Sure, but I will probably wait until about February <G>. So, what is the insurance climate like in West Palm Beach? It has to be better than in mid-Maine.

I think you will be glad you went the client-server route. And, again, for my friends on here that read this, if were only talking about AC, then either way is fine. We should all remember, that we are all purchasing and connecting computers; setting up a domain only means using server software, etc.

Certainly, SBS 2003 Standard Edition or Premium can expand and meet the needs of any small business. That is really what it is for.

As far as wired and wireless is concerned, this is only my opinion. Many use wireless and are happy. I just prefer wired as it is faster and more secure. Of course, as wireless gets faster, wired will generally stay faster but you would have to change cables which is no fun. It isn't that difficult to run cable especially in a newer building. We made 16 runs via a basement and some over the dropdown ceiling, and I paid $600 for the labor and about $300 for the cable. If anything, it will keep you from wanting to move to another location. Tip: Find a local college that offers a course in networking and offer to pay $10 to $12.00 an hour to two or three seniors. That's what I did, and they knocked it out in an evening. Of course, you have to provide pizza. Just remember the crucial rule of network cables: If you need one jack, run two. It isn't anymore work to run two, and you will generally need them down the road.

Again this is MY OPINION: In two offices, I have always had a desktop PC in each room. You can do that wireless or wired. I am not a big fan of moving tablets in and out of each room. But, that's just my preference.

Just for fun, I specced out a Dell server. I looked at the SC1430. I can't believe they have $840 off any server over $2800. The one I built was $3175 or so and was only around $2400 with $19.95 shipping. This came with two dual-core processors, 4GBs of RAM (I would go with nothing less in a server), SBS 2003 Standard Edition R2, CDR-DVD, 4 160GB hard drivers. A PERC 5/i Raid card supporting RAID 1, 5 or 10. I like RAID 1 and RAID 5, but that would require one more drive. But, the SATA 7200 drives are rather inexpensive. This doesn't include backup software or hardware or a monitor. You can always get to the server remotely, but having a small monitor is kind of nice. And tape drives made by Travan, etc. are extremely expensive. External USB hard drives for backups are much cheaper and efficient.

I will PM you with a username and password to look at the system.

As far as Dell helping to set it up or whatever, they will but I wouldn't recommend it. If you went with SBS, you would be best off finding someone who is Microsoft Small Business certified. It would be ideal to find someone who would set it up for you AND not mind teaching you what he or she is doing. As doctors, we usually like to learn and it will be much cheaper in the long run if you know how to troubleshoot problems, make changes, add users and groups, etc. Then, you could always call or have him or her come out for major changes. I spoke with a company here when I was trying to open some ports in my Cisco Firewall but I told them I would need to watch the tech, and they refused. Something about they did't want to be responsible if I screwed it up. Right. They just wanted job security. So, if we teach our patients what to do and what to look for, we are responsibile too?

The SBS OS setup is completely based on wizards, and it is fairly easy to set up. But, most problems with a SBS server-client setup are due to an improper setup to begin with.

Oh well, hope this helps.

Cheers!

Bert
Pediatrics
Brewer, Maine