Benjamin,
Good question.
First, it doesn't really matter whether a practice is new to AC or not as to their needs for their network.
My posts clearly pointed out the advantages and disadvantages of all three options including the one where Nebo could figure out why he was having so many concurrent connections.
"...just enough to use SBS as a domain controller, DHCP server, Exchange server, AC, and maybe a PMS."
How many things do you need to run on a server before you need a "real" server vs "a" server. It's still going to be file server as well. Every time the topic of what to use for a network and how to configure a network and peer-to-peer vs Client/Server; we all seem to talk about it in terms of AC only. Same with backups. Everyone backing up with thumb drives but what are they doing for the entire backup?
Certainly using a regular computer for your "server" is fine. I am simply suggesting that if one is considering adding a user here, a computer there, that they may want to be able to grow into a network just as having an extra exam room for down the road.
But, there are advantages to real servers. For one, while you can use 4GBs of RAM, you cannot use buffered memory. Buffered memory is much more reliable than unbuffered and is responsbile for many crashes that we blame on Windows. To be sure, one should make sure the memory is ECC You can also get corrupted data with unbuffered memory.
Finally, a dedicated "regular machine" for a server can work very well, but it has been my experience that many users tend to use that server as a workstation a well, which is not Best Practices.
So, to answer your question, one can certainly get by without purchasing an expensive server, but one also has to ask themselves how important is your billing and patient data? In the end, your data is safer on a server, more likely to be backed up properly, and more consistently available. When was the last time a "real" server had to be rebooted from a crash? For me, it's been weeks.
