest part of them all. From my previous experience I can say that most of the local PC repairers have absolutely no clue about unconventional cooling methods utilised in high end PCs and even replacing a faulty water-cooled graphics card would require a return to base or engineers visit. Hypothesis – if local support and repair can be established and performed as well as at the base, within the first 5 years, the market would grow exponentially. Probability – dubious using conventional methods. Costs of training would be too high to bear for a company alone and the competitors are unlikely to create an alliance.

Requires no different to ‘regular product’ skills to operate. Operating a sports car is not much more difficult to driving a normal car, yet operating a high end PC, would mean you need more than average PC knowledge, such as: reset the BIOS, reload overclocking, top up liquid if required, reset graphics cards occasionally, reinstalling windows due to the buggy drivers/SLI/Crossfire.
Solution 1: Educate the end users. Probability – unlikely.
Solution 2: The components combination used in systems are very reliable. Probability – unlikely in the next 5-10 years.
Solution 3: have a local PC technician at hand for a small charge. Probability - see above local service.

Relatively long life-span, This is just to comment that a sports car built 10 years ago would drive much faster than today’s cheapest car, however todays cheapest PC would be much faster than a PC built 5 years ago. Obviously this is one of the obstacles that throttles the buying decisions of expensive PC for the usability factor as any extra pound spend over a certain amount will give just marginal increase in performance that probably would be beaten by newly released hardware in 6-12 months at much cheaper cost.

Well established second hand market. We can argue that cars lose value in the same way as PCs, yet a high end Custom PC will totally lose value over a 3-4 years life-span and will practically have no residual value. A luxury car will lose value as soon as it drives his first mile, yet the value loss will be less evident between lets say 6 years old and a 7 years old one.

Parts pre-tested in real life before final product assembly. This is another reliability factor and as mentioned above – that is unlikely over the next 5-10 years. The new hardware release is so frequent, that manufacturer’s simply do not need to do the practical testing as well as that is done for car parts where human lives can be in danger out of something malfunctioning.

Product assembler has most parts made in house or for them. As with the above – this is impossible for a local boutique business.

Well established logistics. New cars are normally delivered by specialised services or own solutions as well as there are approved dealer networks in operation. Majority of PCs are delivered by generic national or international couriers and as such they are not suitable to deliver or install such PCs. Damages caused by couriers is the biggest nuisance to an end user and biggest loss maker to a PC maker. Transit insurance does not always cover the value of damages unfortunately and even if it does, they never provide for loss of goodwill. Hypothesis – if a courier company is to provide a bespoke delivery and installation service for high end PCs with no risk of damages, this would nearly replace the need for local servicing. Probability – unlikely. Cost of training and operating such service would be too high for them.

Way forward:

Now out of all above arguments only 2 obstacles can be theoretically removed – the well-established logistics or local service. I won’t comment on the organisation of a logistics system that will service this market as I am not sure on how attractive this proposition would appear to a courier financially; however I have what to say about the local service.

Again, this is just a theory:

A National, and then Global Franchise is to be established under the same business model as any other franchise yet the additional advantage to this is that there is no initial need to rent a dedicated and expensive business premises and neither does it have to be a full time job from the day one for the franchisee. All can be done from a cheaper workplace or even from a suitably equipped home.

The Franchisor will provide the training, parts, admin support and necessary national advertising in exchange for an initial small fee paid by the franchisee. Obviously the franchisee selection process must be very rigorous as from my previous experience, out of 1000 people that can build PCs, just a few are capable of delivering a well-built high end machine.

All orders must go through the franchisor’s website online and the parts will be supplied as required by the franchisor to the franchisee including all the modifications required/custom cuts/paint jobs etc. The customer will have the option to choose his PC maker as well as interact with them over the forum. Each franchisee will have their own about page with the examples of their work, pictures etc. Naturally this will create competition and facilitate the keeping of high standards/service from the franchisees as no one would want a local customer to be lost to the neighbouring area where the builder does nicer builds/better service. All the support will be via the website’s custom designed CRM directly between the builder and customer, yet any administrative and accounting queries will be handled by the head office. The parts RMA and all the accounting will be handled by the head office, so this leaves the franchisee to focus on supporting his customers and builds. Profits from each build would be shared according to a predefined arrangement and if there is any warranty purchased, that will be defined as well.

Naturally regular conferences and experience exchange would be held regularly, where new ideas could be discussed, brainstorming and feedbacks etc.

This is just another crazy idea that I had, but in all fairness it can be done and it could turn into a nice international business with worldwide presence. Would I do it? Nope, thank you. I would much rather be involved with CRM/ERP/Ordering/Invoicing system setup, accounting and developing procedures etc.

Thanks for reading

As I never heard of such thing as ZARAFA before, and never even thought that there was an alternative to Microsoft Exchange Server, especially capable of running on both – Linux and windows servers… So there I began to read all the wiki’s, forums etc about this zarafa. It was all new to me, and it had some server pre-requisites such as: I had to use a certain version of php; some SOAP; and some LIBs of certain versions. So I needed a new server for that, as I have a few sites which need a different php version on the same box… However, thanks to the good wizards from Coreix - they sorted the problem by installing a virtual server (Open VZ) on top of my current one.

The next part was obviously to install and integrate everything together. Lets put it this way, it wasn’t the easiest job for me due to not being a Linux expert and never had setup a mail server before, so in total it took me about a week to do it all. It was quite challenging to integrate the first part – postfix with zarafa and spamassasin. The second part was even more challenging – to integrate zarafa with SugarCRM (this was so tough that I put the white flag up and asked for help in zarafa forums, where a very kind fellow saved me, thank you) The problem was that zarafa guides are written for Debian environment, and I was using Centos. As some of the paths of linux libraries are different on them 2 flavours, I needed professional expertise. Another challenge I had was the SPF and other spam fighting techniques to make sure that my emails do not go to junk – also a tough one to crack, thanks to Andreas again – cant think what would I have done without his help.

A few more days of troubleshooting and fine tuning of all this and now I am using a free own hosted Microsoft Exchange-like server on Linux which has:

• Webaccess client – very similar to outlook. Usual drag and drop of emails into folders, contacts, tasks, categories.
• Pushmail for my Windows Mobile Phone and my colleague’s Iphone.
• Fully functional Outlook client for my Windows machine. Has pretty much all the features that exchange server has and I can not tell that I am not connected to microsoft exchange.
• Server side synchronisation with the CRM software. When I add a task, contact, appointment or all in the CRM, it automatically appears in my outlook within the same minute. Same thing other way around unless I select for it to be private.
• Ability in the future to integrate with blackberry should I need to – the Professional and Enterprise versions of the server comes with it.

A few pictures below of the webaccess, outlook and sugarcrm:

Probably many will say that I am gone mad, yet I have valid reasons for that and below I will give the technical explanations behind it.

1) The CPU manufacturing process is shrinking and the current generation of Intel CPUs is at 45nm, due to move to 32nm later on this year. I hear many say ’so what has the manufacturing process to do with the actual watercooling being obsolete?’ It’s simple – more components packed together in the same size will need quicker heat exchange by the exactly same area of contact and the copper commonly utilised in the industry is starting to bottleneck and no matter how quickly the liquid will be pumped, through the CPU block and how cold will that be, the actual CPU temperature will be quite different from the overall ambient liquid temperature.

Example: back in 2006 when Core 2 Duo (65nm launched, the watercooling made a big difference to how much you could push your system to. To stably overclock the first batches of E6600 CPUs to 3.6Ghz on a commercially available air cooler was almost impossible, yet possible with watercooling. It actually made a big difference to the overall CPU temperatures. Now, with the launch of the Core i7 the watercooling struggles to give you as much quantitative benefit when compared to aircooling and I believe that will shrink even more when the manufacturing will move to 32nm. Unless of course diamond or diamond based heat exchangers and compounds will be widely accepted as a cooling standard. One of the latest attempts in this domain was reported by Custom PC not long ago - http://www.custompc.co.uk/news/605550/researchers-create-new-thermal-material.html

If it will be cost efficient, then there is still hope for watercooling to be effective for a few more years to cover the 22nm CPU manufacturing, but probably not as much for the 16nm later on.

Fact: If you look below at the E6600 world records you will see all attempts were made using one sort or another of extreme cooling, such as liquid nitrogen or cooling cascades.

Now if we do the same search for the newer core i7 CPUs, we would notice that in the top searches we get even aircooling and watercooling alongside the liquid nitrogen. That makes a watercooled Intel Core i7 CPU 27Mhz faster than watercooling, leaving even some phase change cooling results behind.

A ‘better’ alternative to watercooling is considered Peltiers/TEC (Thermo Electric Cooling) which is being adapted for use in PC systems by the Canadian Cool IT and in the UK an interesting attempt at using the concept was done by Kobalt Computers, where a Core i7 CPU was overclocked to 4.4Ghz with fairly interesting temperatures as reported by media. I was never a believer in TEC due to the efficiency limitations (the best peltier will only achieve 67% conversion efficiency and that is behind other technologies (PSUs are currently at 80-90%), yet the concept works. Maybe its not the quetest cooling, but it works.

Achieving 4.4Ghz from a Core i7 with good temperatures is pretty impressive, yet the price or availability for the full system was not released and I would imagine they are quite prohibitive in the today’s climate when no-one wants to spend money. A smartly built aircooled system with the same components wont be that far of from those results and that is fact.

My second argument today against the need for extreme speeds is also simple – what for?

A few years back it was understandable – to play the latest games on the highest settings you needed to overclock heavily and always have tomorrow’s technology. Today there are not that many games that wont play very well on a aircooled and overclocked to 3.6Ghz Core i7 with a few high end VGAs from AMD or Nvidia in it.  So the only purpose of watercooling would remain  - noise removal, which will win against the TEC concept.

I understand that not everyone will agree with me, please feel free to comment

Then they managed to exploit one of my user’s site which had a weak password. I noticed that quickly as whatever they tried to do caused the apache to die.

The last part that got me furious is somehow they managed to write to my htaccess files a few lines of code that was telling google to go and index their site instead:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} (Googlebot|Slurp|msnbot)
RewriteRule ^ http://dfsg.us/ [R=301,L]

Now that’s cheeky. I have no idea how they did it as the file is accessible for writing only by the owner. There is no way they know my password as if they did, they would have probably done more damage. I guess there is a new php/apache vulnerability which is yet to be reported and a patch made available for it.

For now, I disabled ftp access, installed a few programs to block IP addresses of users who attempt anything suspicious, changed all my passwords, installed a php patch for improved security and I am looking forward to wasting more of my time in due course!

Oh, the same issue has been reported by a guy over here - http://44px.net/blog/2009/02/28/napominayu-prosteyshee-pravilo-teper-i-iz-svoego-opyita

He thinks its the ftp details that got hacked – I looked through my ftp logs – nothing there on my end.

Update 05/03/2009 – Coreix was kind enough to do a audit on the server and suggested a few extra security measures that I gladly accepted to make the server extra secure. Now I can sleep at night

And once again I will comment on how good the Coreix support is – professional, knowledgeable, polite and not trying to rip anyone off! They worked to apply all the security measures and disable the services that were not necesary etc for a good part of the day and I got charged a very reasonable ammount of money for that!

• Intel has reported a 90% drop in profits and is considering a global job cut of 6000 employees.
• Microsoft is considering laying off 5000 employees.
• Empire Direct going into administration.
• Foxconn, the biggest OEM motherboard manufacturer joined the ‘profits warning’ club.
• AMD cuts another 900 of their workforce and reports remuneration pay cuts.
• Nvidia reports dramatic revenue slowdown.
• Denis Publishing closed Computer Buyer.
• Dell to close its Ireland facility making 1900 redundancies.
• Lenovo announced 2500 job cuts.
• IBM is to cut 2,868 jobs, but it may be up to 16000.
• Logitech – 2500 redundancies and profit drops.
• Circuit city in the States to close all its stores.
• Samsung reports loses.

I am sure there are/will be more of the above, but it is worrying to see all that in just a month – it certainly doesn’t smell good and shows just how tough was the last quarter for the IT, which even with the new tech released such as Core i7, x58 chipsets etc, it didn’t help in achieving the targets. I see the new Intel technology revolutionary enough to want to spend money on it, yet everyone is reserved and you can’t see the enthusiasm that could be seen back in 2006 when the Intel Core was released. The current slowdown is caused mostly by the customer spending, or the lack of it if I am to phrase it better. The cut in that spending originates from the general panic infused by the media and the end result is job losses which in turn will cause even less being spent, as to save for the bad times – a chain reaction of inevitable events… hm, dont i sound like half life here? Nope, that was ‘Unforeseen Consequences’. Joking aside though, the reality is not very sweet.

On the other hand, the above news could be actually good news for IT and I will explain why.

I see the PC industry as a relatively honest industry that does innovate a lot and pays adequate remunerations to its executives and everyone involved. To put it in contrast – you don’t see a graduate working in IT to get hundreds of thousands of pounds in bonuses… This is enough in my opinion to argument that the state of the PC industry wasn’t a messy one before this entire global crisis begun, unlike ‘those other industries not to be named’ that created this situation. Yes, quite a lot of companies were and are dependent on credit, but still there are a lot of them that do have history and a strong backing behind them. So what was to be affected, it has been pretty much pruned. I felt the first signs of this downturn in Feb last year and observing it all since then it leaves me but to think the companies caught unprepared or weak are gone, the other players have already understood the new conditions and have begun to readjust as we can see above by cutting down in their production capacity/consolidating its workforce etc. I somehow don’t see the current market turning very much worse – so brace yourselves IT fellas, it can’t be that much longer now before we see it stabilizing and growing again. Maybe we haven’t seen the worst of it, but I still have confidence that soon there will be some light too. It just takes time for everything to readjust to the new state of affairs.

Gaming High End Desktop Replacement Laptop

I didn’t like the laptops for many different reasons. Historically the majority of them were having proprietary parts that were not compatible with each over – PSU, Optical Drives, FD, HD mounts etc and I hated that you couldn’t upgrade them as normal desktops. Back in the days, I even came across some BIOS limitations that didn’t allow me to install a different windows version – i.e. instead of the originally installed windows 98, to upgrade it to windows XP. Lets just keep this short and say – I wasted too much time on useless laptop troubleshooting/upgrading which lead me to hate them.

About 4 years ago, it all changed with the Clevo D900 Laptop for me: desktop-type CPU and Chipset, full size keyboard, proper high resolution screen; all the parts inside could be upgraded/changed – beautiful! Only downside to it all was the weight, heat and battery life as you can imagine from a 17″ Gaming Laptop. Just to make a comment here for those who haven’t heard of Clevo. Clevo is a OEM manufacturer of laptops chassis and as such, you normally wont come across this name, but instead you could recognize their products under Alienware, Rock, Eurocom, etc brand names.

Anyway, I liked the product, however, not long after that, the heat issues  proved to be a problem. Different parts inside were failing more often than we wanted – HDs, Memory etc. Looking back, I can tell that the majority of these problems resulted from improper use. I will elaborate. The laptops have ventilation holes at the bottom and naturally they shouldn’t be obstructed. If you use this laptop just stationary as a desktop replacement, then its fine. If, however the beast is to be used sometimes as a ordinary laptop, then you will more than likely obstruct those holes, when placing it on your laps or other non-solid surfaces. What does that mean? Shorter life for your components.

Anyway, about a year later, in 2006, Clevo released a new range of gaming laptops, this time with the Intel Core Mobile CPUs, which obviously run cooler and the above issues were not so frequent. Great I say! Finally we have a product worthy of respect. What is even more interesting, as you may know, these high end laptops are marketed as fully upgradeable, including the VGA card!

Nvidia Go 7950GTX

Only if this was true! Theoretically, you could upgrade the VGA cards, however for obvious reasons, Clevo never shipped any VGA upgrade modules separately for older models, which meant that if you had a Nvidia Go 7950GTX (pictured left) in your M57U laptop , there was no way for you to upgrade to anything else. The PCB boards may have been similar from model to model, however the heat-sinks were different, so even if you were able to obtain a mobile 8800 DX10 GPUs from the newer M571 model, it wouldn’t fit into your old laptop, or into your old VGA heatink.

Is this a fair game? You expect to be able to upgrade to the next VGA card and wait for it just to find out that the new graphics cards have slightly different cooling or mounting mechanism and as such it wont fit into your laptop. Lets be honest, you spend 2-3k on the latest and the best laptop and a year later you cant even upgrade the VGA card to a newer one which theoretically is very possible – just need a piece of cheap metal to be manufactured! I call that cheating and I don’t play those games if you ask me!

Anyway, last year-early this year the desktop replacement laptops with desktop CPUs were making their ways again into the market, this time however with 2 graphics cards and up to 4 HDs. I know how hot can be 2 7200rpm HDs , a single Gaming VGA and a desktop CPU and I said no, but thank you no. Instead of focusing on improving the quality/battery life/cooling of the current models, Clevo just decided to focus on what brings them more money in the short run!

Speaking of quality/battery life/cooling, I can tell that Clevo loses big time when put next to other brands such as Sony, HP etc. I personally own a Sony 13″ Laptop which is in a completely different league to the Clevo 12″ Laptop I owned before this Sony starting from the noise level, battery life and finishing with the keyboard feel and screen quality. Ok, the Clevo 12″ laptop is a entry level product, however the 17″ high end series lack that solid feel unfortunately too.

So what other options are there if you wanted to buy a gaming laptop, but don’t feel like shelling out every year or so 2 grand because you want to have the latest graphics cards? Well, for pure gaming on the go (friends house, LAN Party, remote office) I would buy  a small form factor PC for under 1k, that could take a high end VGA Card and with the money left, I would get a good solid portable laptop like the Sony Vaio SZ or Z. These Sony Laptops come with entry level gaming Nvidia Graphics cards, which can be switched on or off to save the battery life when needed, feel solid, hold up to 3.5-6 hours on a single charge, have a fantastic screen and can be had for as low as £800! Ok, you cant play the latest games in high resolution or maxed out settings, but you can still game if you happen to find yourself bored on a first class flight to New York…

Morale of the story – you cant fit a Ferrari engine into a WV Golf and even if you do, be prepared to have a hot and noisy piece of equipment.

There isn’t a universal answer for that unfortunately. And please don’t expect me listing all the UK companies who make custom PCs as you can find them all in Google… Except some companies, which are not very good at SEO (Search Engine Optimisations), however you will find those easily by browsing PC magazines such as PC Pro, Custom PC, PC advisor etc. Google does a good job at what it does, however let’s not forget that a company can be brilliant at building and servicing PCs, but for one reason or another it won’t show in Google in the top results. A good example is Scan and Armari. If you are looking for a custom PC in Google it is very likely you won’t come across them and if you don’t read magazines, I guess you may lose a lot as both these companies have been around for a while, however they have been focused on keeping the existing customers happy, rather than getting new business. The life-cycle of a PC is around 2-4 years and when you are long enough in business, the same customers will come back and one day you will feel comfortable not to advertise as much as before.

Anyhow, let’s assume the list of companies that build PCs is in front of you ready and it’s a matter of choice now, who will you trust to take your money?

• The first and most important – can they build you the PC you are looking for? I guess the list will get shorter as some SI’s are focused on different price brackets to what you are looking. You have the £299-£499, 499-999, 999-2499, 1500-5000 price brackets. It is easy to classify each company by simply looking at their offerings and promotions.
• What I would look for next? Reviews, testimonials and general forum’s feedback. If a company has been a bit in business, it is very likely someone has left at least some feedback. To find that – google is your friend – use ‘problems’ and the company name you are researching. But again – don’t trust everything you read, especially for young companies or all the negative feedback – as sometimes it was left by someone who can never be pleased. Or the type who sees the glass always half empty. I feel sorry for those.
• Next, the warranties – take your time to read that, however please note that a young company will generally offer a more attractive story to get more business and generate more positive feedback.
• Once you are happy with all the above, (I guess the list will become shorter) i would look to put the final tick – check the company financials and background. I use a company called ‘company searches made simple’  however there are plenty of them on the market to provide a risk assessment on each and individual company. This is crucial, especially in the today’s market conditions.

So, as we narrowed down our list, it is the time to decide which PC to go for.

I wont go into technicalities in this article yet, however I would like to stress one important fact. It is only natural to assume that you can have pretty much what you want made custom for you as long as you have the dosh. However, looking for something very high end can be the fundamental error sometimes. It is like wanting a hotrod of the custom PCs. It will be fast, but it doesn’t mean it will last for very long or work like a clock all the year around. Owning a hotrod will need a lot of service just to give you that short ride of ultimate adrenalin gratification. Cram inside a good case the latest of everything, cool and tune it nicely and you have it – a PCs that will top the benchmark leader-boards, for a while.

So what can be wrong with wanting something nice and powerful? Let’s suppose you have the money, found the system integrator to make exactly what you wanted, you buy it with warranty of course and a few weeks later you have it – your Dream PC. I bet it will feel good. But what if the PC breaks down? The warranty covers it, I hear you say! The System Integrator will collect the PC, find the fault, source new hardware and possibly implement modifications, return the faulty one back to the supplier, rebuild the machine, maybe reinstall windows and then ship it back. So we are back at the same question – what is so fundamentally wrong with wanting a very high end PC?

The above is ok if it happens once… or twice… But what if the hardware doesn’t want to work as you expected? Who will we blame? The motherboard, CPU of VGA manufacturer? Nope, the system integrator – he has put it all together and charged for that – let him be so kind to fix it. We did exactly that all the time – no matter what the fault was, we were prepared to work non-stop to get down to the root of the problem.

Now, let’s imagine that the PC you purchased from is a decent company, who will get out of their skin to help you. Will you be happy? Probably for a while, however your frustration will grow each time a PC will be returned for repair and break again after. One of them reasons for breaking is that sometimes hardware manufacturers will release new hardware with unstable BIOS or even bugs in hope to provide fixes later. At first such hardware will pass all the tests a PC will go through while at the system integrator, but the real life use will be a bit different. Sometimes it can be the power fluctuations will affect a high end PC, the different humidity and even the different ambient temperature. Who is to blame again? Doesn’t matter, but you will have no PC while it is being fixed and having to help troubleshoot or make arrangements to be in for couriers to pick and return the PC, maybe you have confidential data on the PC – numerous reasons… Is that what you have expected from a Dream PC?

A high end PC will generally be also over-clocked. Over-clocking, so much popular nowadays, may affect your experience as well. It probably wont shorten the life of a component as much as generally thought, at least on the CPU level, however the motherboard may act a bit differently to what it normally should. Examples would be – random BIOS resets or the necessity to power the PC down and on in a certain way to avoid that. Again – nothing major that a true PC enthusiast should be scared of, but not exactly what is expected from a normal PC user who is generally afraid to update a BIOS.

So, the morale of the story – even if you have enough money to buy a very powerful PC, think twice before doing so if you are not a PC expert. Save yourself a bit of hassle and get something a bit less powerful or at least follow what a system integrator tells you. If someone has been in business for a while, he may be able to suggest something appropriate for you and making a call to such a company will put you in a better position to decide what you are really after.

Why am i telling you this now? Well, my previous post mentions that my server was down for over 24 hours and this is how it all happened.

Back in July, I signed up for a dedicated server from webfusion.co.uk for quite cheap – £36.99 ex VAT

It was a ubuntu linux installation with some weird in-house developed CP that provided basic functions – add domains, subdomains, emails etc. We needed a bit more, so we requested the root access to perform other needed functions.

All was running ok innitially, but then in August-September my friend Roman (programmer) and I started work on a new project which required the latest php and apache version, so we tried via the command line to update them. A bit of googling and research didn’t help, so we thought – webfusion must know how to do it – I am sure they came across this before. So I opened a ticket and patiently waited. I was given some clue as to how to solve it, but I needed a bit more guidance, so after a few days of email exchange (normally they were taking 24 hours to reply) I am told – pay us £100 and we will do it for you! That is to update the PHP server version to the latest one! I believe it is a host’s responsibility to do these updates free of charge as they normally improve the security.

I refused to pay and I told them just this – If I had known you charge to help clients to update the PHP to the latest stable version, no way in one million years I would have signed up with you. Although, I still tried to prove my point that all I need is some help and it is their responsibility to keep the server up to date.

No worries, I am stubborn and as such, I spent a full evening and did all these updates myself and installed the missing packages for our application to work. (It has to do with Zend Framework)

Unfortunately, my update didn’t want to work very well with their Control Panel software which resulted in my websites being down all night. Webfusion on their website claims 24/7 support, however my emails and phone calls weren’t lucky to get any attention until the next morning. Spending a quite a bit of time on the 0845 number with their first line support gave me the impression that I am talking to an operating manual which didnt contain my problem, so I requested second line support. Unfortunately their second line support dont take calls and as such I am told they will reply to my email at some point in time. OK, I said – not to worry, I started to dig my server config files, backed up the original configuration and added my website records manually one by one to the Apache config files. After restarting Apache, it worked and my websites were back on line. This obviously didn’t work with their CP and as such if I wanted to add any new websites, I had to add them via their CP and then manually to write the records to the Apache file. I described it all nicely in the support ticket what I have done and a few days later I am told – your update is causing conflicts with the CP and if you like it fixed – pay £100 and we will reinstall it all for you.

Now, If I didnt have any knowledge of Linux at all, I would have been with no service for a few days and then made to pay £100 to get it fixed. Just how bad is that I thought, so my reply was – thank you but no thank you.

One morning I wake up to find that my server was down all night and no-one knew about this at their end. My understanding of a managed dedicated server is that they somehow monitor it. Well, this ‘doesn’t work like that’ with webfusion. Oh, allegedly my motherboard died they said and they allegedly replaced it that morning. After replacing it, their own Control Panel stopped to work. What did i say? Calm down, every problem has a solution, so I do a support request to them a few days later  - please if you can help to restore the service as since you replaced your motherboard your own CP didn’t want to work. A few days later of the usual email exchange, i get the usual – your server is messed up, we recommend to re-image it as it was, but we will have to charge you £100. I couldn’t stop laughing to be frank – they want me to pay them £100 for something they broke! I said – no, but thank you – i will better move to another provider. After that they magically fixed and said – all had to be done is restart apache. Now I know that wasnt true – they restarted the CP service and told me otherwise!

A few weeks later I had a bit more time one evening and I decided to install my own CP – looked at webmin and installed it. It worked, but it didn’t want to work with the existing domains. I restarted Apache and still no joy. Oh, well – I went to bed thinking – I will finish it another day – either way I don’t need a CP yet.

Then, last week, i though to myself – these guys from Coreix.Net are such a good bunch of guys – i will better pay £3 more pounds each month, but give them my business instead. So i got in touch with them and asked what is what – was told – setup time – same day and that they recommend CentOS for web-hosting. Even the sales guys seemed to know more technical stuff than the first (and probably second line) support at webfusion.  just for comparison, it took webfusion about 1 week to setup my server!

Anyway, last Thursday, I decided to move away from webfusion and gave them their 30 days notice as per their terms and conditions. I specifically asked them to keep the server alive for 3o days again – as it it stated in their operational policies. And guess what? Hehe – they disconnected the server all together! I had to phone them again and they restarted it. They restarted it, but it still didn’t work. This time none of my, or my friends websites hosted on this server wanted to work at all! They tell me – its because of the DNS records propagation – you have to wait 24 hours for it to resolve. I am known and I like to think of myself as a humble person and I didn’t want to make that guy feel like a stupid, so instead I tried to look maybe he indeed is right, so I said – I will do a bit of homework and call you back. I dug again into what could be the problem and concluded that it is the DNS server, Alas it was too late – they went home that evening!

I was able to see all my sites if i changed my C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file to include the server’s IP followed by the domain name, so it was definitely the DNS server to blame.

I went to bed, but before doing so I emailed coreix.net sales guys to say that I am definitely going to buy a new server from them next day (Friday). The following morning, it was big my surprise to see an email back from them sent at 2am! yes, they replied my sales enquiry within 15 minutes at 2am! I wish I had known they would reply that late as the email said – if I place the order then, they will aim to work all night and get the server ready for early morning! Now this is what I call service! I apologised for not waiting for their email back that late and placed the order online on Friday morning.

Now I had to sort out the old server, so Friday half a day I had to prove the first line support that there is nothing wrong with my domain registrar or the NS records on that end – it is to do with the BIND DNS server on this machine. Their first line support guy (who admitted that he has been with the company for 2 years now) tried even to make me change my registrar to them! How smart is that? he said – if you do that, then we know for sure that what you say is right and then we can help. I had tried really hard to control my temper and furry, so I calmly tried to explain him again and again – ok, please now, lets ping the NS name and you can see that is pointing to the current server. Now lets flush the DNS and do it again – cant believe he didn’t know that command line! So after another half a dozen of calls, they finally replied in the afternoon – your matter has been passed onto the second line support. Good, we are getting there. The second line support asked me why did I install webmin - i replied that because their CP didn’t want to work very well. Then another few hours later they say – the webmin installation may have caused the problem. I reply – it was working fine for over a week and it only stopped working when my server was switched off without my consent. I knew at the time, what will be me next reply, so I went and removed the Webmin CP with the BIND server. restarted Apache again – and all my sites came back online! whoohooo! and then a few hours later I get a reply from them – the best way forward is to re-image the server and for that we charge £100. Now this is fun! I say – with all due respect, but I fixed it and I will forward you my invoice for my time spent at £125 per hour.

By that time, I had a reply from Coreix with my brand new server installation details, so I started the migration process the same Friday evening. I came across the need to install PDO_MYSQL, whatever that is, to allow our new project to work. I am not a Linux guru – all i do is trial and error with no major reading. I got stuck – the PDO_MYSQL got installed, but i couldn’t enable it in php. It was becoming late and i said – will fix it tomorrow, but in mean time – I will email coreix to see if they may have a solution. It was 1am. The next morning, Saturday – checking my email and you guessed it – i had a reply at 1:10am from their support line asking some additional info. i provided that and withing the next 10 minutes I received a link to the solution! Brilliant! I did that php recompiling as described and all started up like a dream!

Oh, the same Saturday morning I got an email from webfusion – Dear Mr Chobanu, we are sorry and would like to fix it free of charge by re imaging. Its a tad too early I say, isn’t it? Me, an end user with no sysadmin experience was able to fix it without re-imaging and you professionals, want to wipe it off and start again? I hope their management will come across to this and see just how bad their support is and take action as in my own view, it is dangerous to entrust them any of the hosting needs, no matter how small. Just to add up to my story – Webfusion is a brand name of GX Networks, which also owns 123-reg. GX Networks LTD is the new name for Pipex Communications. Pipex was my first adsl provider back in 2002 and all them have been put to shame by a company that not many people heard of – Coreix

Now I am sitting here on this nice and rainy Monday morning, admiring my own work and writing this article – All my sites are already moved, DNS resolved, CentOS is great, DirectAdmin (new CP) is absolutely spot on, and last but not least, Coreix are a company that I have utmost admiration for, wish them just the best and will be recommending them to anyone who is after anything server related. As for webfusion, they are not the type to learn from mistakes it seems or take advantage of the second chance! Hope this page will attract visitors who had problems with webfusion and are looking for a reliable provider.

My current hosting provider is (still) webfusion.co.uk and i had a dedicated ‘managed’ server from them with 24/7 support. Yep, managed if you keep the server as it is without updates and their first line support is so useless, they don’t know how to check DNS records or how to clear the DNS cache of a windows PC. I am not a command line guru by no means, but this is something any first line support should know! And this advertised 24/7 useless support is non existent after 8pm!

I was going mad today – no emails coming in, felt like disconnected from the rest of the world. We take emails for granted now, but they do indeed mean a lot in our modern lives.

Anyway, i just thought I will let you know why the website was down (probably for the 3rd time in the last 3 months) and soon I will make a full report on my experience with them. Oh, i think to sue them too, so I will do a bit of reading first if I go ahead.

For now, if anyone who thinks of getting a hosting from these companies, think twice and look forward to my full report on them. Absolute nightmare!

Bluetooth Plantronics Pulsair 590A

Ohoooo! Time for a new PC hardware related blog. Nothing extreme though, just a pair of headphones. Basically, over the past year or so I changed quite a few headphones and I wasn’t 100% happy with any of them. I tried a few Logitech, I tried the Steel Series, Razer, Creative ones. I liked the Creative gaming headphones more or less, but still I wasn’t overly impressed. The reason of so many changes was that the majority of current headphones do press against my ears enough to cause discomfort from just a few hours of gameplay or music listening as I am wearing glasses. Lately I did also feel the need for wireless headphones, so I decided to see if Bluetooth headphones can fit my needs. As time wasn’t particularly something I was short of for the past few months, I did my home work well in researching what to buy. As they say – measure 7 times and cut once, and reading about the Plantronics 590A, seemed exactly what I needed – portability, long battery life with excellent sound specs – 20hz to 20Mhz.

My main purpose was to be able to walk around the house and listen to music from my laptop, or media centre, get the same headphones with me and connect them to my HTC mobile, play games, use them for skype and occasionally conect them to TV if I need to, without bothering anyone around. Isn’t it too much you may ask? I am sure it is, but thanks to Bluetooth – it’s all possible.

So I ordered the kit and have been using it for the last few months and finally decided to make a quick report on my impressions. Well to start with, they aren’t the cheapest, however you feel like the money have been well spent from the moment you open the box. It comes with a lot of different cables for different needs as well as a carry around box which feels quite solid as you can see below.

Lets break it down as what they are all about and how to they fit into the today’s needs.

PCs and Laptops. All the modern laptops come with Bluetooth, so pairing is simple – just a few button clicks, enter the difficult to remember password ‘0000’ and job is done – play games, use them for Skype, listen to music – everything. And if the Bluetooth response time is not good for your gaming – you get a 3.5mm jack cable from Plantronics where you can plug it into your high end gaming card and you can then take advantage of all the advanced gaming effects. Personally I haven’t noticed any sound delays, so I never had to use the supplied 3.5mm jack cable. Additionally, if you plan to use this method, please note you won’t find it very useful if you do a multiplayer round as the mike doesn’t get connected via the 3.5mm jack.

Mobiles. Again, Bluetooth is not something any mobile will lack today and as my windows HTC mobile phone doesn’t take normal headphones – I was limited to the standard supplied ones as the sound connection is made via the mini-USB socket, but thanks to the Plantronics Pulsar 590A I can connect in both modes – Hands-free and Wireless Stereo, getting to listen to music while on the go and if someone rings, the music will get paused and the call can be taken by a simple touch of the button on the headphones. The mike is very sensitive, I must warn you – sometimes too sensitive and people can hear everything around.

TV and media centre. The kit comes with a special Bluetooth adapter, that plugs into the 3.5mm jack and with a simple button press gets the headphone paired and you are all set for watching the late night TV without waking up anyone around…

The overal wireless experience has been great – loss-free sound transmission with pretty good range and no radio interference of any kind as well as superb battery life. The other not less important factor that makes me recommend these headphones is the fact that they are foldable, so you can easily carry them around, especially useful if you plan a long flight and you don’t want the headphones to take much of your space at the same time.

Battery life is over 10 hours of constant music play, so it’s more than enough for any single day and the recharging is quite short too – never had a problem. I am particularly happy with the fact that Plantronics has thought the charging process pretty well, so it provides a classy base for charging as well as allowing the while-in-use charging via the supplied USB-charger cable, so even if you find yourself in the middle of gameplay with the dying battery – you just simply connect them to charge and carry on having fun.

Last, but not least, Plantronics designed these headphones with the spectacle wearers in mind – light and flexible – now I can listen to music all day and no pain!

The overal experience from this little gadget has been faultless and I couldnt be happier to be honest so I can strongly recommend it for gaming and modern digital media needs to anyone that needs wireless headphones. Bear in mind that I am quite difficult to please. Or so I heard…

Please feel free to comment and share your experience with Bluetooth headphones and thanks for reading