I did not "randomly change to a server OS?" - I have 2 offices with 8 computers in one location and 5 in another and all those 5 computers in second location need to remote into the computers at the main office. For example Reception to Reception, Exam Room 1 to Exam Room 1 and so on. Setting up SBS2011 server at the main office allowed me to set up Remote Workspace to that with one click on one RDP icon on each desktop in second office we are logged into the computers in the main office where AC on each desktop is connected to the AC data on SBS 2011 server standard. That is very fast - way faster than LogMeIn. That is the main reason I swithced to SBS2011 server. I could have gone with SBS2011 Essential but Dell T410 came with SBS2011 Standard - it was't much more expensive than SBS2011 Essential.
Yes, Exchange & Sharepoint are included in SBS 2011 Standard but so far I have not found the need to use them.
Let me give you one example of SBS2011 making things complex: All of a sudden after one software update of SBS2011, AC on clients could not connect to AC data on server. Then I called AC support and they informed me that SBS2011 updated the security software which changed all the permissions and so clients were not allowed to access the AC data on server. AC support had to manually change the permissions to get it working.
Computers and servers and network are just tools to get my job done as a physician and I could't be spending my time on tools. I want to set it up and then forget about it so I can spend all my cognitive energies on medical decision making. But the added layer of complexity with SBS2011 forces me to spend more time on tools and distracts from medical thinking.
Coming back to the original point I was making, that unless you have a second location where you need to remote into multiple desktops in main office where AC data resides, you do no need a server SBS2011 or 2008. Peer to peer network is simpler and less complicated. If you need to remote into one or two computers, you can use Windows RDP (on port 3389, 3390 etc) or JumpDesktop. Both of them are way faster than LogMeIn.
I found hardly any speed advantage going from AC data on Windows 7 i5 with 4GB to Dell T410 server with 24 GB RAM and Intel 3570 Xeon processor.
All said, Sandeep's videos are excellent resource for setting up SBS2011 and if you are going to install SBS2011 then make sure to watch them. They were very useful and Sandeep helped me in setting up the secure certificates on server from GoDaddy. These user discussion forums are immensely useful for AC, thanks to all the people like you who spend their time in helping everyone.
