I just can't believe that I've made it this far into the thread!! Sheesh!
lol It's almost like a train wreck!

Doug


"David Maynard" wrote in message
...
kony wrote:

On Wed, 08 Dec 2004 22:25:11 +0000, Trevor Best
wrote:


David Maynard wrote:

Please! Listen to all the advice you've been given in the other
replies!
The fact that you even ask about Win XP (Windows Server 2003 would be a
possibility),


Why? Because it has 'server' in the name?

Yes. What Dee said.

Also because the machine won't grind to a halt when you copy files
to/from it like the current workstation flavors of Windows do.

Also it will allow expansion of your network, a workstation OS will limit
you to 10 connections.

Also it will allow you to set up a domain and manage users centrally.

Also it allows bigger versions of certain server software to run, e.g.
SQL Server Standard edition as opposed to Personal edition, which would
limit you to 5 concurrent query threads and no replication publishing or
worse, MSDE that will limit you to 2GB databases.

Think about your client and their ability to expand.

Also if you do go for Win2003, don't go for the Web edition, it really is
XPee dressed up (10 user limit for file sharing connections, etc although
I can't comment on it's performance in relation to using XPee as a file
server, which is ****e).



Now back up a bit and note that NONE of what you mention has
been listed as a requirement. So far there's only two
things for certain: 1) It will serve files for 2 fixed and
4 in/out mobile (Laptops) 2) Everyone seems relatively
clueless about just how little it really takes to fileserve
2-6 clients. Excepting data backups (drive capacity), for
all we know the job could be handled fine by a 486 box
fished out of a dumpster and running win3.1 or (gasp) DOS.

Hehe. Yes. That was the point of my question. Everyone is all fired up to
create a massive corporate IS department and all the folks asked for is
some file storage and backup.

I wouldn't touch it with a 10 foot pole, for 'free' anyway, because I
don't think they've thought out what they need, file sharing, security,
document control, backup schedule, maintenance, up time, who runs it, or
anything else, but that's another matter.

My 'guess', since I've seen small groups do this, is they simply want a
central file store with a regular backup schedule and nothing more than a
caveat to the users "if you don't save your stuff here then it don't get
backed up."

Btw, you can now fish fully operational P233MX machines out of the
dumpsters I got one.