shovelhd

Revenue is good.

I passed my ham radio Technician Class exam yesterday. The intent was to be able to legally use a high quality radio on GMRS channels while working at races. Lots of officials use them illegally, and I didn't want to be one of them. My grandfather was a wireless pioneer, though, and I grew up hanging around his museum and ham shack. I had studied for the exam a few time earlier in life but never took the test until yesterday. So who knows where this will go. Maybe I'll go for my General.

Homebrew01

Sounds like fun. SSIS Packages ?? I remember a tool of some kind to bulk migrate packages.

furiousferret

Visual Studio changes the string values automatically (2005 is odbc, 2008 is sqlncli) then I saved it in a folder and just did a mass find / replace on the server names. 2005 > 2008 isn't bad; after that we have to rewrite stored procedures and that's going to be a ton of work.

shovelhd

That's some old stuff.

Homebrew01

You should see where I work. We're running old Cold Fusion code and SQL 2005.
We rewrote our website in PHP, but other stuff still runs CF.

That's the downside of a tiny company with tiny budgets.

I'm waiting for the version of SQL that will fix my typos.

Homebrew01

How come ?

Homebrew01

Maybe I'm looking at the wrong page, but even on sale, Mozy looks like $1800 a year for basic (non server) 1 Tb backups.

https://mozy.com/product/mozy/busine...e-pro-txt-pt15

I haven't looked at the others yet.

mmmdonuts

The other part of this equation is do you have the bandwidth to do cloud backups?

Homebrew01

I'm trying to find that out. The IT director would know, but he left the company a few weeks ago.

shovelhd

You can get an idea by using speedtest.net. Run it five or six times in case you are on a broadband circuit with throttles. Use an Ethernet connection, not wireless as that can be the bottleneck.

Bandwidth constraints may or may not be an issue depending on what you have to back up. You did mention SQL Server, so if your critical backups are large files that change often, then online backup won't be good with limited bandwidth. It works really well when you have lots of small files that have incremental changes. The first seed backup can take a few days, but once that is done only the changes get backed up continuously.

Another option would be a set of direct attached portable drives in a rotation. USB3 is probably the fastest with the best value all around. Cheap adapter and drives. Swap Monday-Thursday and take Friday offsite weekly. It's still work that has to be done by a human, whereas an online backup is hands-free unless you have problems. Drives, cables, adapters fail.

In evaluating the cost of backup, you have to calculate the opportunity cost of failure. What is the cost per hour of losing each critical system? When I worked at a small software development business, the critical systems were email and the source code repository. If customers cannot communicate easily with you, you will go out of business. I outsourced email twice. No need to host it in-house. The source code was a different matter. If the repository failed, developers could continue to work on their desktops in unit test, but there would be no builds, no system tests, no QA, no releases until it was fixed. Miss a release date enough times and you will go out of business.

globecanvas

Distributed version control! If you ever find yourself in the rare position of being able to choose a repository system from scratch, or to migrate to, distributed systems have a big advantage in this area. We migrated from SVN to Git a few years ago; for this reason and many others, and it has improved everything about how we develop and manage code.

shovelhd

Yup. We got there eventually, but it was a big transition that had to be coordinated.

mmmdonuts

I think your budget could allow for a NAS appliance with a cloud sync/backup solution. Something like a 4-bay QNAP that would give you good throughput and capacity for local backups which could then be synced to a cloud storage service. A mix of full and incremental backups would allow you to keep a week or two worth of backups nearline while the cloud sync would run in the background. Backups are time sensitive and you don't want to spend a long time waiting for them to complete. The archival/vaulting can take longer without impacting backups. Some NAS boxes have multiple ethernet ports and support channel bonding for higher throughput.

Of course the cloud option is available if you have the service to support it. If your company's internet service is asymmetrical and your upload is much slower than download you might have a problem. Also make sure you don't have any caps on usage.

mollusk

Looking for some advice here. I have not been regular for a while, but there are some very tech savvy folks that frequent this thread.

My very old HTC Incredible is getting very long in the tooth and I will be getting a new smartphone VERY soon. From what I have read I am liking very much the Samsung Note 4. User replaceable battery is important to me and the ability to take hand written notes is a HUGE plus. And at Best Buy it is $100 dollars off right now if I stay with Verizon.

Am I missing something or is this a no-brainer?

mmmdonuts

Ask yourself some questions: Are you happy with Verizon and not looking to change carrier? Do you think $560 is a fair price for a Galaxy Note 4? If yes to both then it sounds like the one for you. If not then read on.

I'm a big proponent of BYOD and no contract plans when it comes to cellular service. The device premium you pay with a subsidized Verizon plan is around $360 over the 2-year contract term, add the $200 up front at BB and you pay $560. ETF starts at $350 and they hope you don't use it because sometimes you're better off when you do. The Verizon price for the Note 4 on the EDGE program is $699, same price at T-Mobile. So $560 is still better, right? But Verizon service on contract is pricier. However when you BYOD you can have some wiggle room in your plan price and the per device price. If you mention that you might jump ship their customer retention dept can cut you a deal if you're nice. You like the Note 4 so if you look at the Note 3 you'll find that it's nearly as capable as the 4, it will run Kit-Kat and Lollipop, and can be had for less than $400 new and less than $300 in used mint condition. These are 3rd party and Swappa prices for the Verizon variant, don't buy from the carrier unless it's a bargain basement clearance not tied to a contract.

I haven't used either of the Note 3 or 4 so I'll let others chime in on the tech details. What I have read is that the Note 4 was a small upgrade to the 3 where the Note 3 was a huge upgrade to the 2.

shovelhd

Kc1dzj.

mollusk

I managed to get it for less than nothing down and no activation fee, but with a continuation of my current two-year contract so I am pleased. It helped that a Verizon rep was there and it was clear that we (our family) were looking for a good deal and not adverse to changing carriers.

The only thing that will take some getting used to is the size. I can no longer use the "snack size" Ziplock and now need the "sandwich size" bag when riding.

mmmdonuts

Cool. I'm curious about the "less than nothing down" deal. What did you mean?

Homebrew01

My wife just got one. Happy so far.
Not happy about buying from Verizon now that you mention Best Buy. Maybe return it and buy from BestBuy.

Homebrew01

We're getting a 16 T Seagate NAS for $900.

Homebrew01

OnLine Chat with Verizon. They are going to credit our account $100 ..... Thanks for the the BestBuy info, Mollusk

Homebrew01

$199 at best Buy with contract. I guess you are talking no-contract ?

mmmdonuts

Nope, though no-contract is the way to go in most cases. The $200 up front is really a down payment with the rest of the device cost tied up in the $40 monthly line access fee (Verizon) on top of the voice+data plan fee. That's how it works with 2-year "subsidized" contracts. When you BYOD or go EDGE the line access fee is $15-25/mo depending on data plan chosen. That extra $15+ per month is how Verizon can "subsidize" phones. At the end of the two years the total device cost is at least $360 + up front payment, my $560 above.

Another thing about Verizon is they don't automatically drop the price of the line access fee at the end of the 2-year contract. If you don't upgrade for a new phone and another 2-years the plan becomes month-to-month and should be the same as BYOD/EDGE. But they don't lower the line access fee unless you contact them and of course they have a chance to pitch a new "deal".

This was pretty much the practice with all of the big carriers until T-Mobile decided to throw a wrench in the machine. They all get you one way or another but there is a shift in wireless with T-Mobile, the MVNO's, and even no-contract pre-paid options from the carriers and smaller players they've bought out.

TheKillerPenguin

When I left my parents' verizon family plan I had to stick with verizon or they would incur a fee. I picked the most inexpensive plan at the time which was $45/mo, kept my old phone so I wouldn't have to buy one, and generally didn't use the thing, and at the end of the month my first bill was $95 due to a bunch of hidden fees. So then I cancelled the contract because I was super pissed, but they wanted me to pay them $200 to buy it out which was bull****, and I never did and thus I got dinged on my credit score for it.

**** Verizon, **** it hard. I use Virgin Mobile now which runs off Sprint's towers, and pay $25/mo for more minutes than I use and unlimited texting, no contract.

revchuck 

First time poster in this thread. My laptop took a solid hit due to a power surge, and two of three USB controllers were fried, though the rest of it apparently escaped harm. Those controllers are part of the motherboard, so replacing them is the same price as another laptop. I've got a USB hub that will work. Is there anything I can do to speed up stuff going through the hub?