I joined Sam's Club 18 months ago when I opened my own solo practice and got a decent server (DELL) for about $1600 (no RAID however), which was about $500 less than Costco and the Dell site itself. New computers are relatively cheap nowadays ($400-600 for good desktops and $500-$700 for nice nontablet labtops) so buying used/refurb makes no sense. The cost comes in the operating system software (I use Windows XP Pro) and getting machines or stand alone upgrades adds at least $100 to the above costs.
I'm just about ready to become a registered user of AC and I find it runs really nice on my 2 exam room/5 desktop/1 laptop/1 server configuration. So far no speed or reliability issues in approx 45 days of use and 380 patients entered in. Of course I haven't started selectively scanning in old records or importing new correspondence or labs yet.
I was wondering from those who have used AC for a while about how much storage space is needed for a practice with approx 2000 patients (Int. Med). Currently I have AC on my server which has a 160GB hard drive with approx 80% free space. Thanks for the help and the wonderful advice in the other sections of the user board.
