Hey Christopher, Trust me when I say, this is something you just have to feel your way through. I'm sure you could get a few good recommendations, but even if you find the best programmer in the world, there's always communication issues and you need to be able to relate to the person. i.e. learn how they work and what's the best way to communicate with your needs to them; this takes time. I have multiple web designers I work with and each of them "take instructions" differently, some only understand the task if I give them instructions face to face, others I simply do mock-up diagrams with notes attached and this works, others a phone conversation is enough. My point is after you get your recommendations, you'll still have to feel your way through what works for communication medium between them. But look for people that understand this struggle already. I know you mentioned you're looking for US partners; I'm in Canada, but if you're interested in talking about this more shoot me off an email: dbrowne [at] candevservices.com and check out my website www.candevservices.com and let me know if you're interested in a more detailed conversation. Yes it’s a bit of shameless marketing, but believe me when I say, I know how hard it is to find good designers/developers. I’m sure I could help you out.

Dwain Browne www.candevservices.com

For me it's hard to have one set price because different clients have different needs and level of complexity. Generally speaking, I charge a fix cost for any giving project, then a support/maintenance rate if needed. The biggest problem I experience is the fact that I sometimes get corporate clients, and then I get the guy that's working out of his brief case trying to sell a product. So my solution is to set 3 different brackets of price structure (low, Medium, High) I then evaluate each client, depending on size, complexity and needs. From there I determine my cost/rate per hour. So for example... a small website project would cost $700-$1,500, Medium/Standard 2,500 - 4,500, Larger projects starts at $5,550. Rates follow the same principle, Low, $35/per hr. Medium $45-55, High $85-120. So bottom line is it all depends on the client. I'm not going to charge Microsoft, $35 bucks an hour... nor would I charge some guy that barley has a concept going for a project $120/hr. And then there’s the type of project, i.e. ASP.NET projects get higher rates, than PHP projects... sorry PHP guys, I love php, but I still think ASP.NET is better IMHO. That's my policy. I’m interested to know what you guys think this system. Dwain Browne Web/Software Developer www.candevservices.com

I'm currently using it as my main OS on my Desktop PC. Seems very stable and most of my development/graphics tools works great (VS, Adobe Flash, Photoshop etc..) Except for Dreamweaver CS4 :( (strange considering all the other Adobe apps installed perfectly - Dreamweaver 8 works though) So i've decided to keep windows 2003 on my other pc just for Dreamweaver CS4 cause I love it. Dwain Browne

What reason could there possibly be for getting Vista at your work? Other than to cause catastrophic failure. I’ve been using Vista since Beta 1 release and I honestly would not recommend it to a business place until some of the quirks get sorted out. As a Visual Studio Developer, the only issues I had, was getting SQL 2005 to work on the 64bit edition (which adds another bit of complexity all on its own) was forced to use the CTP version, but they are sorting out most of the problems I’ve encountered so far (at least from what I’ve seen in the I think November 06 release)

namespace Dwain_Browne { public void EmailSig() { Response.Write("Thankyou"); Response.Write("email: dwainbrowne@gmail.com "); Response.Write("Secondary email: demonite3@hotmail.com "); } } }

You people have no sense of humor... o,, by the way Google will be kicking windows a** soon. :D. http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en\_GB&word1=Google&word2=Windows dwain

Hey, look at it this way; if you put on the TV there's soccer but then look at the advertisements what to you see Toshiba... so what does Toshiba got to do with soccer? Well the same way software is related to soccer, it’s the official program to run the soccer scores ;P Chill out buddy, there has to be a time when us software developer take a break. db