helping people purchase and get started

[pocock]

I wanted to make this world a little bit easier for other developers to buy in, so I'm making some contributions on the wiki, feedback or enhancements would also be welcome.

In particular, comparing different wiki pages during purchasing can be frustrating, so I've combined key facts in a single table on a single page but please feel free to correct it if you feel anything is not quite right there.

[MPC7500]

Good idea. On the TalosII table, you should notice that only in dual CPU configuration all PCIe slots are available. Otherwise like the TalosII lite.

[MPC7500]

A few little things:

Condor is for LaGrange CPU. All others for Sforza. Blackbird has a audio chip which the others haven't.

[pocock]

My next step in this area is creating localized ordering pages

I created one here for Switzerland because I know a few people nearby who are curious about ordering

https://wiki.raptorcs.com/wiki/LocalSuppliers/Switzerland

The concept is simple: people can click through to some local supplier to build up a shopping cart of local parts.  Most people in Switzerland live near a Digitec store, so I created Digitec links as an example.

This concept could be adapted for other countries.  For example, people could maintain pages like this in the wiki and share them with local colleagues and friends.

To automate, it could be driven from a Git repository, for example, using Jekyll or Jinja2 templates.  The inputs would be
a) table of suggested parts (e.g. the Define 7 XL case, long name, EAN, anything to help search for it)
b) table of local suppliers, by state/country, including company name and a URL template string for putting the part into a search

With an automated solution, somebody could change a part name (e.g. adding the Define 8 XL case whenever it exists) and it would propagate to every country page.

This is not an attempt to create a new shopping cart, it is simply a complement for existing shopping carts, to help people save time and increase the chances that people end up with similar supported components.

[MPC7500]

I might have split it up by continent for now. But it's a good idea anyway.

[pocock]

Continent is not always helpful for tax/customs purposes and also due to language differences.

For example,

- Switzerland is not in the EU VAT and customs system

- consumers from Italy and France (where taxes are over 20%) drive into Switzerland to buy things like memory sticks, SSDs, CPUs, laptops, digital cameras and SD cards at 8% tax.  They are supposed to declare these products at the border and pay the extra 12% when returning to their own country but I suspect they sometimes forget.

- businesses in Italy, France or any other EU country don't need to pay the VAT taxes, so they buy from their local suppliers to get faster delivery and local support

- the UK doesn't use the Euro, they use Sterling and as they are a very big economy, their local suppliers are very efficient for people who live in the UK.  After Brexit, they may have customs barriers, nobody knows right now. I used to live in the UK and if I lived there now, I would probably want to order from a local UK supplier, pay in GBP and receive the product next day

So it is probably useful to have some groupings, e.g. a single page for all EU countries as well as some local pages for big countries like UK and France.  Please also remember language is a factor in EU countries, if people in Italy and France can buy the same product at the same price from a supplier using their own language, they will usually prefer that.

The Swiss page can be seen as a proof-of-concept, any ideas or initiatives to extrapolate from that are welcome.