Linux is becoming quite a contender both in home use as well as becomming a champion in the enterprise market, but what about the vast, yet often forgotten Small Office / Home Office?
Recently I became part of an office expansion
project aimed at growing a one man (or in this case one woman) operation in to
a multi-user multi-task environment. Simple enough, right? Not exactly, you see
the technology set of for the home office doesn't exactly scale well when we
start adding different users to the mix. The single person operation consisted
of custom built PC's and proprietary software packages that work just well
enough to get by, but not well enough that I could offload the same experience
to the new players in the game.
The Hardware
- Had to be cheap
- Had to be AMD
- Had to run Linux
- I didn't want to build it
As with any IT department our budget is "only as
much as you need” and "nothing too expensive..." and noting that this
is a small company when we begin to play with technology the dollar signs ($$$)
really begin to impact the books. So keeping this in mind I decided to do the
daring thing and ditch the big box computer manufacturers and go it alone. Well
not exactly; I knew I wasn't going to be able to beat their pricing for desktop
PC's building them myself, nor did I really want to.
So I decided to go shopping around, I knew I was going to need the capabilities
of a Windows XP Professional, so that threw out the Dell PC's because I didn't
want to hit the company with a $600 PC bill plus another $450 OS bill quickly
to follow. And because this is a company, and I'm the honest type, I had to do
things 'legit'. So I turned my attention to Linux.
The computers didn't have to be top of the line boxes they are primarily for
standard word processing, web and e-mail but they still needed the ability to
share documents with the rest of the office and be extensible. And so I began
my search, and unfortunately turned up empty handed for a low cost PC builder
that was able to meet my criteria.
Intel v. AMD
Why AMD? I'm sure we could get in to a long debate on which processor manufacturer
I should go with and why one is better than the other and both sides have great
arguments to support their position. My confidence in Intel has been rattled
over the last year really leaving me to feel that Intel is playing a giant game
of catch-up and in my experience when a company starts trying to catch up and
compete head to head with another you are left with an incomplete and inferior
product. AMD was in the zone last year continuing in to this year.
Given the time Intel will shine again, and in the enthusiast market what I say
today on the subject will be meaningless in the next 6 to 8 months. But I
needed to think what technology will carry this company for the next 2 years,
and right now AMD is the answer. It goes to the old K.I.S.S (Keep It
Simple Stupid) philosophy.
"We can't expect users to use common sense. That would eliminate the need for all sorts of legislation, committees, oversight and lawyers." -- Christopher Jennings
|
Most Popular ArticlesEasy Fix to Prevent Microsoft From Bricking Xbox 360s HDDs Arrives
November 18, 2009, 6:41 AM
Anti-Evolution Actor Modifies Darwin's Work With Questionable Intro
November 22, 2009, 12:12 PM
Built Around the Browser, Google's Chrome OS Launches, Reinvents the Operating System
November 19, 2009, 2:40 PM
Climategate: Stunning Deception and Misconduct at UK Warming Research Center Revealed
November 20, 2009, 4:00 PM
Update: OCZ Technology Announces 3.5" 1TB Colossus SSDs
November 23, 2009, 9:58 AM
|