OsCommerce or ZenCart ?
posted by Allan@TechCrammer @ 1:58pm, Wednesday 9 June 2010.
There are alot of open source ecommerce applications out there today. And very feature rich. So how do you decide which is for you? I beta tested a couple of the more popular choices and here are my findings.
osCommerce has recently added a v3.0 Alpha 5 which seems to rework alot of the foundation of the application. This is a good thing since it will make templating and other options easier to add, however since the v2.2 has been around for so long there are alot of contributions written for this platform. For example, I purchased a design template and it was written for the v2.2 of the program and I could not use it for the newer version.
ZenCart also has alot of community following with a large number of modules and add-ons. Overall I found the two very close in the amount of features that \\\\\\\"can be\\\\\\\". Though ZenCart seemed to have some features already included in the base code. Such as coupon codes and discounts.
Once item that was missing from both applications was a way to perform county (not country) based taxing. We are in the state of Ohio and each county has a different percentage of tax added on to the state tax. I had to make my own lookup code to marry this custom tax into the total price.
Templating seems easier in the Alpha release of osCommerce, though ZenCart\\\\\\\'s current release makes this very easy as well.
Ultimately, I had to make a decision to wait for awhile until the new osCommerce version is more widely accepted or just go with ZenCart. So I decided the latter and have been happy with ZenCart so far. However, I don\\\\\\\' think either decision would be right or wrong, it just comes down to a personal preference and they both have a myriad of features to offer if you have your own Linux server to host on.
Show me the e-commerce....
We are working for Microsoft, Yes YOU!
posted by Allan@TechCrammer @ 11:20pm, Thursday 22 January 2009.
I use the term "we" loosely, though if you are the famed goto computer guy or gal then you are probably shaking your head because you know exactly what I am saying.
OK, with friends and family it is somewhat expected that you will lend some advise or help troubleshoot a problem. Though this actually extends into the workplace and that is where I think this topic is most interesting.
I have worked several contracting jobs, have been on small start-up teams and large corporate environments. With this said, I have been wracking my brain to think of one single instance that I (or someone on my team or even in my office) has ever called Microsoft to ask a question. Not a call, not an online chat or an email sent to the company of the most widely used OS on the market.
I can even extend this to using not just the OS and the standard MS Office products; however, many of the development teams I worked with also used Visual Studios, Sourcesafe, SQL Server, etc... I can even recall when we first started doing a large SQL Server replication implementation and scouring the web for information on how to make this all work back in the day when this was not so popular of a concept.
Think about all the times that you have taught someone how to use Excel and Word or those calls from your boss when he was trying to get his PowerPoint presentation going. Think about all those blue screens on your clients workstation that you spent endless hours trying to salvage data or to re-load some oddball driver. Hmmm... here is a good one, Outlook and Outlook Express I have shown countless people how to setup an account or make rules, forward, vacation... you know the drill.
I understand there are help guides, and online knowledgebases (MSDN was great when we were using it) and I am not saying people should be quick to just call Microsoft for something that they can get from a KB. However, what software or even hardware doesn't come with a manual and information of some sort, though this doesn't stop most end-users from calling the company to assist with issues. Good customer service is part of the price right?
I guess we expect help from the manufacturer of the hardware first, which is probably why DELL and the other computer distributors probably have to spend a bundle in customer support. I believe that the Microsoft support site even states something to the instance that your computer manufacturer is your primary source for support. So I guess I am supposed to call DELL when my Outlook mailbox is corrupt, because I have a DELL PC?
I am sure there are better examples, and maybe I am missing the big picture. Microsoft likely has a huge support demand, though I can say it would be alot larger if it wasn't for us techies and software/hardware providers that lend a helping hand to Microsoft users.
Maybe that is why I have really shifted into Open Soure and Linux over the years.
Here is to all of us computer geeks providing free (or maybe just a sixpack of cold brews) tech support!
-Allan
Is it better to turn off your computer at night?
posted by Allan@TechCrammer @ 11:49pm, Sunday 11 January 2009.
My family has been trying to do more "green" things and this includes powering off lights when leaving rooms and turning off unused electronics. This will likely save us a little "green" as well.
I come from the old school and have always heard through my geek friends that computers are best left on and turning off/on causes undue stress on components and leads to shorter life. This sounds like it could be true for things like a hard drive, since you hear it hitting the drive the hardest when starting up, though doesn't seem to make sense from an electronics standpoint since you would think the longer a component has power flowing it would have less life.
I have some personal experience with computer failure, though the servers we use at work are much higher-end and were made for longer life to begin with. So I don't think it would be fair to compare this equipment to a low-end home computer that also typically has more unexpected turnoffs, such as power failure. We also use an industrial UPS system at work that provides very clean power to our servers which I can only guess really adds to the life of the systems.
I ran a quick search and saw this link which appears to be responses from computer manufactures on this question.
http://www.energy.unsw.edu.au/unswitch/experts.html
I would be interested to hear what others say about this.
Powering down (at least for now)
-Allan