[Greg C]

I have a problem -
My aged machine - on which I produce all my free topos for LakesBloc - is perishing and I can not afford to buy a new one, as I have just bought a new house and will have to get a much need new car soon  :nopity:

I have no quarms in not getting paid for producing the topos as I love doing it but I need a half decent machine. Therefore I am looking for some way of raising at least some of the funds needed to save the service, any suggestions?  

Good news for Rockfax, I guess.

[dave]

what about getting madrock to "sponsor" the topos specifically, thus rasing some capital?

[Greg C]

Cheers Dave,
Have already thought of that but all adevrtising budget is accounted for this year.

I suppose I could approach another manufacturer?

[Bubba]

What's up with the machine? Can't it be rebuilt/botched?

[Greg C]

It's just old and doesn't have much memory, poor graphics capabilities and crashes more and more frequently basically very well used. The problem is there is tons of info on it which and if goes fucked perminantly would take years to recreate.

Maybe I could do somthing similar to the Yorkshire bolts fund?

[Bubba]

You need to burn all that info to disc asap.

If you save all your data, and rebuild it from scratch with something like win2k, you'll probably squeeze some more life out of it for a while. Failing that, you can get a pretty reasonable pc for about £250 these days.

God knows about fund raising - I've thought about it in the past to pay for the hosting fees for this site, but I want to keep it advert free for as long as possible.

Perhaps the best thing to do as a trial is set up a "donate by paypal" facility, then those who use your topos can donate a fiver here and there.

[Mike_H]

Yeah thats sounds like an idea Bubba.

I know alot of web development sites like Evolt, operate a similar scheme of asking for a donation.

I know I'd have no problem in making a donation if I made use of the topos, but with it you also bring a higher expectation from people as they are actually paying for a product.

[dontfollowme]

What computer do you have at the moment? I have a PIII 450 going spare?

[Greg C]

Can't rememeber off the top of my head but it was bought its a 1997 Patriot and it wasn't state of the art then 1.96GB, I think?

[dontfollowme]

for a short term solution you could just buy a load of ram to speed things up

[Bubba]

I know I'd have no problem in making a donation if I made use of the topos, but with it you also bring a higher expectation from people as they are actually paying for a product.

Yeah, good point Mike  - that's a good thing because it encourages the sense of community - people who donate feel good coz they're offering support and want to improve the service, and the site that's being donated to feels like they should offer better service because people are giving their hard-earned, so everyone wins in the end.

One thing I'm thinking of donating to at the moment is avant browser which is an excellent wrapper for internet explorer. I use it all the time. Many people say "use Mozilla Firefox"....well I have, and avant browser is much better imho, and the guy offers a constant stream of updates.

[Mike_H]

I haven't had a look at the Avant browser, got to say I use Firefox heavily at work. All our web work has moved over to CSS so it as good a testing platform as any and I think it rocks (especially tabbed browsing)

Just had another thought about the paypal donation thing, off the top of my head I'm sure that that scheme is only operated in the US. I don't think the European arm of Paypal allows such things. But I could be wrong!

[Mike_H]

I am talking out of my arse on the last point, I think I was thinking about another service they only offer in the states for e-commerce.

[Jim]

pay pal is ebay's paying-type service thing. They charge you the privalige of 4% for using it

[dobbin]

Paypal is an eBay company, and they do charge you a wedge for the privilege.

Sell your ass Greg, or start selling crack on the site.

[Bubba]

Paypal fees aren't that much are they?

He's been beaten to the crack thang http://www.virtualcrack.com/

Bet there's not many full on crack-dens in the lakes though. Could be the answer.