Any IT Guys/Girls Here?

How To Buy A Business Desktop

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347734,00.asp

"While it may be tempting to buy a simple consumer PC from a big-box store like Best Buy or Wal-Mart, you'll probably be doing yourself and your customers a disservice if you do. Specialized business PCs have extra features that make them better suited to the office than the $250 sales-circular special. For one, business desktops are built to last longer, and are usually easier to service, than consumer PCs. After all, the longer a business PC is down, the more money it costs you in lost earning time. Business PC makers may have specialized tech-support lines to help you troubleshoot your QuickBooks problem. At the very least, you can add a service contract to your business PC so that on-site tech-support calls are handled by techs who respond in hours or minutes rather than in days or weeks, like the ones who handle consumer tech support."​
 
DRE said:
The company I work at now uses Google Calendar and Google Docs Spreadsheet. My ISP job before that mostly used Microsoft Excel but gradually drifted towards Google Docs Spreadsheet. I'm surprised to see how popular Google Docs Spreadsheet is in big companies.
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Why? Money talks. ;)
Why do you think MS is getting onto the bandwagon and the new Office 365? They are competing against Google as they "see" where the future lay. I'm not real crazy about cloud apps like that unless you have redundant lines to the 'net that are not dependent on the same paths. There is ONE trunk for internet that runs into this one-horse town I live in. I know a couple of years ago they cut the main trunk between here and the next city and our internet was down until it was fixed (that included the call center I was contracting for).
 
Tracy Perry said:
I personally abhor the all-in-0ne desktops. More difficult to replace a main board if you need to, they are harder to upgrade components (and in some cases you cannot), and are generally more expensive. There is a reason that most businesses use the normal desktops. That's one reason I won't own a new iMac. The new iMac pro will be a little different beast, but it's expandability will get costly as most of your expansions will have to be done via Thunderbolt .
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PC Mag likes All in One

How To Buy A Business Desktop: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2347736,00.asp

All in One, All Is One
Don't need multiple hard drives and/or multiple graphics cards for your users? Consider deploying all-in-one systems instead of tower PCs. All-in-one PCs have the benefit of a built-in screen without the theft and travel breakage risks that business laptops face everyday. All-in-one PCs are available with high-end performance processors like the Intel Core i7 for your demanding users, but also are available with energy saving processors for everyone else.

388073-how-to-buy-a-business-desktop-dell-optiplex-9010.jpg

If you choose all-in-one PCs with DisplayPort or HDMI inputs, the screen will be usable, even after the internal CPU and storage become obsolete. Touch screens are useful for certain applications (Kiosk, POS, and information retrieval come to mind), and the all-in-one form factor lends itself to touch-screen computing. It remains to be seen if touch on the PC will be as essential as it is on tablets, but if you're launching touch apps on Windows, you'll probably want to develop for all-in-one desktop PCs.
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With that said, these Optiplex All-in-One's don't look so bad.
http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/all-in-one-desktops

More Pros and Cons Here: http://jackrabbit.com/blog/2012/03/...-are-they-a-good-fit-for-your-small-business/
 
Tracy Perry said:
Why? Money talks. ;)
Why do you think MS is getting onto the bandwagon and the new Office 365? They are competing against Google as they "see" where the future lay. I'm not real crazy about cloud apps like that unless you have redundant lines to the 'net that are not dependent on the same paths. There is ONE trunk for internet that runs into this one-horse town I live in. I know a couple of years ago they cut the main trunk between here and the next city and our internet was down until it was fixed (that included the call center I was contracting for).
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Yeah my company uses Office 365 for email. I prefer it to old school outlook.
Haven't thought about which I prefer, Office 365 or Gmail...
 
DRE said:
PC Mag likes All in One
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STAY FAR FAR AWAY
I'm going to the local pharmacy in the morning to take a look at an almost new one that is having some problems (they said it was making weird noises and then Windows will just shut down). I know the one they are talking about and I do NOT look forward to replacing the drive in it (pretty sure that's what it is from their description). Yes, it's under warranty - but it would require boxing it up and taking it to a service depot to get it worked on. Down time that they cannot afford. If you were going to have the full meal service contract on them from Dell - that would be one thing. BUT - I've got a Dell (not an all-in-one) here at the house that I am having to run continuous diagnostics on until it errors again so I can give them the code before they will even send someone out (and it has the standard Dell business warranty). At the office it will run fine and then one day just refuse to boot - the diagnostic lights on the front indicate either a CPU problem or mainboard (they use the same one for both), but that's not good enough for them.
 
Tracy Perry said:
STAY FAR FAR AWAY
I'm going to the local pharmacy in the morning to take a look at an almost new one that is having some problems (they said it was making weird noises and then Windows will just shut down). I know the one they are talking about and I do NOT look forward to replacing the drive in it (pretty sure that's what it is from their description). Yes, it's under warranty - but it would require boxing it up and taking it to a service depot to get it worked on. Down time that they cannot afford. If you were going to have the full meal service contract on them from Dell - that would be one thing. BUT - I've got a Dell (not an all-in-one) here at the house that I am having to run continuous diagnostics on until it errors again so I can give them the code before they will even send someone out (and it has the standard Dell business warranty).
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Stay far away from Dell period too?
 
In response about Dell... we've got 8 new Optiplex 9020's coming in shortly. They have the 5 year ProSupport onsite service contract, Dell UltraSharp 24" monitor (the computers they are replacing are 4 years old - as are the monitors), and from what the business manager told me they had SSD's installed in them. They've had good luck with them.
At the call center I used to work at, they were strictly Lenovo - I actually had less problems getting support from them than I have had with Dell. But, when IBM sold off Lenovo I kind lost my taste for them.
 
DRE said:
I did some research and learned that the median pay for a Information Technology Manager not counting certificates or degrees is $55,000 a year / $26 an hour. That's only a dollar more per hour than what a web designer should charge on average. http://www.payscale.com/mypayscale.aspx?pid=63acf9f7-d46a-4f00-9971-ef7e31f156ea
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Well, all I know is I took a pay CUT when I went from working patrol to doing the IT work for the city I worked at. Of course, I was wanting to get out of patrol work with that city (didn't want to move to a new city) after being involved in a shooting that involved the death of a lady and me having to shoot the offender, and the aftermath was handled "poorly" by PD Admin.
 
Tracy Perry said:
Well, all I know is I took a pay CUT when I went from working patrol to doing the IT work for the city I worked at. Of course, I was wanting to get out of patrol work with that city (didn't want to move to a new city) after being involved in a shooting that involved the death of a lady and me having to shoot the offender, and the aftermath was handled "poorly" by PD Admin.
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Do you prefer doing patrol work vs IT?
 
DRE said:
Do you prefer doing patrol work vs IT?
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I prefer being retired like I am. ;)
Both had it's plus and minus points. Overall, I actually enjoyed patrol more since there were instances when I actually got to do what the job entailed - help people in need out and sometimes make a difference in their life.
 
Mike Edge said:
That's VERY entry level pay scale. Anyone with at least 2 certifications and a bach degree can start off at 75k/year
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Depends on if you go into private industry or government service. They are rather tight with the money in the latter (until you get up into the "department head" area).:cautious:
 
I love the current layout of my site but back when my friend referenced me, that was back when 8thos had a main page that pretty much functioned like a CMS but I had gotten rid of that a couple months ago. I literally have no live examples to show off so I tried making 8thos look like a CMS again as that example since today is the due date I told her I'd have all the itemized lists for everything she needs today.

Unfortunately, Xenforo 1.2 Beta does not work very well with Xenporta and doesn't work at all with Simple Porta and Widget Portal. My MAMP also broke!!! I deleted Mamp, I would reinstall again but I feel like forking over the dough to buy Mac OSX server and create a local installation of her site there.

*thinks about it*

Nah I'll try mamp or another free server addon instead.

http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp-macosx.html
 
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Uh... how about simply installing VirtualBox, pick your flavor of Linux ice cream, and set up that way. That's what I did before I got my servers here at the house - and was able to duplicate the OS and environment that I was working on for the forum.
 
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