Archive for the 'IT' category
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
Just ran into a time consuming hiccup trying to work with a Clone CD Image. I hope the rather detailed explanation below will help someone else deal with a Clone CD Image faster on his Mac.
I'd downloaded a 600 MB disk image to use with Parallels. The disk image came wrapped in a .rar format.
Unpacking the .rar file was very difficult.
- StuffitExpander crashed
- Forklift couldn't handle it
- Archive Utility just wanted to compress it further.
Finally I was able to unpack it with IAarchiver, slowly but certainly.
After unpacking, I was offered a directory with three files in it:
- image.img
- image.ccd
- image.sub
Clone CD img ccd sub files
I had no idea Windows used the archaic Mac .img format. It turns out that Windows doesn't. What I'd inadvertently downloaded is what is known as a Clone CD image. I was unable to mount it on my Macbook. No known solution or software for Mac OS X can handle Clone CD images. BIN and CUE files are no problem, but CCD files - there's nothing out there.
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By Alec
IT |
Thursday, March 13th, 2008
Over at LifeHacker a fascinating discussion of monitor size and productivity. It caught my eye as I've recently moved from a 30" monitor to a 24" and 12" setup. Strangely I find I'm more productive on the second setup.
In any case, people have all kinds of strange setups including one guy with six 15" LCD's all on a special mount. I think he's onto something. As I said, I've gone from a single 30" to a 24" (1920 x 1200) plus a 12" (1280 x 960). At home I now have 20" (1680 x 1050) plus the same 12" (Macbook).
I stopped running the 30" as my Macbook can't do Dual-Link DVI.
I thought my productivity would go down. No way. Substantially up. Managing the windows and flipping between applications was a hassle on the 30".
With a dual monitor setup, all the distractions on small monitor. Work on big monitor.
That said, I much prefer the 24" as a main monitor. I am less productive by an order of magnitude except when web browsing and writing on the 20". It's just not big enough to handle two full size documents (without having 8 or 9 pt antialiased type to squint at). 24" is the sweet spot.
simple dual monitor setup 24" and 12" (macbook plus 1920 x 1200)
Finally, if you can avoid TN screens on your main screen. Sometimes you want to stand up and look at your work. Sometimes you want to lean back and look at your work. You can't do it. The colours go all wonky. Things get dark. The monitor distracts.
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By Alec
IT |
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
I've just been debugging display issues in the CSS in Knowlege Constructs FAQ-Tastic tonight. Firefox and Safari on Mac were a breeze to get right: just pull all the margins and padding off of ol.faq with a .nonumbers ol class that I'd already been using. It was especially easy to figure it out with the Web Developer's Toolbar on Firefox.
Unfortunately a quick excursion over to the Darkside and Internet Explorer (the blinkers through which 92% of the visitors to our clients still see the web - among Folivision vistors Internet Explorer users are a minority), showed that the CSS code just wasn't working. Indentation had gone totally astray.
In the absence of Web Developer's Toolbar for Internet Explorer, there is no way to get instant Internet Explorer preview. The closest thing is to open up the file directly from the server and save it back to the server. Usually, I am set up with two monitors on my desk, a 20" Samsung 205B for the Windows box and an HP LP3065 for the Mac work station. It's just a matter of editing in CSSEdit or BBedit on the Mac, saving onto the server and pressing F5 on the PC keyboard.
We've installed a Linux machine now - the first of many - and I had to give up my 20" Samsung 205B and plug the Windows box back into the HP LP3065. (Both monitors are highly recommended, btw.)
Pushing input and switching keyboards was not efficient (3 movements instead of one, along with a screenflash each time).
So I decided to take the plunge and go looking for a Windows XHTML/CSS editor which would allow me to open up files from the server. It was either that or move a monitor.
html kit screenshot
I'd had a quick run-in with HTML-Kit a couple of nights ago which I found via somed SEO research I was doing (htmlkit are doing some serious link selling) but had not been happy at all with the tool. It was ugly and clumsy. Nothing like being at home on BBedit (which while arguably drab, is not clumsy). The website was particularly stressful with it's ugly and unreadable four column layout. Would you want to trust your html and CSS editor to people who can't build a readable web page? Me neither. While version 292 is free, all future versions and advanced functionality are relatively expensive, with just part of the pro package costing $65. I don't know if the guys at htmlkit have a drug habit they are supporting with their newfound commercial activities and advertising but something is seriously amiss.
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By Alec
IT |
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
All software documentation should be written by Germans. Here is a thorougly Teutonic guide to detoxing a Window's box. It could only be a friend's home computer.
- no right minded developer would ever let his computer get to this state.
- no competent sysadmin would give employees the leeway to do this on the corporate network
Microsoft Windows System Tray Run Amok
Some good pointers and getting the invevitable Autorun out of there - which is something which will be useful for us at Foliovision:
Using Sysinternals' AutoRuns tool I had a look at all the different places that can be used for running software on logon or boot, and apart from all the (presumably) tiny gadgets and widgets I also found a lot of the ubiquitous pre-loading parts of all sorts of common software: Adobe's PDF Reader, Microsoft Office, something from iTunes and several others....
Nobody in their right minds would boot their machine in the morning and manually launch Acrobat Reader, all MS office apps and every application they might possible use that day just to have them ready. It is immediately apparent to even the novice user that this is probably not making the machine more responsive.
But this is - almost - exactly what happens with all the auto run entries: You just don't see them on the screen immediately. So one thing I always do after installing any software is double-check whether it just registered some sort of auto run and if so remove it.
This is the result you are aiming for at the end:
Windows XP System Tray in Healthy State
Normally we do all this by hand, but I am going to try the Autoruns tool. It looks like a great way to speed up the cleaning process. Check Daniel's article for how to detox an XP computer without formatting the drive. Frankly, I think if I was going to go to this much trouble I would just move the data off and format and then back. There are too many things that can go wrong if you don't format the drive. But in these days of 500 GB standard hard drives, his tips willl become more valuable.
20080206 Update
I've found a great tool for cleaning out the start menu: Mike Lin's Startup Control Panel. Autoruns is wonderful but it is a bit overwhelming for non-programmer types.
Don't let the long name deceive you. Startup Control Panel is just 34 kb. As Mike says "like all my programs, it's very small and won't burden your system". I recommend the .exe version which you run only when you need to. The less clutter in the way of startup the better.
Startup Control Panel screenshot
BONUS TIP
While you are there, be sure to avoid Mike's Clipomatic. While attractive and including the functionality I'd like, Clipomatic has weird issues on XP which prevent it from functioning correctly.
M8 Free Clip
I've had to keep the Foliovision Windows boxes on the very ugly but functional M8 Free Clipboard. If anyone has any better ideas for a free or inexpensive multi-clipboard, I'm all ears.
By Alec
IT |
Friday, January 4th, 2008
google mail ads
One of my clients recently moved to Google Apps as their full time email solution.
I had my reservations at the time, but more on privacy grounds than technology ones. It turns out there are technology issues as well. My client was very excited about improved spam filtering from Postini. After the move he told me right away that he was getting a lot less spam.
This same client runs an insurance business with online application forms. Those forms go to special unfiltered email boxes. Of course those addresses aren't released publicly.
So they get all their forms and don't have to worry about miscreant insurance filters (most of my other clients are in real estate and we have filtering issues in real estate and mortgages as well).
Over the holidays, we couldn't figure out why Adwords was sometimes claiming more completed applications than the client was receiving. My tests were working. Finally we compared lists.
My client wasn't getting all the completed applications that were going into the database.
It turns out that Google Apps/Mail were deleting quotations (even though they were coming from his own domain).
What's the solution?
There are several, including setting up filters which move the wanted mail into a special saved box or the archive (why would you want your fresh mail there), but the best one is to add the address which you want whitelisted to your contact book.
- Click on and open an email from the sender that you want to whitelist.
- Click on the little down-pointing-triangle-arrow next to “reply”
- Add sender to contacts list.
Here is what the Add to Contacts function looks like when highlighted:
Gmail white list - Add to Contacts:
Nasty looking Ads - Not in My Email Thank You
There are other solutions for white listing a whole domain. In this case, you need to create a special folder for white listed mail and set up a mail filter for the domain in question sending it to one of the folders. How this works is that the incoming mail is filtered before going through Postini's spam filters. In general, this is commendable engineering as anything white listed will really get to its mail box and runs no risk of being lost in a spam filter.
Here are the eight steps:
- Click on "Settings" at the top right.
- Click the "Filter" tab in the yellow headings section.
- Click the link "Create a new filter".
- In the Choose search criteria section in the "From" field type in the email address or if it's a trusted website then you may opt to simply type the main name of the domain (eg. "howtomarketyourstuff.com" without the quotes).
- Click the "next step" button.
- Select the "Star it" radio box.
- Click the "Create Filter" button.
- The emails will end up in your Starred folder.
Convenient enought but it wouldn't work for my client or many other Gmail users.
Why not? Well, this client actually handles his Google App mail through Outlook when he is not on vacation so extra folders in Gmail looks like a problem waiting to happen. Perhaps someone else who runs Outlook and Gmail can let me know if the extra folder with its mail will turn up in Outlook or not...
Frankly, there were a number of deals which my client missed while the quotations were in Google Mail's Spam Folder. It took us longer to track down the hole than normal as it was not consistent and my client was away on holidays with limited computer access).
I have to say free apps can be awfully expensive.
By Alec
IT |
Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
We have occasionally - say about once a month - had small problems with our cable internet (Chello.sk). We've been lucky - the longest we've been down is one and a half hours and most of the time it's less than this.
Even a single day with internet down for a whole day would cost the company three times more in lost productivity than the cost of the second high speed connection for the year.
So we've done what every modern business should do. We now have redundant high speed internet from T-Com.
Which is a good thing as our cable internet is down today. But no big deal, I just swapped the router over to the DSL connection and we were all ready to get back to work. Well, almost.
With Mac OS X, switching over from one network connection is as easy as renewing your DHCP lease in the Network preference pane - the OS will usually do so automatically.
mac os x switching network
With Windows, it's a little more difficult as the computer will not want to switch over automatically, even if you open up the Local Area Connection Status and press repair.
That's not enough. After some positive messages, you will get an error saying that Windows is unable to repair DNS.
The simple but tiresome solution is to restart your computer. No big deal for one computer but for seven, a real pain in the neck.
There is a faster way. Open up Start -> Run and type:
ipconfig /flushdns
Your connection should be immediately live.
So now we have redundant internet for the whole office with just swapping over a single cable.
In terms of a longer term solution, we are thinking buying a load balancing router.
Unfortunately the reviews of all of them from the
D-Link DI-LB604
whether the D-Link DI-LB604 or the Linksys RV082 have been so rotten that there doesn't seem to be any point in buying one for less than a thousand dollars. That's a lot of money for about $50 worth of hardware. Especially hardware which doesn't work very well.
At that price, it makes more sense to build your own load balancing Linux server. At least that way, one is future proofed. Load balancing routers are in their infancy and have to get better and cheaper over the next two years. I have no interest in paying the early adopter tax and then struggling with a shoddy solution.
What distribution or software to use. Reliable sources (tech support at Cartika webhosting) suggested doing it the Untangle Gateway Platform - which is free for DIY or $25/month with full support. Another well-known free alternative is pfSense (Wikipedia info). For background, read this good IBM article on setting up a network router on Linux.
The issue with any of this setup is the hours it will take to get it working properly. Later this month, I'll probably have our new IT guy Alexander sit down and figure out Untangle on an old server from Vienna. If any of it works, I'll let you know.
In the meantime, just remember cable swap and ipconfig /flushdns.
By Alec
IT |
Monday, December 31st, 2007
When I wrote my last post I thought some people might be curious about the tools we are using to run Foliovision. As I started to write a short list it was quickly apparent that this is a subject of its own.
The list will mainly focus on online applications, as they are the primary tools in our kit. Online applications allow people to work from different computers and for new works to get up to speed more quickly. They are also wonderful for remote workers, of which we have always had a few.
What are we now using includes:
- Freshbooks
daniel tsang freshbooks
Live before Freshbooks was a misery. My own custom programmed filemaker database for accounting. The one plus was quick entry of data. But when we started to grow, getting everybody's hours for the month and importing it into the spreadsheet was an onerous task. Two days per month billing is now two hours. Actually not anymore, as there are enough employees and the projects are complex enough that I have to go over all the hours very carefully and it's probably four or five hours work to send out clean invoices. There's nothing worse than getting client complaints as someone from your team did a poor job of logging their work. But the extra time is more a question of scale than anything else. I am so happy with Freshbooks I could shout for joy, even if due to growth my account costs twice what it did when we started (which it should! - more employees means more revenues). The customer service is a joy. If you can still get Daniel on the telephone (1.866.303.6061), you will never get better customer service anywhere.
We are a cross-border company with clients in Canada, Austria and Slovakia and employees in all those countries plus Hungary and England. If Freshbooks will work for us it will work for you.
- Basecamp
The backbone. Project management for people who want to get things done. Project management for people used to attractive Apple interfaces. Project management on which to build a company. 37signals has a less is more approach to software. Basecamp is a good poster child. It takes new employees about two hours to get up to speed on Basecamp. For clients, it can be more of an issue, as our clients are often the pre-tech generation and they don't necessarily want to take on a new online interface. But once they get it, they love the ability to collaborate with their whole team in a single online spot.
- Backpack
Handles Writeboards much better for external consultants than Basecamp. Basecamp requires that to access any Writeboard attached to a project, the collaborator must have access to the project. Not on! Kind of cute to be able to add so many different kinds of media to a sort of webpage so quickly. The least expensive account ($5/month) actually lets you do quite a bit with it. A useful enough online Swiss army knife that everybody should have one. That's a lot of $5/month.
- Highrise (trying not really totally committed)
The best of the worst. It's an online address book from the 37signals crowd. This time they got the pricing so wrong it's almost laughable. I don't want to pay $50/month for a basic address book. It's supposed to be a CRM system. The CRM guys pricing is so wacko it makes even Highrise look like a good deal. In the end, a lot of what we might do in a CRM we've moved back to Backpack in custom projects. It's a little more cut and pasting but access remains integrated and there's no extra monthly fee.
CRM is a really tough nut to crack 37signals hasn't cracked it either. All my clients are absolutely miserable with all the solutions they have implemented. They spend thousands on troubleshooting and customisation and their applications still barely run. Maybe Google will come up with Google address book. One argument for using Highrise is that it isn't from Google (or worse Plaxo, people who come from a background of privacy violations) or eBay or Microsoft or any other major US corporation who might be inclined to automatically share all your data with whatever NSA. Talk about making creating a police state - your every contact is online.
Jason Fried is such a prickly chap, I just can't see him giving up data very easily. David Heinemeier Hansson, as a good Euro type, would oppose data surrender on principle. As he's the tech mastermind behind all the 37signals magic, he'd have to be in on it.
- Emailias
ugly but brilliant emailias
I went to the Arctic with the two guys running this service, Paul and Graham. We made an amazing film there. Paul was a programmer at Morgan Stanley at the time, helping them time the market. When he came back from the Arctic he wrote emailias. Emailias is butt ugly but it saves me from tens of thousands of spam per year. How? Every time you sign up for an online service, you create an emailias. Then you can monitor who is sending you spam. About one address goes bad per month (sold or stolen). At that point you can just cut off the address and move on with your life. At $20/year emailias is a steal. We use Emailias for the company as well now.
- Cartika
The best web hosting in the world. These guys take their work incredibly seriously. If you host with Cartika, your websites won't go down. And if they do, it will be your fault. And Cartika will do everything they can to get the sites back up again. Expect to be SMS'd or Skype'd or emailed before you even notice that your site is down or misbehaving. They actively monitor for security attacks.
Of course this means they aren't cheap. But a reasonable price ($50/month will get you started with 5 GB of space and unlimited websites within that space) keeps out the spammers and boneheads so that they are able to service the people who want reliable web hosting and are willing to pay something for it.
- Google Docs | Google Apps
What a great service! Live collaboration on serious documents for free. Google Docs is a $200 to $500/year value for free. If you have multiple sites and don't use Google Docs to prepare your company work, you are shooting yourself in the foot. Basic spreadsheets and decent enough word process for nought.
For privacy reasons, we avoid the email.
- Open Office
neo office desktop
It's not online but does work beautifully with Google docs. Sort of an offline client for Google docs when we need to get something up to presentation level (Google docs is a bit rough with images) or want to smooth the transition from Word to Google docs. You can install Open Office on as many computers and operating systems as you have for free. My experience under three different OS is that the install takes about two minutes and is troublefree. While I'm no great fan of Java interfaces on the Mac, I have to admit it's nice that this is the one truly crossplatform application. We use the Neo Office incarnation. Between Google Docs and Open Office, it's an end to the Microsoft tax. Thank you Scott McNealy!
- Google Calendar
Wow an online calendar which actually works. We've been waiting years for this one! We actually customised and installed a php calendar on an old server at one point. Never was easy enough to use to make it a big part of our lives. Moved back to paper. Google Calendard is what we've all been waiting for. Apple blew it with iCal by not making it easy to share and modify calendars online.
- Statcounter
aodhan cullen statcounter
Statcounter used to be the best online stats program. We are in year four of the impending release of StatCounter pro. On the other hand, I know how to use Statcounter, it's relatively quick and stable. A great little Irish company run by a 20 year old (an ex-twenty year old - now 24). A bit too quick out of the gate and lagging now in the stretch but hopefully Aodhan will catch up with himself soon. I still like the easy to read reports and great client access system.
- Google Analytics (very passively, I hate the slow interface)
- PPC Assurance
These guys are promising to separate our PPC stats from our organic stats. They are also promsing to get our money back from Google for bogus clicks. Part one might work out. Part two has not worked out so far. BS answers from Google. Nice to have a monopoly. Based on current performance, PPC Assurance is too expensive for now. What is cool though is it sets up all this tracking automatically through the Google API. You are saving hours of time. There's some powerful medicine in here somewhere. More wonderful Canadians doing amazing things online (Freshbooks and Cartika are Toronto, PPC Assurance/Enquisite is Vancouver).
- SEOMoz Tools
We are paid members here. The tools aren't as good as we thought they would be or hoped, but the premium guides regularly updated along with the regular tips are worth it for us. Saves us a lot of forum time, sorting through disinformation. SEOmoz membership is only really worthwhile (it's expensive at $300/year) for a dedicated search shop. But if that's your case, then you should consider joining. The website is very fine as well. Browsing most of the site is free.
- Del.ico.us
Great desktop clients available for what is a simple and effective and fast bookmarking service. We use it at the company as well to share and promote sites. SEO 101 tip - some links in an active del.ico.us account will get your site indexed quickly for free.
- Smugmug.com
Smugmug lab mascot
Smugmug was a bit hokey for awhile, built on the foundation of the old Gallery. But the MacAskill family has kept pushing away at the code and now Smugmug is smooth and quite fast. There is a bit too much functionality in there for my tastes, but if you know what you are doing you can create very attractive galleries. Their prices can't be beat - from $40 for a standard account to $150 for a pro account - you get basically unlimited backup and storage of high res images (up to 8 MB per image). Unbelievable. On the high end account, you can build on your own domain or subdomain, allowing you to leave one day if you really want to.
- Foliopress WYSIWYG and Foliopress Images
The best for last. Like many web developers these days, we are using Wordpress as the core for our sites. Over the last two years we've built our own frameworks, including page management and better admin sections. Finally we've completed the crown jewel, Foliopress WYSIWYG and Foliopress Images. It's what makes writing this post and adding attractive Google images ready thumbnails so easy. The best part is that Foliopress WYSIWYG is truly a drag and drop ready to go editing system with image management. No trolling through config files to be up and running at full efficiency.
I'm not the first person to write a post about the tools he or she uses in a web business. I've found these posts extremely helpful and probably discovered a number of the tools above via such posts. Here's some other good and thought provoking posts about online tools and running a web business (specifically focusing on the tools). Enjoy!
By Alec
IT |
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007
Firefox has a great search feature based on Command-F (Mac) or Control-F (Windows).
You get a cute little text box at the bottom of the screen which allows you to search the whole page.
Firefox Find - Command-F
Subsequently Command-G works just fine to take you down through the page.
Just ' (apostrophe) alone will bring up the Quick Find box. It looks almost the same but isn't. Quick Find only searches URLs (a nice extra almost undocumented feature).
Firefox Quick Find - ' (apostrophe)
If you want to do a Quick Find in all the text you need to use / (forward slash).
Very nice.
Great for Unix geeks. Quite harmless.
Not quite.
You can get caught in an edit box (think Gmail or forums) and be unable to type an apostrophe.
At this point, cut and paste won't work either.
If you press escape it will stop the QuickFind, but as soon as you press apostrophe again back is the Quick Find box.
It looks like either you can't use an apostrophe or you have to throw away your writing (a true story).
Not quite.
There are a few solutions all surprising and undocumented.
- Resize your browser window (the instant and wonderful solution)
- Type about:config in the address bar to access Firefox's hidden preferences and toggle "searchkeys.disable.all" to true
I haven't decided whether to leave the QuickFind on (now that I know how it works). I certainly don't think Quick Find should be on by default.
As iCannonBall writes:
The (') hotkey was activated for me every time I tried at use a contraction in Gmail, as with wberryiii.
How many non-savvy gmail/FF users out there are being forced to abandon contractions?
This is the kind of advanced feature which has less experienced internet users reverting back to Internet Explorer or Safari.
Too dangerous for road use.
Credit to Lifehacker writing up this Firefox feature albeit with a positive spin. The remedies are there in three pages of comments but are rather difficult to suss out. But in the end my long text box entry was saved and I hope yours will be too.
By Alec
IT |
Tuesday, July 31st, 2007
We needed to add four new workstations to our Foliovision office in Bratislava. In my experience working on quiet computers really increases the productivity, so originally we were considering laptops. After quite a bit of thinking and research we’ve made the decisions to base our computers on Intel’s Core 2 Duo chipsets, as they’re fast and cool (they run almost at half of the temperature of their AMD alternatives).
WHY DUAL CORE
I’ve found dual processors to be great for design and internet related tasks, as you can leave an upload running in the background while still working at full speed in a text editor or browser. If the Core 2 Duo is good enough for Apple, we decided it was the choice for us. Going with a budget chip would save you a $100 or $150 on the unit but at the cost of additional heat, noise and problems.
After doing up a budget for Intel Core 2 Duo laptops and desktops, we found laptops would have:
- smaller screens (1440×990 versus 1680×1050)
- smaller and slower hard drives (80 GB versus 200 GB)
- much higher price tag (25,000 SKK ~ $900 versus 17,000 SKK ~ $625, including Samsung 20” 205 monitors)
- would be much harder/more expensive to repair
We also thought long and hard about whether we needed or wanted to be moving our computers around. We already have three laptops in the company so we already have some portable units – if we need them. And we found that portability was a small concern. The guys didn’t feel like taking their work home for the weekend or to Switzerland for holiday. Why should they? Always having your work with you can be the bane of one’s life, costing peace of mind and whole relationships.
So desktops would give us bigger screens for less money. The final big advantage is that if a laptop breaks down it goes into service for four weeks. With a desktop we just buy and replace the broken part and wait for a replacement from the manufacturer which goes into the spare part cupboard – almost zero downtime. So we went out and bought desktops and hoped they wouldn’t be too loud. Here are the specifications:
- Intel® Pentium Dual Core E2160 (1,8 GHz, 1MB L2 Cache, 800 MHz FSB)
- GeForce 7200 128 MB DVI with TV-Out
- Hard drive 160 GB 7200rpm SATA
- RAM 1024 MB DDR2
- DVD/RW Dual double layer recorder
- Gigabit LAN, Floppy 3.5”
- Keyboard and optical mouse.
Agem Intelligence 5300 as they come straight from the supplier.
And these computers are fast.
Unfortunately with four of them on, the site promotion room sounded like the deck of an aircraft carrier. This was just not going to work. Balázs went to work experimenting. Luckily the guys at Agem didn't make it impossible for us, to take the computer apart, the screws were easy to remove, the cables weren't glued in the harddrive, etc. The CPU fan didn't seem to make much sound at all. Part of the problem was an internal fan in the case, but the biggest noise was coming from the power supply.
This power supply was the source of all our problems.
The fan on the CPU.
The internal fan in the case.
We started looking at the silent computer sites. We found really good information at silentpcreview.com, buildsilentpc.com and hardcoreware.net. First order of business was to change the power supply. One of the possibilities was to purchase something like the so called PICO PSU, which needs only an adapter similar to laptops and makes very little or noise at all. We were a bit worried about if it is capable of delivering all the necessary power because of the lack of proper information on the manufacturers site. Luckily we found this great PC wattage calculator tool, from which we were able to figure out our needs specifically. Unfortunately there was no distributor in Slovakia, so we had to go for something else.
After additional research, we’ve finally found our best best. It’s definitely a more expensive, but fully professional solution: the fanless Fortron PFC ZEN (2500 Sk / 100 USD + VAT) high quality convection power supply. Happily enough it was available from the distributor from whom we bought the computers ( Agem ). The power supply has a Active PFC circuit, full range input, real no noise design with 0dBs on full load and a dual 12V rail output for ensuring the consistency of the voltage rails. The excellent heat dissipation is achieved with partial mesh casing and conventional heat transfer. Here are the details:
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By Balázs
IT |
