ACK controls

[bloodmoney]

Does ACK have a web site?

[Nickman]

No.

[bloodmoney]

kinda odd for a company that is producing hardware not to have a web site dont you think?

[amiga_3k]

@bloodmoney

Depends on a lot of things. Points to consider are:

The cost for building and maintaining a website. It takes at least a few weeks to create a fully informative site from scratch. This means an investment of some odd 10k Euro / US Dollar. Then keeping it up to date takes at least a half days work a week, adding another 1k Euro / US Dollar every week. This money is taken right from the profits.

The size of the company. If it's just a 4 person operation (IIRC that's about the size of ACKControls) those persons have to create the cashflow to pay for a site.

The way of selling products. If they can get enough work in by phoning / visiting potential customers to keep 'em all at work, earning enough money to make a small profit then there's no use in getting even more work. It wouldn't be the first time a company went bust due to too much work being sold (sounds odd, but expanding the order wallet means investing in more people, bigger offices, more machines etc. etc. etc...).

You'll need to HAVE products. If no products are available (or only products developed for and owned by others) for show, there's no use in having a place to not showing it.

Okay, a little site declaring who they are would be nice, but apparently they don't feel it's possible. I know of companies who do produce and develop that don't have sites as well, so it's not that odd. Also, one must nog over-estimate the impact of a site. It's nice for a first contact but in many cases the phone has still to be used.

[Oli_hd]

Well I havent updated my website since december 2004, it means nothing at all.

Anyway the word is developing, not producing (Although I look forward to the day)

[Gojirax]

Actually. For zero investment you can put up a Blog and keep your updates and info on there.

It doesn't take much to create an internet presence if you need one, and the return on the investment is quite large.

(If you are creating a product that you would like to market, then you DO need to invest something into getting the word out.)

[Zac67]

Building a small info site for a handful of products just takes a couple of hours. You don't need CMS and fancy PHP coding, just some linked pages. Edit the text, embed one or two pictures and add doc / driver links - that's it.

[-BobW-]

They had a website when they were actively selling AmigaOne's.  Thats where I bought mine.  

When they ran out of stock they took down the site.  I'm sure they will put up a new one when they have something to sell.

[bloodmoney]

I have a website for my own business. My host charges me $100 US dollars a year with massive bandwith and like 200+ mail boxs. My domain name is roughly $10 a year.
A bit cheaper than your estimate. I design and maintain it myself. A web designer might charge anywere from $50 to $1500 dollars depending on what you wanted.
Better yet a friend might do it free. Heck I would design a basic one for them for free.

[amiga_3k]

Building a site privately is a big end cheaper than professionally. With a professional site build during business-hours you'll have to charge all the hours, that's where my estimate comes from. I know what my boss charges for the work our programmer/consultant delivers: that's in the 120 euro/hour region. If the programming and lay-outing takes 2 weeks, that's 80 hours. This comes to a total of 9600 euro. But to be able to build the site he needs input. Collecting that input means talking to staff of the company. At that moment they can't be productive so their hours need to be taken into account as well. Say he needs to interview people for 8 hours. That's a total of 16 hours to be paid for, 1920 euro. Already 11520 euro spent, and that's without the discussions with the buyer of the site. Those hours need to be calculated as well. The cost for pictures to be taken have not been taken into account either. So... even if the hour-rate could be cut to 60 euro/hour I guess I'm not too much of in real cost.

[bloodmoney]

As stated earlier he doesnt have to have anything fancy.
Its not like his site is Best Buy or MCdonalds. He just needs a web presence. Like a virtual business card. Doesnt even need a shopping cart yet. Just Hi this is our company.
History and progress.
heres some pictures.
Contact us here.
All cane be done less than $1000 us dollars mabey even as low as $300 us dollars or a friend $0 dollars
No research needed Im sure knows his own product.

[Gojirax]

amiga_3k wrote:
Building a site privately is a big end cheaper than professionally. With a professional site build during business-hours you'll have to charge all the hours, that's where my estimate comes from. I know what my boss charges for the work our programmer/consultant delivers: that's in the 120 euro/hour region. If the programming and lay-outing takes 2 weeks, that's 80 hours. This comes to a total of 9600 euro. But to be able to build the site he needs input. Collecting that input means talking to staff of the company. At that moment they can't be productive so their hours need to be taken into account as well. Say he needs to interview people for 8 hours. That's a total of 16 hours to be paid for, 1920 euro. Already 11520 euro spent, and that's without the discussions with the buyer of the site. Those hours need to be calculated as well. The cost for pictures to be taken have not been taken into account either. So... even if the hour-rate could be cut to 60 euro/hour I guess I'm not too much of in real cost.

Sheer madness.

You're talking apples and oranges here.

My company spends over $65,000 per year on anti-spam/spyware software.

Does that mean I should quote someone with spyware a $65,000 bill to clean it off their computer?

Hardly.

What a professional (And I assume quite large scale) company spends on operating and advertising isn't even REMOTELY representative of what a 4 man operation would spend.

Code would be written by the owner or a friend for free or in trade for a 6 pack of beer.

Pictures would be taken by the developer or the developers girlfriend.

The hosting would be budget hosting and domain names are cheap.

Think small business.

Heck, think "Hobbyist"

[glitch]

Ummm, didn't Adam just tell everyone to go pound salt?  Have things been patched back up recently???

[bloodmoney]

Amen Gojirax !
You can subtract 9600 euro because I have already offered to design a simple site for free.

 :-P

[Argo]

Nope, No website...
He's not producing anyting so it is not odd.
Oh, sure he could put something simple up. Then it you just be a magnet for hate mail and attacks in various forms for not haveing a professional looking website. Not to mention why advertise something he does not have?

There seems to be some movement by him on the PV project, as the AW forums seem to indicate. It looks like after the last fiasco, he is taking his time and working privatly til he has something fully working to show. Unlike the failed, postponed and cancelled demos of proof of concept and WIP.

His biggest mistake was announcing the project in the first place. Not that he will not hear complains, strong ones, after he has something to show and sell.