Hi,
Posted this in another thread but it got lost! As many of you know EVGA has a moronic ordering system, in that there really ISN'T one. If something is not in stock there is no way of getting into a pre-order cue, instead you rely on a lottery system and the speed of your internet connection and hand movements with your mouse! Suffice to say it's an archaic redundant system that nobody worth their salt uses, but EVGA find it necessary and apparently less hassle than the pre-order system (their words in an email to me... for who EVGA, us or you?).
 
So I found a way of refreshing and checking pages automatically without the need to stare at a page all day whilst work randomly hitting F5! Google "Page Monitor" and then download from the chrome store. Page monitor allows you to check pages automatically and/or even elements of a page. For instance, I got notified via page monitor that a 980Ti Hydro Copper was in stock at OCUK by selecting the pre-order element. When it changed to a "buy now" button it promptly set off a sound to inform me! I still find it odd that OCUK seems to be getting more stock of the card than EVGA themselves, but that's EVGA for you!
 
Hope it helps people get back to work rather than stupidly hitting refresh all day as is apparently the way EVGA want it!

Select 'monitor this page' with Page monitor and it will tell you when something on the page has changed or select 'monitor this page' and then 'options' and check 'custom mode' and then click pick and select the 'notify me' section. Whenever the notify me section changes to 'buy now', 'Page monitor' will alert you.

ty_ger07
Hopefully not too many people do this sort of thing. Otherwise, website issues and timeouts...

If you had the chance to preorder a $700 video card right now, would you pay the money now and let EVGA sit on your money for weeks or months without you knowing when to expect to receive what you purchased? If EVGA used such a queue, people would have to pay upfront; otherwise it would be a mess going through the queue waiting for people to answer whether they want to make the purchase they "preordered" of pass it on to the next person.

I think EVGA's current system is better. Currently, there are no issues with having to hold people accountable for their interest in purchasing something nor having to guess people's everchanging flakiness. It is now the buyer's responsibility to purchase the item when it is available.

Don't be ridiculous. This is basically automatically doing what people are doing manually with F5. As for being better? Again don't be ridiculous... Ready Spooty75's responses on the 'GTX 980 ti Hybrid availability this month?' for why your argument falls completely flat on its face. The pure fact you think what EVERY respectable online purchasing site does is wrong, and EVGA's ridiculous way is right screams fanboyism on your part.

spikerules

ty_ger07
Hopefully not too many people do this sort of thing. Otherwise, website issues and timeouts...

If you had the chance to preorder a $700 video card right now, would you pay the money now and let EVGA sit on your money for weeks or months without you knowing when to expect to receive what you purchased? If EVGA used such a queue, people would have to pay upfront; otherwise it would be a mess going through the queue waiting for people to answer whether they want to make the purchase they "preordered" of pass it on to the next person.

I think EVGA's current system is better. Currently, there are no issues with having to hold people accountable for their interest in purchasing something nor having to guess people's everchanging flakiness. It is now the buyer's responsibility to purchase the item when it is available.

Don't be ridiculous. This is basically automatically doing what people are doing manually with F5. As for being better? Again don't be ridiculous... Ready Spooty75's responses on the 'GTX 980 ti Hybrid availability this month?' for why your argument falls completely flat on its face. The pure fact you think what EVERY respectable online purchasing site does is wrong, and EVGA's ridiculous way is right screams fanboyism on your part.

That's a pretty childish response. I was merely stating my opinion.

So, please answer this question directly:
If the preorder system was utilized, would you be comfortable paying EVGA $700 today for a video card you hope to receive some time weeks or months in the future?

Since when does pre-ordering mean you have to pay at that time? I can run AUTH only transactions on a credit card just fine, and then capture that authorization when it becomes available. There are a LOT of retailers who do just that. Same thing when you book a hotel in advance. This is not hard. If you don't have the funds available at the time of capture, they can (if they're nice) contact you for an updated card with a 24-hour deadline, or (more practically) you lose your spot.

ryancarnell
Building off of this, I've setup an alert using a web service so I don't have to leave my computer running as well as Chrome.
 
I've setup an alert for the Titan X Hybrid AIO Kit, which can be found here: https://www.changedetection.com/log/evga/product_log4.html
 
Utilizing this type of service is much better than sitting in front of the computer and hitting F5 as it is a much lower load on the web servers themselves (I know this as I host about 600 servers in a data center). This pulls just the HTML code and doesn't download any of the images, applets, or cause the server to run any PHP. In addition, the alerts can be shared with other users so it is still just being pulled from a single instance but notifying multiple users.

Didn't know a cURL or scraper can tell a server to not process server side code...

zeroseoul

ryancarnell
Building off of this, I've setup an alert using a web service so I don't have to leave my computer running as well as Chrome.
 
I've setup an alert for the Titan X Hybrid AIO Kit, which can be found here: https://www.changedetection.com/log/evga/product_log4.html
 
Utilizing this type of service is much better than sitting in front of the computer and hitting F5 as it is a much lower load on the web servers themselves (I know this as I host about 600 servers in a data center). This pulls just the HTML code and doesn't download any of the images, applets, or cause the server to run any PHP. In addition, the alerts can be shared with other users so it is still just being pulled from a single instance but notifying multiple users.

Didn't know a cURL or scraper can tell a server to not process server side code...

I agree. If the site is processed in php (actually ASP.NET in this case), the server has to run the server-side scripting language at the time of each request in order to generate any HTML content. The server can't magically know what the stock status of the item is and provide the correct HTML output until it first connects to its database and does the required checks.
But his other points are well taken.

ryancarnell

ty_ger07

zeroseoul

ryancarnell
Building off of this, I've setup an alert using a web service so I don't have to leave my computer running as well as Chrome.

I've setup an alert for the Titan X Hybrid AIO Kit, which can be found here: https://www.changedetection.com/log/evga/product_log4.html

Utilizing this type of service is much better than sitting in front of the computer and hitting F5 as it is a much lower load on the web servers themselves (I know this as I host about 600 servers in a data center). This pulls just the HTML code and doesn't download any of the images, applets, or cause the server to run any PHP. In addition, the alerts can be shared with other users so it is still just being pulled from a single instance but notifying multiple users.

Didn't know a cURL or scraper can tell a server to not process server side code...

I agree. If the site is processed in php (actually ASP.NET in this case), the server has to run the server-side scripting language at the time of each request in order to generate any HTML content. The server can't magically know what the stock status of the item is and provide the correct HTML output until it first connects to its database and does the required checks.
But his other points are well taken.

 
Let's all jump on the guy trying to help, right? I'm not a web developer... I manage a data center and it's infrastructure, while I don't write code and am no developer by any means, I do know that it requires less resources by far when using a service that looks for meta changes or even content changes by looking at the HTML code versus someone sitting in front of their computer and hitting F5 (as was my point as well as the point of the OP). Yes, the server must request quantity from the database be it MySQL, PostgreSQL, MSSQL, Oracle, etc. I don't know how their servers are structured. I was simply pointing out that by using a single source to do the pulling and notifying multiple people versus multiple people setting up their own change monitoring alerts, would also be better as it would use less server resources.
 
Also, corrected my original posting by removing the reference to the server not having to run PHP. My Bad.

Don't get me wrong. I agree with all your points other than just the one minor item pointed out.