I like the search and I like using rules to move e-mail into folders. OK, it's not the most sophisticated, but what it lacks in sophistication it makes up in simplicity and ease of use.
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We still use Oki Microline dot-matrix printers extensively here <blushes>
I really hate them but haven't yet found the time or the will to replace them.

And slide projectors are still popular amongst photographers aren't they? So hardly historic.

@nadnerB said:

Exchange should not be used for a filing system.

Why not?

I'm being slightly contrarian here, but I don't see why you shouldn't.

Cheers. That didn't work on its own, but I changed SATA emulation mode to IDE and that did the trick.

@ajstringham said:

Most people just act lazy.

There are plenty of other reasons other than laziness. A key one is that people might give a higher priority to the organisation they work for than the specialisation. Let's say you work for Microsoft and you love it. You want to be a Hyper-V specialist, but there's no opportunities there and Microsoft want you to be a Windows 8 specialist. Do you leave to pursue your specialisation? If you love working at Microsoft, chances are you'll stay.

I could be wrong as I've never had any desire to specialise in anything. I'm a generalist. I get bored easily. I have multiple hobbies, none of which I'm much good at, and I pursue jobs with as much variation in them as possible. Sometimes I think I'd like to be very good at something, but generally, I'm happy being a jack of all trades.

I've generally always had a helpdesk/ticketing system. I gave it up a few years ago for a while, and now regret that decision, as there are problems I face now that I remember I've fixed before but I can't remember how and I wish I'd logged the solution at the time.

But I've never got users to raise tickets themselves. I've always created the ticket myself. I don't find this a hassle. If you only have a small number of calls, why don't do you just do this?

We have some software & hardware that will only run on Windows XP, and the XP PCs they are currently running on are getting very old. I'd like to replace the PCs with new ones. I've tried installing XP on a brand new HP PC and it just blue screens almost immediately after starting to run the setup program.

I don't think virtualisation is the answer, because the software using special hardware installed in a PCI slot, so the OS needs to run on bare metal.

Is it generally possible to install XP on new PCs, or am I on a hiding to nothing and should give up trying?

How many tickets do you get a day?

@technobabble said:

Some will email/create a ticket and then after I reply send me a regular email.

I'll sometimes do that with my IT support providers. Surely Zendesk should handle this (I've never used it)? But generally, I'll just click on reply - so if your e-mail comes from your support@ email address, then this would work fine, right?

I'm not sure how many people actually choose their specialism, and how many stumble into. I certainly didn't choose to get into ERP, but just happened to be offered a job in it when I was desperately in need of job. I didn't even want a career in computing. Most people I know, if you ask them how they ended up doing what they're doing, will say "Dunno, it just kind of happened, and here I am, 20 years later, an expert lion tamer/DBA/window cleaner".

I just googled "spoint". That was a mistake at work.

Boo, US only!

I love those cars. I imagine they're a bit small for American tastes, though?

We do have workflows for the file server. For example, we might keep scans of documents relating to particular customer projects that are only needed to be kept for 6 months. I could write a script to delete all docs in the relevant sub-directory that are older than 6 months. Or the user could keep them in sub-directories named by year 2010,2011,2012 etc etc, and then once a year delete the oldest sub-directory, so he only keeps recent years.

Of course, this can and will be replicated in Sharepoint. What I'm interested in is what Sharepoint can do to prevent data sprawl that a file server and a bit of scripting or manual user intervention can't.

Of course, I really need to know exactly what @Dashrender meant.

Or to put it another way: I have a problem with people creating new documents and storing them on the file server, then instead of cleaning them up once they are no longer useful (by archiving or deleting), they just leave them there forever. Particularly bad examples might include half-a-gig of jpegs entitled "Office Christmas Party 2004". With Sharepoint, they'd just upload them there, instead of saving them on the file server.

Basically, people add data faster than they remove data - so you get sprawl and eventually it becomes unmanageable. How is that prevented on Sharepoint in a way that can't be done with a file server?

I get that. But @Dashrender said he has a problem with old files on his file server that get abandoned or never cleaned up. A common problem, and what that I struggle with myself. What I don't get is how moving those files into Sharepoint will enable them to be cleaned up or archived and deleted correctly.

Can you give an example?

or specifically, what can you do in Sharepoint to prevent "files getting abandoned and never cleaned up" that you can't do with traditional file sharing on a file server?

@scottalanmiller said:

Sharepoint can automate that if you make a job for it.

How does that work?

Shame. I'm about to buy it and start a 12 to 18 month project to implement here. Although I've been heavily involved in ERP for nearly 20 years, I've never actually purchased and installed a system from scratch, I've always joined organisations after they've gone live or worked in a support and development role for ERP vendors.

A few weeks ago I was pretty confident, but now I'm feeling a bit intimidated. The ERP communities on Spiceworks, LinkedIn and Microsoft aren't that active or helpful. I really need a SAM of the ERP community, but I'm not sure there is one.

All good fun though!

@ajstringham said:

They are almost identical in how we are standing! LOL

No real surprise. You're basically SAM Mark II aren't you? The younger, newer model. I expect you to eventually overtake him on Spiceworks points and blog posts.