How much will you charge?

Before I talk about pricing (latest discussion), I just would like to share a thought that I just had. Last week, 2 of my hard drives failed (from seperate computers). Both happened within 1 week, the other pc only had an IDE connection, the other had both IDE and SATA. It was hard for me to decide whether to get a SATA drive or an IDE drive, because for me I dont see any difference in performance between the 2, and I am used to pluggin in IDE devices. I got the SATA because of the reason, that I have entered the IT world, it is something wherein you can say that the only thing constant is change. If I still use IDE, in time, maluluma lang ako..we just have to accept the changes in technology. (kailangan pakisamahan si Pagbabago)

Okay, back to pricing. About a couple of months ago, a friend of mine asked me if I could create a website for their school. They said they'll be in charged of hosting and domain, they just needed the design and the pages, and they will give me a list of things to put in the site. I have done a few websites before but for free so I didn't have any idea how much I'll charge them for this website. I was thinking of charging them 2-3 thousand for the design and pages because I felt that it was really simple. I got surprised that they offered to pay me 9 thousand for a simple website.

When you think about pricing, these are the things that I think you should consider.

• Intensity of work - how hard will that project be?
• Materials used - will you buy software/hardware for that project?

and these are additional things you may want to consider..

• Your/company's name - pag sikat, mas mahal. I think it's a pride thing. When you're known to do something great, you wouldn't want to keep your prices low because you'll look "cheap".
• You clients name - Like the school that asked me to do the website, It's a small school, but a school that has a lot of money. (i guess, dahil conio ang mga estudyante doon, mga foreigners eh hehe)

I believe that there are a lot more factors for pricing, but I think that these factors are one of the basic things to consider when you're estimating the price for a proposal.

Memories...

Its funny when you try to remember what you used to use before.

This is an external zip drive, I couldn't find the disk anymore, it looks like a normal diskette, it's a little bit thicker and the metal cover that opens is smaller.















Who thought that parallel ports (printer) can't be used for drives?














What's inside it? The insides look like the insides of a floppy drive.














If you look at the head, It is also magnetic, not optical.














We got this external zip drive, because when we bought a PC before that was bundled with an internal zip drive, but it was useless because we couldn't use the zip disk it to transfer files from that PC to another PC (hindi pa uso network dati pero may internet na mabagal). I think that this is one of the reasons why ZIP and JAZ failed.

I was thinking of a reason why some memories/disks that come out of the market succeed and some fail (in terms of sales & users).

Lets look at some examples of the disks/memories that became successful. CD writers came long after CD players and VCD players came out. DVD writers came out after a lot of people had DVD players in their homes. USB flash disks came out when computers already had USB ports and a lot of USB peripherals were already being used.

I felt that if manufacturers create a product that uses something that everyone already has instead of creating their own "trend", it has a great chance of being successful just like what I mentioned above.

So this puts another question in my head..Blue ray isn't that popular yet. Most of the people, I think, do not have blue ray players at home, and they are already introducing blue ray writers, and disks in the market.. will blue ray be successful? only time will tell..

Mantech 3rd Blog

About a month ago, i was trying to look for a DDR ram, because my girlfriends computer was so slow and i found out that it only had 256mb of ram, and the hard disk was full of bad sectors. I am not very familiar with the parts, i know what they are but i dont know the specifics. I went to PC Express, i thought that i could find any computer part here, but the guy said that they don't sell DDR's anymore. I was surprised, for me, DDR's are still new because the PC that i'm using still uses one (old school) and it's just 3 years old. So i went around town center and went to the 4th floor where most of the computer stores are, I checked every store and they didn't have even a stick of DDR, and they all referred me to the store in front of CD-R king. This store had every kind of RAM and a lot of chop-chop parts. I asked the lady if they had a DDR, she said yes, and i asked how much she said P4,300. It's ironic that something that is older and slower is much more expensive than the ones that are being used now (Branded DDR P4,000 vs Branded DDR P1,500). It wasnt the first time that this happened to me, when i went to PCX about 2 years ago, i was trying to look for an RD ram for my 6 year old pc (mga unang p4), the guy literally laughed when he saw me holding that kind of ram. I couldnt believe it, because during that time, there was no core 2 duo or even a core duo, it was still the time of pentium 4 but there was no parts for it.

This story reminded me of our research about IBM, we really should take into consideration the availability of parts when we buy a PC (used or brand new), because if you wont be able to buy upgrades for your pc, you just wouldnt be able to catch up with the requirements of the programs that are released in the market and your pc, in time, will just end up as junk.

Second Blog

If Charles Babbage had finished the Analytical Engine.....

I believe that the computers now would really a lot more advanced.

But there's one thing that amazes me. If you look at the Analytical Engine, it is mostly (if not all) mechanical. Who could ever think that by turning some wheels, you can yeild some answers.

There are some things in the Analytical Engine that I think can be related to the parts of a modern computer.

1. First, the rod where the wheels are connected (bottom of the machine), i think that in the computers now, this is the clock. The faster this wheel turns the faster the computer can process data, also all the wheels are attached to it, it keeps the parts synchronized.
2. The wheels on that rod, I think that the wheels on that rod has some grooves so that when it turns, it can "compute" for the answer or it can be conditions to either change the positions of the flat metal parts on the top, so i think that in modern computers, this is the ALU or the arithmetic logic unit which contains the basic operations and some conditions.
3. and the last thing i could see that can be related to a modern computer are the flat metal sticks, notice on the left part of the engine, some of those flat metal parts are either pushed or pulled by the wheels, i think that this holds the data, so i can say that in modern computers, this is the flip flops, each metal part can hold 1 bit of data

This is mechanical, modern computers are purely electronic, how did this help in developing modern computers? First of all, i think that if Charles Babbage had created a machine that Automates jobs, it just proved that it can be done. Second, when we solve a problem, it is easy for us to solve something because we understand what the problem means, but a computer doesnt understand that, so he represented the data (numbers) into something that can be manipulated by a machine in order to come up with an answer.

I know that the older computers (older than analytical engine) like the abacus had a way to represent data (used balls to represent numbers), but in order to get an answer, someone should move the balls to get an answer, Charles Babbage was able to make that automated.

First Blog

Before I couldnt agree that the ABACUS was the first computer. Why? because first of all it looks a lot different from the computer we all know, second it's not electronic. I couldnt see a connection.

But when I was about to write this blog, I just saw a connection. I have seen how it could have influenced the design of modern computers.

I dont know how to use an abacus, but i know one thing, you either move the balls to the left or to the right. There's no such thing as putting the ball hanging in the middle.

The CPU's of modern computers are digital, they only understand 1's (highs) and 0's (lows). so i thought, that the abacus CAN be like the computer's CPU. if you place the balls on the left side, you may represent it with a low, and if you put the balls on the right you may represent it with a high..get the idea?

the only difference is..when you read high's and low's in a computer, you read it as binary (sign and magnitude, 2's complement, 1's complement depending on what was defined by the architecture). in an abacus, i think you count the balls, but the basic idea is the same, you represent the numbers (problem) using bits, then solve that problem using those bits, and then output the bits, then convert those bits (output/answer) to a number understandable by humans

Thats why i believe now that the abacus was the first computer..