Scenario:

1. I find a great looking Acer monitor on some website: Acer S243HLbmii
2. Google search the bastard! First result, the Acer website. Great, I’ll go straight to the source and get my information. Quick and simple.
3. I end up at a strange URL:

   http://us.acer.com/acer/product.do?LanguageISOCtxParam=en&rcond5e.c2att92=169&inu49e.current.c2att92=169&link=ln314e&CountryISOCtxParam=US&kcond47e.c2att92=169&rcond159e.att21k=1&kcond48e.c2att101=62722&rcond190e.att21k=1&acond23=US&rcond4e.att21k=1&sp=page17e&rcond157e.c2att92=169&ctx1g.c2att92=169&rcond42e.att21k=1&kcond50e.c2att92=169&rcond45e.att21k=1&rcond158e.c2att1=0&ctx2.c2att1=0&inu53e.current.c2att92=169&rcond38e.c2att1=25&var13e=US&rcond44e.c2att1=0&rcond186e.c2att92=169&rcond3e.c2att1=0&rcond28e.attN2B2F2EEF=3264&rcond189e.c2att1=0&ctx1.att21k=1&CRC=712559224

   Whatever, this shouldn’t be a problem, I used a search engine. I’m also never going to send this to anyone, right?
   

4. I find the S243HL model, click it and wait for the fancy sliding and fading effects. And wait. And wait.
5. This must be a problem because of the URL.
   1. Go to Acer homepage.
   2. Browse products, monitors.
   3. Nice and shorter URL this time. Click again on my model.
   4. Wait.
6. Then this must be a problem because of Firefox. Switch to Chrome. Wait.
7. The damn thing must have been built for IE. Open IE. Wait.
8. Javascript problem maybe? Disable javascript. No fallback whatsoever…

In the end I believe that it is definitely somehing bad I’ve done. Maybe I didn’t click on something, I didn’t use the correct Firefox version or I have a weird IP address.

Picasa: OK, great. This installer will automatically use Romanian based on you location. Who cares if your default language is English. Heck, I won’t even give you the option to switch languages.

Me: Oh well, I’ll just change that later.

Picasa: I’m done installing. Let’s run Picasa for the first time! Do you want to scan all your computer or just your Desktop and My Documents folders?

Me: I keep my photos on my network! I want more options or a cancel button! Oh well, I’ll just select My Documents folder then.

Picasa: OK, searching right now. It looks like I found a 1080 HD movie on your desktop. I bet you want me to generate a thumbnail for it. Working…

Me: That’s it. I’m removing these folders from your settings.

Picasa: No you are not. I’m not responding to your commands anymore.

Me: The I’ll just end the process.

* tries again to start Picasa and remove the Desktop folder. Same problem. Finally deletes the troublesome file from the desktop. Picasa eventually accepts the removal of the folder.

Me: Let’s change your language now… English US. Great, it works!

Picasa: Yep, although some shortcuts in the Start Menu are still in Romanian. Isn’t it great you couldn’t change the language before installing?

• OK. A 13 inch display screen isn’t really that small and having a 1280×800 resolution (like many of the 15″ laptops) means you get a decent amount of space. Most IDEs like Eclipse fit just fine on the screen but I wouldn’t recommend doing any graphic editing since that does require a little more than this resolution has to offer.
• BAD. Capacitive media buttons are cool for about 5 minutes.
• AWESOME. The remote control that fits into the express card slot is awesome. Apart from shielding the slot from dust (which would be otherwise covered by a useless piece of plastic) it proves quite useful at presentations or watching a movie.
  
• USELESS. Fingerprint reader is also cool for a few hours. I haven’t even installed the drivers anymore. So it’s useless at this point for me.
  
• USELESS. Who uses a DVD unit anymore? Even Windows can be booted and installed with an USB stick. If I could I would remove it completely and probably buy an external USB unit for emergencies. Now it only uses space, power and adds to the laptop’s weight.
• BAD. The power button should be positioned on one side, not beneath the screen. You may want to connect the laptop to an external display + mouse + keyboard and disable the laptop’s monitor. But now you still have to open the lid to power it up.
  
• BAD. Not having an edge to edge monitor screen means you get dust and dirt stuck right on the margin above the actual pixels.
• OK. The integrated webcam and microphone are rarely used but prove useful when the need arises. The bluetooth and card reader are great as well.

So what would I look for in a laptop If I was searching for one right now:

• A maximum 13″ display if you want a mobile unit. Otherwise let’s just call it a desktop replacement :).
• Power button access without opening the lid.
• Multimedia remote control (play, pause, mute, next, etc).
• Volume controlled by a physical wheel situated on one side. Yes, it’s not so cool but is extremely fast and easier to use than buttons for +/-.
• HDMI output. This is a must have.
• A minimum of 2 USB ports.

I would also not worry about the HDD’s capacity too much. Out of a 250GB HDD I’m only using 50GB (Windows 7 32 bit and all software needed is installed). All the important and heavyweight data (photos, movies) are stored at home on my NAS.

Here is a quick guide:

1. Launch Adobe Flex Builder.
2. Help > Software Updates > Find and Install… > Search for new features to install
3. New Remote Site…
4. URL: http://flexformatter.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/FlexFormatter/FlexPrettyPrintCommandUpdateSite
5. Finish
6. Restart the IDE
7. Use Ctrl+Shift+F (by default) to autoformat your source files.

It’s a screenshot from Age of Empires: Rise of Rome (a great game, by the way). Using TinEye you can find the (supposedly) original source at http://www.lauppert.ws/screen1/rise_of_rome.jpg. However the ad takes you directly to Travian, a multi-player browser game.

• $56 according to mywebsiteworth.com
• $2372.5 according to websiteoutlook.com
• $95 according to websitevaluecalculator.com

The disturbing problem is when people use those values in business proposals:

Hey, my website was valued by websiteoutlook.com at $2372.5 so I got to get at least $2000 for it.

Why would you even consider this information useful to your buyer? There could be only one of 2 explanations for this:

1. you are dumb
2. you believe your potential buyers are dumb

And here are a few such listings:

• http://flippa.com/auctions/82838/High-Traffic-Directory-Earning-Over-100-Per-Month
• http://flippa.com/auctions/82871/Domain-and-Site-TwitterTrafficTips-com-For-Sale
• http://flippa.com/auctions/83096/Custom-Coded-Forum-Approved-Free-Image-Host-For-Sale
• http://flippa.com/auctions/81837/Link-Directory-Network-Earning-240-Per-Month-No-Reserve

So what did that mean?

• Traffic. On July 15th Awstats reported a traffic of 23 GB and about 3.5 million hits on lolhome.com. Google Analytics counted about 125.000 unique visitors that day.
• Load. On an ordinary day the VPS was having an average memory usage of 55% out of the 384 MB available. Apache was also dealing with 3 requests/second on average. When the visitors from reddit came, the memory peaked at 85-95%. This caused Apache to reset a couple of times and reported roughly 130 requests/second.
• Revenue. The website is monetized by AdSense. I won’t give away the exact figures but they increased about 9 times that day.

Screenshots

unique visitors

1st spot on reddit homepage

VPS performance

I must say I’m quite satisfied with the way my VPS handled the short burst of visitors. On a shared environment the website would almost certainly have been put down by the host. I monitored the website intensively that day and there were absolutely no slow server responses on any website on the machine. Apache restarts only took a few seconds (2-3) so downtime was not a problem.

Although the websites appeared to be working fine the VPS was reaching its limits. If I were to have that amount of traffic on a regular basis I would probably upgrade. Until then I can rest knowing that my sites are able to stay online should a traffic spike kick in.