Bert and Lurker,
In the long run my ideal situation, set-up would allow a few (2-3 probably) off-site laptops or computers to reach back into the office, to our P2P "server" to read and write to the main datebase(s) here in the office, AC for now, and what ever PM software, database we settle on after this tech situation is solved. I don't want to have to worry about scheduling the home based billing lady verses Nancy's need to get work done from home, with a single access at a time solution. For right now a single access solution could work but in short time we will probably need the multi access solution, so whether to just go with the bigger one right away verses doing one and then switching to another is debatable. I lean towards just getting it done once myself.
I've been thinking about eventually getting some form of decent RAID 1 NAS device for database stuff, so as to take that traffic off of the main tower to keep things moving quicker and smoother around here, but if this makes things too crazy perhaps I could either add some RAM to our old tower here, or purchase a newer faster main computer at some point. The old tower is 2.8 mghz, hyper threaded P4, running XP Pro with only 512 of RAM. Back when I had it built in 2003 that was quite a lot, but not anymore. Anyway, when I'm sitting at this machine at the back with AC, IE and my email open it can slow down the laptops reading and writing to it a bit. Also the harddrive in there is as old at the tower (Everybody knock on wood with me here), so by getting something new be it NAS unit or new Tower, I also get to update the drives just in case....
I'm real hesitant to go full blown server route that some like Bert keep pushing simply because I believe in Lurker's phiosophy of keep in simple stupid for the "the practice manager is the IT dept" issues. As lurker said so well, I want something that I know how it went together, so I can trouble shoot it myself, maintain it myself, and take it apart and put it back together all myself, no less saving lots of green on MS Server licenses. Isn't that why almost all of us are AC users to some extent??? WE can maintain and use this thing mostly by ourselves without too much expensive "help". With this simple small office, P2P should be fine for years to come, at least until CCHITT and it's CCHITT get rammed down all of our collective throats....
Thanks for all the "collective brain trust" support fellers....
Paul
