I've been hearing a lot about Banana Pi lately. I've been told it's basically just a more powerful Raspberry Pi.
http://www.bananapi.org/p/product.html

Once your network is set up, AD integration would be what you do next so that any and all account details are tied to it. But if you don't have AD, it doesn't matter.

Note that this IS a rollup, not a patch itself...

This November update rollup also includes all previous updates since our last image update in April 2014. This is a convenient single step to bring Windows clients and servers up to date.

Sorry, never touched one either.

Cool!

@bbiAngie said:

I am running an phenom 1100T at work and it works very well. Great processor
At home I have an FX-8350 and I love it. I tend to be an AMD fangirl but that's because for the money, I think they are great. Yes, I can agree that Intel makes a good processor but for the money, Ill chose AMD hands down every single time.

Nailed it right there. AMD is king of the $150 or less CPU market.
Have to say though, the new Intel G3258 is tempting @ $70 (unlocked dual core, people OC to ~4ghz+ for gaming)
http://ark.intel.com/products/82723/Intel-Pentium-Processor-G3258-3M-Cache-3_20-GHz

@JaredBusch said:

@Carnival-Boy said:

I know. I've got the Pro models.

This was going to be the one thing I brought up, but you got it handled.

I personally do not like NetGear Switches after too many crappy experiences with managing the "Smart" switches.

They do generally work well if you do not need to get into the configuration and I have upgraded the firmware in many of them over the years without any problems.

I have been buying the HP 1910 line lately, but I will be giving the Ubiquiti line a shot next time I go for a model needing PoE.

That's odd, I've always had an amazing experience with Netgear switches. Their smart line is actually a really good value for the low-end/SMB market.

Although I agree, I am going to see about getting one of the Ubiquiti switches in the future.

@IRJ The functionality is supposed to be coming soon where you won't need these third party work arounds. When the convergence happens, it will be a pretty sweet platform.

@JaredBusch said:

That certainly is not a solution, that is a work around. Did they tell you what else may be affected by this change? What other Windows systems may now have problems because of it.

That's all the information I found online.

@NetworkNerd Yeah!

@ambarishrh Super jealous of your funding there! If it were my $$$$ I'd get myself a nice Cleo or Sager or other custom setup. You can get just an insane machine for that money. http://www.xoticpc.com/

@g.jacobse said:

While I've not spoke to anyone about it, it seems impractical to have both PSUs plugged into the same UPS, so why not split them and then identify them by color.

Definitely impractical. Not 100% wasted as it does protect against PSU failure, still. But it does not leverage the degree of protection that you should have.

@NetworkNerd said:

We're upgrading from Epicor 9 to 10 and implementing RemoteApp for users at our remote sites at the same time. Woohoo!

That's 5 new servers on Server 2012 (1 SQL 2012, 3 Epicor application servers, and 1 RDS server).

WOOHOO!

Very nice. that's a great tool!!

@scottalanmiller said:

I think very few people deploy Sharepoint in house anymore.

I have entire customer's sites hosted within Sharepoint. Not the usual collaboration stuff, straight up consumer level sites. Like, huge company, 500 sites a host level. We had a lot of other customers use Sharepoint to extend their site's abilities.

For a simple share, yeah, go O365. Extend the functionality to other stuff, you need a local install.

Well in a hosted system you don't have analogue lines so that isn't a factor for us.

Mine is "Hello, you've reached the voicemail of the IT Department, please leave a message and we'll get back to you".

Honestly, if they're so stupid that they need instructions on how to leave a message (like telling them to leave a number), then I really don't want to talk to them. Then again, my voicemail system records the number they're calling from anyway, so it's generally not required.

Not that I ever phone anyone back anyway. I'm an e-mail only kind of guy.

@scottalanmiller said:

Since "down" just meant not working correctly and JavaScript not functioning, I'm not sure that that would be useful.

Probably not in this case but someone else might find it useful in the future.

@Carnival-Boy said:

The way I look at it, HP build PCs in Eastern Europe where they pay staff a pittance (at least they used to, I guess they might be assembled in China now), they have hugely beneficial agreements with Microsoft on the licencing, and massive buying power for all the components and yet they still can't sell them to me and make any money which is why they've been trying to sell their PC business for years. If they were making huge margins I might think I can get some of the action, but they're doing all this for me for pretty much no profit. I'm happy to leave them to it..

That's a great way to look at it. They have huge scale in parts, huge scale for MS licensing agreements and the ability to source everything from locations that cost far less than "in house" IT will cost. And their margins are effectively zero. You can leverage that scale or you can do everything yourself.

If you have internal bench services, pay them minimum wage and keep them busy around the clock.... you still can't match the cost that the big vendors have. If you want the people assembling your computers to have any skill, get paid a reasonable amount (more than a gas station attendant) and to do so in high cost locations (like anywhere in the US or UK) then you can't match the prices or come anywhere close. And heaven forbid that you have any moment where the tasks for the bench are not completely repetitive and predictable or that they are not kept 100% busy. Then it really all falls apart.