Payroll Processing for Small and Medium Businesses
All companies, startup, small, medium, and large have to make a choice when it comes to payroll. Do It Yourself, or Outsource.
Payroll by itself is not a very complicated process, and usually requires sending the government a check semi-frequently (in the United States payroll taxes are due quarterly for small-ish companies). However, as a company grows, the costs associated with payroll, benefits, overtime, sick days, etc... can become complicated.
Quickbooks, and other software packages can do this for you, but it will take some time and dedication to learn the processes. We have done payroll on our own, and when possible, we prefer to not have to deal with the
IRS face-to-face.
Outsourcing of payroll can be done easily with one of the "big" two (
ADP and
Paychex) and we have used both. Many years ago (around 1996 - 2000) we used ADP successfully. Between 2000 and 2004 we did our own payroll. In 2004 we decided to go back to outsourced payrolls and hired Paychex. Unfortunately, we have had non-stop problems with the overdrafting of our accounts, misallocated taxes, misfiled forms, and forgotten payroll calls. And since 2004 our costs have gone up dramatically, from $100 per month to more than $350 in August 2006.
In addition to Paychex and ADP, it appears that
Sage, Peachtree,
Advantage Payroll Services, and
Complete Payroll all perform outsourced payroll processing.
However, the hand-down best solution for companies with fewer than 50 employees is
PayCycle. PayCycle is a completely electronic process and they provide plenty of step-by-step instructions to help you get setup. They have truly paid attention to the small details of user interface design.
For instance, to setup an account I needed to fax three verification pages to them, including a voided check. Most companies / web programs would generate the three pages, ask me to print them, make my own cover page, and then fax them to number XXX.YYY.ZZZZ. However, PayCycle actually generated a complete cover page filled out with my fax number and name and their contact information. I printed it out, shoved it in the fax machine, and pressed the "Send" button. Done. Just a small detail, but it made the process easier for me (and I'm what matters).
Paychex is supposed to call me every two weeks to process payroll, a day before our payroll actually runs. They remember to call me about once a month. With Paycycle, I login to their system, two days before the payroll runs, plug in the hours (just as I would in a spreadsheet) and I am done.
Simple. Efficient. Easy.Apparently I'm not the only one that thinks they're great.
Here's an article on PayCycle from Small Business Computing, and they have nothing but good to say about PayCycle. In fact, the article is titled "
Making Payroll Pleasurable".
The important things matter most with tasks that are generally painful. Efficiency. Ease of Use. Cost. Paycycle charges $9.99 per month, and right now, they are running a special -- the first 30 days are free, the next two months are $9.99, and after that, it is $9.99 for the first 5 employees, and $1.50 per additional employee.
Total savings to us, using Paycycle instead of Paychex:
($350) - ($9.99 + $3.00) = $337.01
Tip: Make your life simple. Use Paycycle.
Amazon.com's S3 and EC2 Services
Amazon.com recently announced their latest grid-computingenvironment,
EC2 (Elastic Computing Cloud). This release comes on the heels of their
S3 service, which allows users to programmatically store data on Amazon's servers at a flat rate.
I
will cover the EC2 service at a later date, after I have a good chance to review it (we are looking at it to help solve some of our high-computing needs). With the S3 service, files can be as small as 1 byte, or as large as 5 gigabytes, and users pay $0.15 per GB-Month of storage used, and $0.20 per GB of data transferred.
A standard T1 (1.44Mbps) data connection can handle
around 1GB / hour at full-throttle, running non-stop. A T1 router + data line can cost around $450 / month (leased). That's about $0.96 per GB per month.
A
Western Digital Caviar RE (WD3200SD) 320GB and 7200RPM Serial ATA150 from NewEgg is $104. That works out to be about $0.325 per GB. Hard drives have a life span between 3 years and 7 years, depending on the brand, the temperature, usage, and butterfly's in China.
So, if we max out our capacity, and store 320GB of data, on two drives (so we have a back-up), we spend $208 the first month, without S3, on disk storage space. The next month, we spend none.
If we push out data as fast as our single T1 will allow us, in the first month, we would pay $1.61 per GB (two $104 hard drives and the T1). The next month, $0.96 (hardware is paid for, now we are only paying for the T1). The following month, $0.96 (again, just the T1). Every month following, until one of the hard drives dies. And the most data that we can deliver during the month is around 450GB.
Using this formula, with a single T1 and storage we will never have cheaper access to data than with Amazon's S3 service. Of course, we would be trusting Amazon.com with our data, and if they ever have any latency / down-time, our own services / products / company could be affected.
Only with economies of scale and much faster / cheaper per GB data throughput can our system make sense.
Lack Of Content
I have to apologize for the lack of new content over the past few weeks, we have been very busy working on new and existing projects.
Here is a quick update for you on our various projects:
1. Our
not-yet-disclosed project has reached a small snafu, because the three programmers working on it did not complete it during the summer. All three programmers are now working to finish the integration efforts while they are attending college full time. This will not be an easy task.
2. The winner of our
Lubbock Chamber of Commerce auction,
Aycock & Fowler Insurance Agency, needs a website for their new health insurance program which will be targetted at members of the
Texas Association of Builders. More information about their website is forthcoming.
3. Our move to
our new location is currently underway, and we hope to be at the new location no later than September 11. Thanks to Mike Lamberts and Tristan Thoma for their hardwork from
Lamberts Properties.
4. I did a lot of checking around about cheaper group health insurance for our company. After wages and rent, it's our third largest single expense, costing more than $800 for our small group, every month. There are few deals to be found in health insurance, and after a few weeks of research, it appears that we would either need a larger group or individual health insurance to save money. We went with an
HSA plan from
FirstCare.
5. The Lubbock Children's Health Clinic contacted us about their new locations (at
1301 Redbud Avenue, in East Lubbock, and a not-yet-disclosed University location). They are desirous of software and hardware to get up and running at the locations, including an
Electronic Medical Record system and a Physician Management System. We put together a very thorough analysis of the costs involved in thick-client, hosted, and open-source software. I will share the results of the analysis at a later date.
Cable Is Run
Last week, I got a call from our head contractor. Todd was ready for our color selections for our new office, and it was time for me to take a few employees and cable the place with CAT-5 network cabling.
I stopped by our local Electrical Supply company (
Southwestern Electic Supply), and acquired some electric boxes and 1000 feet of CAT-5 cabling. A few of our employees met up with me at the new location, and we performed a quick walk through of the place with Todd. Walls were up where they were supposed to be.
In fact, they were too far along on the walls. They had insulated all of the walls, and had already hung up the sheet rock, but had not taped any of it yet.
I had to go pick up a screw-gun to take down the sheet rock (much easier than fishing the cabling through the walls), and left a few dedicated employees crawling around and throwing cabling. When I returned, we were able to measure out the holes to cut, slice up the sheet rock, and then re-hang the sheet rock. With the added headache of the sheet rock, our 45 minute job took almost 5 hours, roughly 45 minutes per network drop.
However, our new location now has CAT-5 run to every room!
powered by performancing firefox
One Yellow Pushpin
Over the summer,
Resolution Software hired a graphic artist with a unique view on life. During a recent lunch meeting at
Cilantro's in Lubbock, he heard us talking about
One Red Paper Clip, the story of an individual trying to trade up for a home, from a single red paperclip.
To illustrate his perspective on life, he has created his own blog on
Blogger, and is actively trying to trade his way up from a yellow push pin to a home for his parents. In his first trade he managed to swap his push pin for three propane tanks.
You can read about his adventures here.Where did he get his push pin?
From my desk, of course!
Simplified Horde and IMP installation
After my last post about how to update Windows to set Horde's IMP project as the default mailer, I went looking for a more simple solution. The proposed registry fix only works on certain machines (namely, Windows XP Home). Our client uses Firefox exclusively; it is a great standards-compliant browser, so I started looking at community developed extensions for Firefox.
As it turns out, a much better solution is to use the WebMailCompose Extension, and configure it to use Horde. It adds the capability to click on links within the browser, and automatically opens a new tab to compose a message at your choice of GMail, Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Horde, and about 3 or 4 others. It also adds the shortcut Ctrl-M, which opens a new tab to compose a new message, or a mail viewer (in Tools->Read Mail).
Very slick!
Using IMP in Windows with the Horde Framework
One of our clients uses the
Horde application, IMP, to manage their email server (about 100 users from around the globe).
IMP is one of the best web-based email clients available, and certainly has proven itself over the past six or seven years as an amazing application. It is stable, easy to setup, and very little training is required to teach users how to use the software.
In the CVS archives of IMP is a registry file which allows the web-based IMP to become the default email application on a
Windows machine. When a user clicks on an email address, Windows will launch the default email application for them to compose a new email message. Normally, this is not possible with a web based application. However, this particular registry file allows IMP to be used in exactly that capacity.
That file looks very much like this particular file:
--------------CUT HERE----------------
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail]
@="Imp"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp]
@="IMP"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols\mailto]
"EditFlags"=hex:02,00,00,00
"URL Protocol"=""
@="URL:MailTo Protocol"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols\mailto\shell]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols\mailto\shell\open]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols\mailto\shell\open\command]
@="iexplore.exe -nohome www.example.com/webmail/imp/?actionID=login_compose&to=%1"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\shell]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\shell\open]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\shell\open\command]
@="iexplore.exe -nohome www.example.com/webmail/imp"
--------------CUT HERE----------------
However, this particular file needs a little bit of tweaking to work with
Firefox, our preferred browser. A sample Firefox registry file looks like this:
--------------CUT HERE----------------
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail]
@="Imp"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp]
@="IMP"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols\mailto]
"EditFlags"=hex:02,00,00,00
"URL Protocol"=""
@="URL:MailTo Protocol"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols\mailto\shell]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols\mailto\shell\open]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\Protocols\mailto\shell\open\command]
@="firefox.exe www.example.com/webmail/imp/?actionID=login_compose&to=%1"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\shell]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\shell\open]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Clients\Mail\Imp\shell\open\command]
@="firefox.exe www.example.com/webmail/imp"
--------------CUT HERE----------------
To use these files, copy between the "CUT HERE" lines into a file in notepad (or your favorite text editor), and save them as a .reg file. For instance, imp.reg. Then, right-click on the file, and choose "Merge". This will prompt you to make sure that you want to merge the file. Choose "Yes". You're all done!
My Dell Arrived
Luckily, my laptop is not (yet) in the recall list for the
Dell / Sony battery fiasco. It is, as previously mentioned, a
Dell Latitude D820, which should run Linux perfectly, almost out of the box. It arrived today (a day late) at around 7pm, CST.
I've been sick and don't have the energy to go up to the office to get the
Fedora Core 5 CD's. Instead, I fired up the machine with Windows XP, to ensure that the hardware was exactly as I had specified from
palmetto_computer and to ensure there were no dead pixels. Dell has a dead pixel replacement agreement, but requires that 6 pixels be bad. I was concerned that with 1920x1200 pixels on the screen (2.3 million of the little buggers), that one or two would be bad.
Google showed me a quick utility called
Dead Pixel Buddy, which I downloaded and put through its paces. It revealed no dead pixels!
I next downloaded and installed
Firefox, which is a requisite to do any web browsing, and then located a program called
CPUMark to test out the new
Intel Centrino Duo Core processor. After a few minutes of running, it reported that the CPUMark score is 7438.0.
Test One score: 933.7. Test Two score: 427.3. Test Three score: 8403.4.
I installed the same program on my year-old
HP Pavilion 6008cl, running an
AMD 3200+ 64-bit processor and found a CPUMark score of 3891.7.
Test One score: 787.8. Test Two score: 869.3. Test Three score: 3601.4.
Which means that the CPU of the new
Dell is almost twice as fast as that of the old HP!
I will post more, later, as I get this machine setup to run under Linux.
Lubbock's Home & Family Magazine
Today, while located at a Lubbock health clinic (I have
Strep Throat and a
Sinus Infection), I noticed a newspaper-style magazine laying out for others to read. It was a copy of
Lubbock's Home & Family Magazine.
The magazine is about 20 pages (front and back) supposedly is full of things to do in Lubbock, and other issues which might be of interest to a Lubbockite. For instance, one page is a calendar of all of the "Family" activities going on for the month. Another page contains a short article about reading to your children (which was syndicated from
You Can Teach Your Child To Read).
While I was thumbing through the magazine, I did run across a short article entitled "Planning for Success", which took about eight items from Zig Ziglar and didn't quote a single source. Otherwise, the magazine was mostly filled with ads. In fact, of the 19 pages, 6 of them are full-page advertising, and then there are another 31 advertisements of various sizes sprinkled into the other 13 pages (including advertising for itself). I think my math shows almost 2.5 ads per page.
I'm mentioning this, because I'm confused about the value of this magazine. It is full of advertisements for local companies, but contains almost no real content. At least two of the articles are "Associated Press" type articles, which came from other sources. They are claiming to have 350 locations where their magazine is distributed. But who reads it? It has almost no value, in regard to content.
I have no idea what the cost to advertise in the magazine is, but I would hope it is very cheap. It is, basically, the weekly flyer of coupons that I receive in the mail.
TurboSquid, Here We Come!
A few days ago, we made the decision to place some of
our 3d models and renderings on
TurboSquid, a premier 3d rendering site. We have about eight or nine models up right now, and will be adding more in the near future.
Basically, TurboSquid is a broker for 3d graphics, models, textures, and software. Artists or companies upload their own artwork / products into their system and set a price for the items. If someone buys the product, TurboSquid pays the artist / company. The artist or company can set the price they want to sell the object for (including Free!) and can upload screen shots as well. TurboSquid pays out either a check (when your account accrues enough money) or a direct transfer to
PayPal.
TurboSquid has some interesting statistics which the artist can look at, including how many people looked at a product, downloaded it, paid for it, etc...
One feature that is absolutely missing: The ability to get search statistics for what people are looking for. An example: I can see that 22 people clicked on
our light. I can see that 3 people downloaded it. However, I cannot see how many people searched for "light" or the keywords that they may have used to find our light. This would help us tune our ad-copy, descriptions, and keywords.
It also would be very interesting, and helpful, if TurboSquid would tell us that the top keywords / search phrases were X, Y, and Z. That way, as we are modeling, we could build out those top 10, and try and supply products for the demand. I have no idea if
boats,
blood, or
city blocks are what people are looking for on TurboSquid.
It's official. On Wednesday, I stopped by the Lamberts Properties location on 34th Street in Lubbock, and met with Mike and Tristan. I read over their commercial lease that they had prepared for me, and signed away the next three years of our rent. Starting September 1, assuming the construction is done, we will be relocating to offices on 5760 40th Street, Suite C.
Our phone numbers and contact information will otherwise remain the same. We're expecting minimal disruption of our services and products during our transition.
Lubbock Gets A Craigslist - And It's Under Utilized
Craigslist, is an online version of newspaper classifieds, combined with a user forum, and is majorly owned by eBay. Craigslist is a city-by-city listing designed for personal interaction including job searches, personal searching, and the buying and selling of items (everything from lamp shades to vehicles).
It appears that Lubbock got its very own Craigslist a few months ago, and is starting to see some postings. Unfortunately, they have a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem (Craigslist can put a Lubbock site up, but there needs to be posters for the readers to visit, and vice-versa).
Right now, Craigslist appears to be a great opportunity for Lubbock realtors, as there are only about 97 listings in the entire "housing" category. Lubbock has a population of around 200,000. Taken at face value, that means there is 97 homes listed for 200,000 people. That translates into 1 house for every 2062 people.
In contrast, Dallas has a population of around 1.3 million, and Craigslist Dallas has 11,639 housing listings. Taken at face value, that means there is 11,639 homes listed for 1,300,000 people. That translates into 1 house for every 112 people.
The Dallas market is more than 18X (eighteen times) as congested as the Lubbock market!
At a quick glance, about 50% of the housing listings are for the Lubbock area and the rest are for other areas. The Lubbock "jobs" category appears to have 186 postings (slightly more than the 196 postings in the "personals" section), and probably 80% of them are for other locales.
I've spoken with Mike Lamberts at Lamberts Properties about some opportunities to market his company and their many locations. Hopefully, they can capitalize on this market before some of the other Lubbock real estate companies realize it is here.
Dude, I got a Dell!
As mentioned before, I've been looking for a new laptop for a few weeks. I've looked at laptop models from all of the major players including
Lenovo,
Toshiba,
Acer,
HP/Compaq, and
Sony. I also looked at models from
Sager and
ASUS for build-your-own laptops.
My goals were:
- Under $2,000
- 2GB of RAM
- Easy linux installation (ideally Fedora Core 5)
- 80GB or more hard drive
- Less than 7lbs. (Lighter is better)
- As fast as possible
- Better than 1200x800 resolution screen
- nVidia graphics card
The best laptop that I found meeting those criteria is the
Dell Latitude D820. The model that I picked out should be perfect. This bad-boy laptop comes with a 15.4 WUGA inch screen at 1920x1200, with a 9 cell battery (more than 5 hours of battery), an 80GB hard disk, 2GB of RAM (upgradeable to 4GB), under $1,500, a 256MB nvidia graphics card, and with a new
Intel Duo Core processor (running at 1.83Ghz). It is also only about 6.4lbs!
I ordered it from
palmetto_computer on
eBay recently, and am expecting it by next Thursday.
Even better, it
runs linux almost natively!
eWorkMarkets.com FollowUp
A while back, I blogged about the fact that we were considering using eWorkMarkets as a lead source for consulting work. Many of the projects on their website look interesting.
We were scared off by the very stiff up-front fees (which range from $3,995 to more than $10,000). In addition to the high up-front fees, eWorkMarkets also takes a percentage of each and every project, and they claim that the up-front fees are 100% refundable if you win enough bids the first year.
I spoke with some consulting friends (from the likes of Ernst & Young), and decided that eWorkMarkets was likely not the road that we would want to take. And then yesterday, I ran across this forum post on ProSavvy and eWorkMarkets over at SitePoint.
The general feeling is that around June of 2005, both were decent products and lead sources. However, between June 2005 and November of 2005, eWorkMarkets purchased ProSavvy, and rapidly increased the number of consulting groups. Some of the posters claim more than 2,000 consulting groups, and by eWorkMarkets own admission, only about 200-300 new projects every month. If you assume that those numbers are both correct, then there are around 10 consultants bidding on every project that comes up. Yikes!
Many commenters claimed they had been ripped off, or scammed, out of their money using eWorkMarkets. Some had bid on four or five projects, and never received any feedback on their bids (I'd expect for $10,000 that you would get some feedback on what went wrong).
I'm not sure if it is valid, but it is enough that we will not be joining.
Yesterday it was my second anniversary, which we celebrated in regal style.
Before I got home I called my favorite florist,
Box of Rain Floral, across from the
Kings Gate Shopping Center in Lubbock. They have been my florist of choice for about five years. They have never made a bad arrangement, and when I need flowers delivered they do it on time. My wife says that Pam’s flowers are the best in town.
In fact, about three years ago I stopped in to get some flowers for my (then to-be) wife, and found a college friend of mine working as seasonal help for Box of Rain Floral. It’s a great shop. This was the final arrangement that I got from them for Steph, and she has been delighted.
Great service. Great flowers. Great prices.
Service matters.
Once I got home, my wife and I took our two boys to a local grocery, the United Grocery store chain, and picked out a three course meal. Before we could get to the crab legs for appetizers, we decided to stop and get some corn on the cob for grilling. A college-aged worker, wearing the United Grocery store shirt, was standing in front of the corn, slicing off the tops of corn cobs. My five-year old started up a conversation that went like this:
Five year old: “Hey, what are you doing?”
United Worker: “Working.”
Five year old: “Is it fun?”
United Worker: “No. I hate my job.”
Five year old: “Why?”
United Worker: “They always stick me back here. I have to work. To make money. To pay for school. It sucks.”
Five year old: “I am about to go to Kindergarten. Why don’t you like work?”
United Worker: “That’s nice. I don’t like being stuck back here. They always stick me back here.”
Five year old: “My brother and I could help you. Then it would be fun.”
United Worker: “No thanks, there’s probably a law against that. Thanks though.”
Now he may be back there, chucking corn, because he has a sour outlook on his job, and his boss doesn’t want him near customers. Or, it could be that his is chucking corn because because he was really hired for a job that sucks.
Either way … what do you think he is telling United Supermarket customers about their company?
Service matters.
DreamHost
I have absolutely had it with OLM.net — as per my previous posts. On Wednesday, a domain for a non-paying customer (they are a non-profit that we assist from time to time) disappeared. Completely. OLM.net had no explanation.
I followed up Thursday morning and Omar decided to do some digging to find the problem (how nice of him?). He called me back within 30 minutes, and explained that they could not help me, as it appeared that our site’s DNS servers were somewhere else. [Note: That somewhere else was on our dedicated server with OLM.net, which OLM setup!] I explained that he needed to do some more digging, and he should be able to find the problem …. his solution wasn’t correct.
About thirty minutes later, he called me back again. This time, he claimed he had found the problem, explaining that the DNS on our dedicated server was setup wrong (it’s the default Ensim setup), that he had corrected it, and it now ran properly. He expected propagation within a few hours, but it could take 72 hours.
Friday morning, I still cannot find the DNS entries. I called Omar back, and he claims that it is propagating still as it is showing up on www.dnsstuff.com (does OLM.net own them?). I check and confirm that we both see it there though I cannot find it with other tools (Network Tools and ZoneEdit both cannot find the domain). I have never (in ten years) had a domain take this long to propagate. However, Omar seems competent so I take him at his word. In the meantime, my client is calling wanting to know what is going on, where their systems are, why they have no email, no website, etc…
Today, I’ve re-checked the domain, and although it still shows up on DNSStuff, it is nowhere to be found anywhere else (which is why I wonder if DNSStuff is owned by OLM). Luckily, Seth Godin had some great things to say about DreamHost, and their PR / Marketing guy follows the up-front, no BS standards that I like. Hopefully, the fact that they also cater to Ruby On Rails clients means that they are more technically apt than the bumbling fools at OLM!!
I will be signing up first thing in the morning with DreamHost!
Narrowing Down Linux Laptops
I spent some of today looking at options within the world of laptops for a replacement for my HP Pavilion 6008cl, as previously mentioned here.
I did get over to check out the HP website for newer business-grade laptops, but their interface is horrific. I gave up after trying to configure three different laptops, and being given their ridiculous user interface. Note to HP: Take a look at Dell’s laptop configurator and learn something about customization.
I also took a deeper look at Acer and Averatec, neither of which had the combination of RAM / CPU / Screen / Price / nVidia Video card that I’m looking for.
One of the most interesting aspects of the laptop world is the ASUS Whitebox laptops. Apparently, you choose an ideal laptop “barebones”, and then build it out, like you would a desktop. This particular vendor, GenTech, seems to have a large portion of the market, and many of the systems are linux compatible.
Finally, I revisited the Dell laptops that I had mentioned earlier, and immediately ruled out the 640m as having too small of a screen, and too pricey for the features. Over at CNET, I checked out their user opinions and reviews of the E1505 (Inspiron 6400), as well as the D520 and the D820 (both of which are used by Emperor Linux’s Rhino series). It appears that the ideal laptop, with the best mix of price, compatibility, features, and screen is the D820. I’m also checking out the possibility of the M65, which appears to have the same specifications.
Some notes on the D820 running under Linux can be found here (Fedora Core 5), and here (Ubuntu Dapper 6.06). I will probably run Fedora Core 5 on the laptop.
I was able to configure exactly what I wanted on Dell’s configurator, but the total cost to me would be well over $2,000. I wanted to stay closer to $1,500 … so I took a look at Dell’s Outlet store, which has similar models for around $1,200 – but they are missing a number of the key features that I would like. As a result, I will need to watch their inventory on a daily basis.
I also remembered that eBay sellers tend to sell Dell laptops, as part of Dell’s VAR program. Conveniently, many sellers are selling the laptop configuration that I’m looking for, at between $1,400 and $1,700. A serious discount over Dell itself. Now, I just need to locate an external widescreen that can duplicate the 1680x1050 or the 1920x1200 screen that Dell put on the D820 laptop.
It looks like I’ll need a new 21” to 24” widescreen monitor to compliment the laptop!
Another Linux Laptop?
I purchased my main laptop (I have both a laptop and a desktop at the moment) almost 12 months ago from Sams Club, where I walked away with a demo HP Pavilion 6008cl model for around $700. I thought I got a bargain but then spent almost a week attempting to get linux to run on it in the manner that I needed it to.
The machine’s ATI graphics card was not yet supported under Linux and other issues led me to reinstall Windows XP on it, and use it as a regular laptop, and not a development machine. I am back on the prowl for a new machine which can serve as a replacement for my desktop (speed and power) and a replacement for my laptop (lighter, portable).
My goals for a new Linux laptop are nearly unreachable, but it appears that Dell happens to have most of what I am looking for at the moment. I started looking about a week ago, hitting up the vendors that I have used in the past. This includes Sony, IBM (now selling under Lenovo), HP, and Sager (through PowerNotebooks).
Sony laptops always have wonderful screens, but I’m looking for something that will outperform my desktop (an AMD X2 3800 with 2GB of RAM), with a decent wide-screen display (more than 1200x800), and an nVidia chipset …. all supported with minimal tweaking under linux. Most of the Sony laptops I’ve looked at have no linux support, and no one claiming that they’ve actually gotten it working under linux.
IBM (Lenovo) is much more linux friendly, and has machines that will meet or beat my specifications, but at a significant cost. I can easily spend $3,000 on a decent Lenovo laptop. I’m hoping to stay as close to $1500 as possible.
Having used HP for a year, I’m going to stay away from them. The machine that I have is very consumer-grade, and it is heavy, hot, and the battery life is not great. I will admit that I haven’t done a great job looking at their business-laptop products, so I intend to spend some time today doing this.
Sager laptops are wonderful, if what I need is a bulky laptop replacement. The last one that I had contained four fans underneath it, and when I turned it on, my wife thought that a jet had landed. They have very few products that weigh less than ten (10 lbs) pounds, and I would like something that will not break me while I head through the airport.
I’ll post back later as I narrow down the search even further, but it would appear that Dell happens to have some of the best supported linux laptops around, and their pricing is hard to beat. Right now, I’m looking at the Inspiron 6400 / E1505, the 520, the 820, and potentially the 640m models.
We May Be Moving!
We’re still in negotiations with our potential new landlord, Mike Lamberts at Lamberts Properties, for an office location at 5760 40th Street, Suite C, in Lubbock, Texas (please note the Google Map is actually to the right building, but at a different address, because Google is pointing to the wrong address for 5760). But if we do move, it will be within the next few weeks.
I met with Mike and Tristan yesterday to discuss the new location, and an 800+ square foot build out that we needed to have done in the warehouse space at this location. We all thought that it would be a simple build out, but I received word late last night that the build out was likely to be “more than initially expected”. Obviously, I won’t have a price until they hear back from the contractor, but I don’t think this is a good sign.
I hope it works out as planned, as Mike and Tristan appear to be very upfront and pleasant people to work with. Which would be a refreshing change from our current situation.
Dell And The GrandParents
What timing! About four hours after I read Joel Spolsky’s article on Dell, and his explanation of how much the “play” with their channel pricing in an attempt to eek out the most bucks from their customers, I got a call.
My grandparents, who have been using an old Apple Macintosh for the last four years or so, decided that they’d really like to try life with a laptop. I think the overall plan is to have a portable machine that can move around their house with them (thus, a light laptop). And so, about four hours after I read Joel’s blog post, I got a call from my grandfather.
He explained that my grandmother had received a flyer for a Dell E1505 for $699, which was an Intel Core Duo machine, with 512MB of RAM, a 60GB Hard Disk, and that it came with a “skin” (my term, not his) that they liked. Not too bad of a price for this machine, but I recommended that he upgrade the RAM to 1GB if they would do it for under $100 (if not, I can do it for under $100).
He wasn’t really sure how to order one (note to Dell: despite your marketing, some of your target audience doesn’t see the phone number still). I explained that he could get online and order it, or he could call, or I could order it for him online. We decided it might be easiest if I just order it for him.
Before I got off the phone, I went to Dell’s website, and without choosing a type of customer, just plugged in E1505 into their search box. A few seconds later, and as the fourth hit in their search results, was the E1505 laptop. I clicked on it, expecting to see a $699 option. No such luck. There was a $669. The next model’s price went up to almost $900.
[Note: The prices have since gone up to $739, $942, and $1,252!]
I examined my grandfather’s ad, and the pricing and configuration were nowhere to be found on the Dell website. I suppose there was a coupon code somewhere in the ad, but I would stipulate that the use of a coupon code to Dell’s target customer base in their weekly mailings is probably not the way to promote a product.
Needless to say, the resolution was to explain to my grandfather how to purchase the computer over the phone with a Dell representative. He got the E1505 for well under what I can get it for directly through their website.
Considering that I routinely purchase thousands of dollars of hardware … there may be a reason I don’t purchase machines from Dell?
Testing BlogJet
I’m having some major problems publishing with Blogger.com, where it appears to attempt to publish, but after about 3 minutes of publishing it still sits idly at 0%. I suppose I could wait until tomorrow to see if they have resolved their technical issues, but decided to download BlogJet and give it a try.
So far, it appears to work well enough. If it lasts more than a few days for me (considering that the primary desktop that I use is Linux based, and this is a Windows product).
"Computers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid; humans are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant; together they are powerful beyond imagination." -- Albert Einstein
