IT

Ultimate Guide to Saving Money Online In Australia

Posted on by Adam Fowler

This is a bit out of the ordinary for the sort of post I write, but I’ve had a lot of people ask how I get things cheap. There’s a little bit of effort invovled – but not that much, and generally the effort is far less than the money saved.

Here is my ultimate list of methods to purchase goods online, and get the biggest discounts possible. I’ve been using and refining these for many years and saved lots of money compared to walking into a store.

These options aren’t difficult to use, and combining these methods together should help you reduce your overall spend:

  1. OzBargain – A community driven site where users post and vote for bargains and deals discovered.

    Visit this page regularly to keep an eye on deals that pop up. Use the ‘deals’ section rather than the main page, as the main page only shows items with lots of votes. Use the search function when looking for an item to see if there’s any existing deals (use the All Nodes > Type: Deals (No Expired) advanced option to only see active deals). Failing that, check expired deals to see what sort of prices may be possible, or if it’s worth waiting for another future deal to pop up.

  2. Cashback Schemes –  Where retailers pay the site to advertise, and they give the users a portion of that payment.

    CashRewards^ is the one I use, but there’s also ShopBack which is newer but seems to give better returns, amongst others. Sign up for this, and use the Chrome extension. A certain percentage of purchases you make on supported websites gets credited back to you, which you can transfer back to your bank account when you have enough. You don’t really have to think about it after that – when you go to a website that CashRewards supports (and there’s a LOT of them, including major ones like eBay, Telstra, Virgin, Microsoft, CatchOfTheDay etc) it’ll pop up asking you to activate the cashback. Sites like aliexpress offer 10%, which is a reasonable return and should be considered when trying to find the cheapest price possible for an item, as well as automatic money back for random online shopping.

  3. Lasoo – This site hosts a lot of Australian stores’ catalogues online, which are searchable.

    When looking for an item, go here and search to see if there’s any good deals on it. It’s a quick way to see if a retailer has a good price on an item you’re going to buy.

  4. Rewards Card – A credit card from a financial institution that rewards points for each dollar spent.

    When doing online purchases, you should be earning points of some sort. Points Hack is a good website to see what deals are happening. Find a credit card that doesn’t cost anything to maintain, or the costs are nullified by their benefits (e.g. an American Express^ is one card I have which gets 100,000 points on signup, and up to 2 points per $1 spent. It costs $395 a year, but it also includes a $400 travel voucher a year and a bunch of other benefits – so I end up saving money). Also link up your points earning card to Paypal, so when doing purchases through that you’ll still earn points.

  5. Frequent Flyer Points – Airlines or hotels who have their own points system that can be used to receive discounts or spend on items.

    Those reward cards sometimes convert straight to a Frequent Flyer program, or they might have their own points system where the points can then be sent off to one of several options. Don’t transfer unless you want to spend the points, as often there will be promotions where a bonus is paid when transferring the points ( e.g. 15% extra points from Virgin). If you know you’ll use them later with that company, transfer when there’s a bonus. The points can then be used against airfares or their online stores, and really it’s points you paid nothing for.

  6. Discount Codes and Coupons – Usually a code to enter at the time of purchasing an item to receive extra discount.

    Most websites have a code option, and it’s worth checking to see if one exists when doing an order. Honey^ is another Chrome addin that is community driven, and able to test and apply all known codes automatically when it recognises a website, to see if you can get any discount. There’s also some other sites it’ll give you points for when doing a purchase, which can be redeemed for Amazon credit. Failing that, there’s coupon sites such as RetailMeNot where you can search for the site you’re on to see what codes might be available. I generally do a Google search for the site I’m on like ‘Coles Online Code’ and check the first few results.

  7. Specialty Search Websites – A site that indexes certain types of items to quickly find the cheapest option.

    You may have to go searching for these. For computer parts, I use Static Ice which shows in price order the results from many different stores. For board games, I use Board Game Search. It’s worth noting that you may find cheaper from the other methods above, but it’s an easy way to price check.

  8. Price Matching – Some retailers will offer a price match guarantee which can be worth your time.

    EB Games is a good example here – their normal prices aren’t very good, but they’ll price match with almost any advertised price. If it’s more convenient to go to their store than another, it can save you a bunch of hassle. OfficeWorks is even better as they’ll beat any advertised price by 5%. If you find a great online deal, but Officeworks has the item too, you can easily save another 5%. On big ticket items that can easily be worth the hassle of going into a store.

  9. Gift Cards – Cards that can only be spent at certain stores

    The cards themselves provide no extra value, but often they can be bought for less than their face value. For example, WISH cards which are redeemable at the Woolworths group of stores can be bought for 5% less than their value through a variety of different methods, possibly through a service you already use. 5% off your groceries each week adds up fairly quickly for very little effort.

  10. Entertainment Book – A book full of discounts

    There’s a few of these around, but the Entertainment Book is one of the most popular. Although it costs $70, using it twice when going out for dinner will generally cover the cost of the book. Beyond that, you’re saving money. Meal deals are usually 2 for 1 or 25% off which are reasonable savings. You’ll also get those gift cards at 5% off (e.g. JB Hifi, BWS, Jetstar ) which again can pay for itself very quickly. If you have to fly Jetstar, it’s nice to get a discount.

  11.  Overseas Fees – When making a purchase from overseas, it’s often in a a foreign currency.Credit card companies normally charge an extra fee when purchasing in a different currency than AU. There’s often bargains to be found overseas, which are much cheaper (even after shipping!) than anything you can find locally. For this reason, it’s good to have a credit card that won’t charge you extra to do this. The two favorites are the Bankwest Zero Platinum MasterCard and the 28 Degrees Platinum Mastercard – both have no fees on overseas purchases, and no annual fees. Amazon in different countries often comes through with great pricing, and is worth keeping an eye on.

If you think I’ve missed something or have anything to share, please comment so I can review and update this list. I’ve avoided things that require lots of effort to maintain.

^ These are affiliate links, meaning I get a few $ if you use them. If you don’t want to use those links, go to the site manually – but there’s no negative impact to you for doing so.

Samsung Gear VR Competition

Posted on by Adam Fowler

After winning Netwrix’s Sysadmin Blog Award for Tech Tips, the prize of the Samsung Gear VR has turned up today for me in the mail.

I’ve decided to give this away as a prize instead – I have opened it to make sure it wasn’t damaged in transit as the box is a little beaten up, but haven’t used it as I don’t have a Samsung phone :)

Simple and straight forward, use the widget below to enter. Worldwide entry allowed, assuming the local post office will let me send it to you and I’m not breaking any international laws.

If the winner wants to do a review or share a photo of them with the prize, I’d gladly share that on my blog too, but this isn’t a requirement.

I’m also not a supporter competitions that promote spamming, so there’s no entries for sharing this. Good luck!

 


A somewhat beat up box, but the contents are fine!

Samsung Gear VR Competition

Checking CSV Against Active Directory Users

Posted on by Adam Fowler

I’ve written before on how to update Active Directory from a CSV. This time, I’ve got a CSV list of users that I want to check are valid users against my Active Directory (AD) environment.

There’s a huge amount of ways this can be done, and this is just one of them. If you have others, or ways to improve this I’m always keen to hear!

This script assumes you have a CSV file with the header (first line) with the word ‘users’. Here’s an example CSV file: myusers.csv

Below is the PowerShell script I wrote. I’ve also written about ‘If’ and ‘Else’ before, so read that if you want some clarification. The user list I have is based on User Principal Name (UPN) rather than just username, so I’m searching AD to see if there’s a match or not.

Import-Module ActiveDirectory

$Data = Import-Csv myusers.csv

foreach ($user in $data){
$upn = $user.user
$check = $(try {get-aduser -filter "userprincipalname -eq '$upn'"} catch {$null})
if ($check -ne $null) { }
else { "$upn Doesn't Exist" }
}

What I’m doing here is setting each line of the CSV as the $UPN variable to search for. Then using the ‘Try‘ function, I’m catching if there is no result/match (null). If there’s a match, it won’t equal null, so display nothing. Else, show the UPN via the $UPN variable and follow that with ‘Doesn’t Exit’.

This way, I will only get results back from each AD search where the UPN in the CSV doesn’t match a user’s UPN in my AD environment – and I get to see what those results are.

This script method can be applied in many different ways of course, but it was the first time I’d used the Try function, and it worked really well.

 

On-Premise vs On-Premises – Who Cares?

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Update 7th June 2018

I should have linked this earlier, but please read Michelle Warmath’s comment here where as a linguist, she claims ‘On-premise’ is actually correct. I’m not a linguist, but it sounds very well reasoned and sensible. If it’s true, then the premise (!) of my article assuming the term is wrong, is wrong in itself. Anyway, food for thought – please read on. (and welcome Wikipedia readers – I didn’t add the link in to my own blog in case you wondered, but thank you to whomever did). I still have points I made that I stand by.

Original post

Haven’t we got better things to do than worry about this?

From time to time, I see people argue and get upset, frustrated or just obnoxious on the use of “on-premise”. But why?

Yes, the word “premises” means – a house or building, together with its land and outbuildings, occupied by a business or considered in an official context.

…and the word “premise” means – a previous statement or proposition from which another is inferred or follows as a conclusion

(thanks Dictionary.com)

so, it makes sense to extrapolate this to an IT term when referring to something being on your property as “on-premises”. It’s the correct term to use.

However, ‘on-premise’ has become mainstream, and it seems to irk a lot of IT professionals. This has been happening for years already, 3 years ago Brian Madden already wrote about how the grammar war had been lost.

We are now at a stage where the biggest of vendors use the term ‘on-premise’ Here’s a few easily googlable examples:

VMware Microsoft Mailguard SAP LogMeIn RedHat RSA

Also, I just used the word ‘googlable’. That’s not a real word… yet. You knew what I meant though, right? Partly because you’ve probably heard it before, and in context it’s rather clear.

Here’s an example of these polar opposite views on Twitter:

@cxi Personally, I’m still in the “if your employees can’t learn to use premises instead of premise, fire them and hire smarter people” camp

— Dave Henry (@davemhenry) April 13, 2017

@TheJasonNash @davemhenry @cxi If you have smart, well-paid people who can’t get past premise/premises, fire them and hire people who focus on the right things.

— Jeramiah Dooley (@jdooley_clt) April 13, 2017

Obviously I’m on the side of the second example here.

To me, there is a huge difference between seeing someone email about “Microsoft Exchange 2012”. That doesn’t exist, and it means I don’t actually know which Exchange version you’re talking about, and question your knowledge on the product if you think that exists. I don’t apply the same logic to “On-premise” because it’s crystal clear what you mean by the term. If vendors commonly use it, why shouldn’t we expect customers of these vendors to do the same?

It’s also widely accepted to use ‘on-prem’ as an abbreviation. I’ve never heard or seen a complain about that term. Isn’t it then silly, and of little to no value to go on about ‘on-prem’ and ‘on-premises’ being acceptable, but ‘on-premise’ isn’t?

On top of this, not everyone is a wordsmith. We all have different skill sets and abilities, and nobody is an equal when it comes to language. It is not a sign of intelligence or lack of intelligence if someone writes about PC’s when they mean PCs. It’s not a lack of attention to detail either – just like so many struggle to have instant recognition of which variation of ‘there’ to use.

Here’s a little secret – up until a few days ago, I thought the term was ‘pre-madonna’ but saw it written for the first time… it’s ‘prima donna’. We all have these silly stories on terms that we got wrong for so much of our lives. I also knew someone who was telling me about ‘phone ticks’. It was actually phonetics, they’d just never HEARD the word, only in its written form. They’re funny stories, but they all show a connection between the word and its use.

I’m not saying we should abandon grammar and correct terms. Using the correct term is what we should aim for; it reduces the chance of incorrect interpretation. However, the English language is always evolving. The term ‘Cloud’ was made up by someone recently, and it’s still a very broad, general use term that usually needs defining to work out exactly what it is in each situation.

Here’s another example; do you ever use the word ‘datum‘? It’s the singular of ‘data’. True, it’s less likely to be talking about a single piece of information, but when we do, who interchanges ‘data’ to ‘datum’? I don’t see anyone getting upset about that in the IT community…

I don’t mind if you disagree with me, and think it’s just THAT important that people add the missing ‘s’ on. If that’s what you want to do, good luck to you! I used to get annoyed with the term ‘Serverless‘ but have come to realise that despite it’s technical inaccuracy, I know what it means. So go on, keep using that word too.

Clear communication is what I believe is important; and nothing is lost in that when someone uses the term ‘on-premise’. There’s plenty of more valuable habits that are worth trying to change out there.

Zero-click Single Sign-On Without ADFS

Posted on by Adam Fowler

Login prompts to websites are a pain. Enterprise employees these days expect to have a single sign-on experience (meaning the same username/password everywhere) and a minimal amount of logging in to systems each day.

It’s a very different from years ago where every system had it’s own unique login, and users got into the habit of synchronizing password changes when the regular password expiries hit (and I’m sure some companies still run this way), but it’s a problem IT as a whole has worked on for many years.

Microsoft has had a big focus in identity management for many years, with products such as FIM/MIM and ADFS along with the old faithful Active Directory, controlling and giving framework for authentication. The on-premises approach didn’t work for cloud based technologies though. Going to a site such as Office365.com will show an area to sign in:

Going back to the requirements of getting logged out of sites, or needing to log into each different Microsoft service is a pain and time sink for users. The original answer to this problem was ADFS. This works well, but requires the ADFS infrastructure to be set up, and needs to be highly available. If ADFS goes down, your users can no longer authenticate to Azure AD, which is what powers the identity management and authentication orchestration for Microsoft enterprise users (this includes Office 365).

More recently, another native solution was released – Pass Through Authentication for Azure AD Connect (Azure AD Connect being the service that syncs your on premises AD to Azure AD). This removes the requirement for entering a password to these Microsoft services which is great for users, but still requires the entry of the username (which in Azure AD, is the User Principal Name, and looks the same as an email address to confuse things more for users). It’s a good start, but still not the seamless authentication many users expect.

There is another way of providing zero-touch logins to Microsoft services without ADFS, which is Azure AD Domain Join. Windows 10 is a requirement here, but beyond that, the setup is quite easy if you’re already configured for Azure AD. Maurice Daly has written a great guide on this, which outlines all the requirements and steps to follow to be up and running. (Thanks Maurice for your help on this!)

Gotcha for myself: I found that I had an old version of the Microsoft Azure Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell which didn’t have the get-msoldevice cmdlet at all, and had to download an updated version. I also updated the AzureRM module for good measure since it was also out of date, but shouldn’t have been a requirement.

This is a rather complex topic, so I’ve tried to give a fly-over view of the native options available. There’s also Smart Links which can speed up and improve the user experience.

If you’re on Azure AD and Windows 10, give Azure AD Domain Join a try. It may save you the hassle of building and maintaining an ADFS server, and give your users a better experience overall.