Nophix

The Fujitsu is pretty sweet! My only complaint would be the price point. I'm in the market for a netbook, and if it were a few hundred cheaper I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

We also use Altiris at work, which is why I chose it. I am familiar with how it works. Each of the G1's is running dual 1ghz's and 3gb RAM. drives are mainly 18.2 with a few being larger. The 580 on the bottom has a couple 30 something gb drives, can't remember. The IBM is loaded with pretty good size drives. I counted it all up one day and with all of them running, I have a few TB worth of capacity. But hey, since I have all of $0 in the servers and rack, I can't complain at all. The Cisco gear I bought elsewhere from a data center that closed. It was auction-lot gear. But, even given that, I have near nothing in the entire setup, and it runs sweet when I have it all set up.

60" or so Pioneer Kuro plasma, 130+" motorized screen to drop down in front for displaying the 1080p projector. Yamaha reciever, and full B&O speakers for the 7.2(dual subs). All available video sources would be switchable between the projector and plasma. 360, PS3, Wii, and Oppo upconvert DVD player. One badarse laptop for working while watching movies or travelling. A few TB worth of space on a media server for "purchased" dl'd movies of both SD and HD quality. Full gigabyte network, and a minimum of 10mb connection coming in for internet. Fiber if available(Verizon FIOS anyone?) All of this in a basement-level dedicated home theater, with some nice home theater type reclining seating. This is actually the setup I'll be running once we find a house to buy in the town we just moved to. I've got a bunch of the part already. We're buying the Kuro in August or September. I have the servers. I need to upgrade the media server and at least one switch to full GB, the rest can stay 10/100 for a while. We have the Wii and 360, will probably buy a PS3 this year.

5 Cisco 2900 24 ports, and I have 2 260 series routers not et installed. I also have a standard-case server upstairs on my desk being assembled for firewall duties. The servers are playing a few duties. I have one for a file server for data storage, another is dedicated to being a media server for the home theater, and the last one is a play toy. It runs whatever I throw at it to test. I also have a VPN client running on one, and an Altiris Rapideploy for images. MAeks refreshing the systems in the house MUCH easier.

You see, I'm a big gearhead as well as a IT guy. So, I have all kinds of cool toys in my personal shop to destr.. err.. make repairs. If I have something I need to make absolutely sure nobody else can use, I typically employ the hot wrench. Or, Oxy/Acetylene cutting torch for non-gearheads. My bench grinder does a fine job of making powder out of discs and platers as well.

Ask and yee shall receive. Forgive the mess. We just moved recently and I'm still getting things together. I still have to drop in the IBM, and run the wiring for the server rack's new location.

If it's a wireless controller, it won't work without the reciever. It will charge, but not connect to the PC. A wired controller will work fine. Btw, I've run it on XP SP2 and 3, as well as vista.

Hmm... I'll have to get pics of my server rack when I get home. I got it all from work as we upgraded. Servers are maybe 4-5 years old, and I know they run VMware great. The IBM server I have is about 3 years old roughly. Plus, there is the rack. It's a full-height APC cab with glass front door, and is SAWEET!

If it's more of a larger-scale environment, and you want to be able to track trends and common issues, we've had good success with Remedy by BMC Software. I can't give a rough cost, because we have a very large environment, so it looks expensive. they have a version of it that runs in the web interface, such as IE or firefox, so it would run under any OS.

Local admin is the same on all machines. Same base image, and mostly the same machines.

All the computers are connected, but we have a lot that are powered down and unused due to coporate restructuring. Basically they moved a bunch of jobs and people to another location. The question is whether or not they are still loaded in AD. After 60 days of inactivity, they are purged. I do have admin rights on all machines. Would the systems need to be loaded in AD and logged on for Remote System Information to work?

Gears of War is a must, as well as Fallout 3 and COD4. I'm not sold on COD5 yet, but that may come. Also, Mass Effect and Oblivion are good games. The Netflix support is fantastic. They may be mostly older movies, but its a nice feature. There is also quite a few network TV shows there. If you check out www.avsforum.com they have a listing for some software to support Hulu and a few other streaming sources.

We have about 400 machines we need to inventory. We're trying to get our SMS guy to write a script for it, but we do have a huge surplus of idle machines as well. I was wondering if there is something I could slap on a 2gb USB key to help with this. What I need to pull off if possible is the machine network name, model or serial #, user account names, and system specs. No passwords or anything, just the basic info that resides in the bios and system info. I would like it to export to some sort of spreadsheet if that could happen. Basically, what I want to do is walk up to the thing, hit the power button, let it get to the logon screen, slap the usb key in there, pull it out a few seconds later and power it down. Alternatively, I could boot to a USB stick and do the same if need be. I just don't want to have to log in to each machine. This would be used on all Windows XP Pro machines, running SP2. They are primarily HP/Compaq desktops, and IBM.Lenove laptops, with a few Dells sprinkled through.

All. I have gamer A.D.D., so picking one just won't work. However, my favorite game of all time is officially C&C Gen and Zero Hour. C&C 3 is close. Now, Fallout 3 is creaping up there.

Smoothwall and file servers, although I do use a couple for emulation.

I know when Wes built their cab, he used an old USB controller for the controls, and it worked great. You can pick them up in second hand stores for around $5. I run MAME on mine in Windows 98. Seems to wok fine. I worked for an arcade in Tomah part time and learned a lot of how the machines and what not operated. doing repair work for them, I learned a lot about where to go to buy parts, and what worked. So, I did some shopping for mine, and found 2 sets of controls for around $30 shipped. I used an old table top cabinet, and built everything into it myself, since I am not a wood working kind of guy. It worked out well.

You would still need to have a means to get the files to the 2nd office. So, in that respect, they would still need to create a VPN connection, so the remote office becomes part of the local network.

Check Craigslist for your area, and local classifieds. Throw up a classified ad stating that you will pick up unwanted computers for free, and you WILL get calls, believe me! Computers to the general public are considered disposable, so when the new one comes, and they find out they have to pay to get rid of the old one, they are usually more than happy to let you take it. Even if you get a bunch of non-working systems, you'll find the parts are quite valuable. I built a whole computer lab for a boys home this way. Threw Ubuntu on all of them, got them all connected to a switch I picked up in a data center auction for like $5, and some bulk cable from the same auction. Most of the systems were P3, 800mhz or higher. Plenty to run MAME.

I'll show you what I learned in my Comp Sci degree. Yup, not a damn thing. It was basically all the concepts on how computers work, not so much on how to work WITH them. Sure, I picked up some new tricks in C++ I didn't know, but only because the guy next to me had the same boredom issue I did. However, when I went to tech school for my CCNA, I learned a LOT. It will depend on your instructor, but it is very hands-on, and most instructors will let you push your limits in the tech schools. The staff at Uni are there to teach concept and theory, the tech professor is there to make sure you have the skills to do the job. It's funny, even to this day a lot of my Comp Sci classmates are working jobs having nothing to do with IT, but the $2000 set of certs and credits I got from tech have pushed my career into the next level. Oh, and those same Comp Sci guys couldn't hack their way through an open AP. 2 of them still bring their comps to me for Windows re-installs.

I rented this game, actually thinking from the original previews I was going to hate it. I shoud have known better, since I had the same experience with Bioshock. This game is awesome! The ending is a serious twist, I'll leave it at that.

There was a discussion on this on the MWLP site. Unfortunately due to work, it was locked before I could participate. However, The discussion did continue in PM with a few people. Basically put, he is CAPABLE of holding a decent LAN. The problem arises with the trouble he was starting witht he people he was involved with, and some of the actions he has taken. That being said, if you choose to go to a HOBNW LAN or anything hosted by bugs, just be warry. If he really has done as he said a few days ago on that thread, and re-evaluated himself and his position, the possibilty of a good time is there. If he can do that, and prove himself, good for him. I'll even give it another shot. Bugs, I was going to throw this out on the other forum, but it got locked prior to me having time. I know you are reading this, and I believe you have taken some advice given by a couple of the other members on a "fresh start". I'm fine with that. Just remember that the people here have been my friends for a much longer time period than MWLP. I've been following the show and a part of the community since season 1. Don't let the post count and join date fool you, my original account got eaten up during an upgrade. If you choose to host LAN's again, take the advice given to you by the rest of the LAN community. Be good to the people here, and they will return the favor. As was said on MWLP, you have a chance to redeem yourself. You can't escape the past, but you can learn from it and grow. It will follow you until you prove to others that you have actually learned from the mistakes made, and become a better person for it.

If there are any left, I'll be ordering one shortly. I keep forgetting about it.

I'll take the flip-side to this. I have the education and experience, and the education, while valuable in some respects, didn't do any good to land me my job. I'm sure it helped some in previous jobs, but not as much as the Uni's would have you believe. Btw, our group consists of 3 server admins, and 2 network admins. Server guys handle anything server-side, apps, exchange, logon security, while the net admins are in charge of connectivity, provisioning, routing, and hardware security. Basically, anything that isn't, or doesn't reside on, a server is the net admin's role. I would still recommend certifications as they do help in a lot of respects. CCNA, MCSE, A+, whatever you can get your hands on and learn will be helpful as long as you learn the info, and don't just grab the cliff notes.

I'm sorry to say this to you haters, but you are seriously taking Obama's tax reform and twisting it. I think you may have watched too many McCain ads! Obama is going to balance out the tax system. Right now, the people making the most money have the most write-offs. I'm sorry , but when I see someone making 300k/yr and they are able to write off all those luxuries, such as the 8 snowmobiles, 4 atv's, and the custom 20k+ home theaters, and wind up paying less taxes than I do at my under 60k/yr, it pisses me off! Then, they whine because they may have to pay out another couple thousand in taxes that those write-offs would have covered. I'm sorry, but your damn olympic size swimming pool is not a tax write-off! Neither is your new Mercedes! Taxes should be balanced across the board, based on a percentage of your total income, with the only write-offs being things such as medical expenses, child care, and homestead. You know, things you actually NEED to live! As for the living within your means, there are a lot of us that DO. I know I don't make 250k/yr, so I don't drive an 80k car. But the things we do NEED as a family eat away nearly everything we make. Our housing costs, utilities, food, clothing, transportation, everything. We don't have cable TV, but internet is a MUST in today's world. Everything has gone digital. Add to that the fact that I HAVE to have it for work, to be able to remote in when not here, and that becomes a necessity. And one more thing. MEDICAL CARE. FUCK the medical and insurance industries! How is it that I pay $500/month for medical coverage, and still wind uop paying out over $10k/yr in simple checkups and visits. God forbid you actually get sick! But, for some reason, these executives are STILL going on company paid vacations totalling hundreds of thousands of dollars, and taking mone millions in bonuses... Gee, I wonder where my money is going. I welcome Obama, and hope he can put policies in place to get the country back on track. If not, I'm moving to Canada!

Now working on Fallout 3 for 360. This game is unbelievable! Of course, there are always the staples, such as Orange Box, Forza 2, and COD4.