-----Original Message----- Thomas Chiverton said: If it's a dev box though, why not run 2K on it like the actual server ?
Why? Why would I pull down my system all over again and install Win2k? What would that give me that I don't get now from WinXPPRO? This is my Dev machine which I also use as my personal PC. I am always interested in better ways to do things but they have to make business sense. I'm not on salary - like a great many on this list, I earn my living by charging for work done. I have neither the free days (I run a very small business by myself!) nor the $1000 to spend on yet another course to learn how to set up Win2K since Win2003 is only around the corner unless I can see a pressing advantage for doing so. Win2K has too many concepts that are different from WinXP. I can't see what I'd gain by changing to it. Specially since as we have proven with these servers, they're not bulletproof either. I'm a web developer, I pay other people to be network people. I can only learn just so much. As it is I spend about a third of my time learning things. What would I gain by also learning all the ins and outs of Win2K since I only have 2 people in my company and a 2-PC network? I'd rather spend my time learning about Flash Remoting and CFCs which I can turn into cash-type-money from web site owners than spend it learning about networks just so I can have a system that's identical to the one I use for a production server. Unless you can convince me I would earn more in my little web dev business by knowing how Win2k works than by knowing how CFCs and Flash Remoting work. So I'm going to explain it all. I'm always interested in any better way to run my business, but I do wish people telling me how to do things would at least take the time to know what I do now before they tell me what to do .... I run a one-person business. I hire subcontractors where I need additional person-hours to meet my deadlines. I run a two-PC network in my own office as my business PCs and dev environment. My PCs have WinXPPro kept up to date to the minute, with SQL2000 (SP3) and IIs5.1 web server. On those boxes I have just under 1GB of RAM on each machine and never less than 10GB of free space. Currently I have 32GB free on this 'main' machine. They both have McAfee AntiVirus kept up to date - checked twice a day for updates. For tools I have: MS Office2002 suite with all service packs applied, ColdFusion Studio 5.0 DreamweaverMX, FireworksMX, FlashMX, TopStylePro2.51, UltraEdit10 text editor, Photoshop7, Illustrator10, CoolEditPro2.0 Plus sundry other 'use once in a while' tools. All connected on a 512KB ADSL pipe to the internet. Does anyone feel like telling me this is an inadequate environment for developing maintaining and testing small web sites? I reckon it's as good as anyone's and better than most. It was THESE Machines that gave me trouble in January. I ended up having to rebuild the "main" machine because I changed the mother board and WinXP didn't like the new chipset. Formatting the hard drive and beginning from scratch ended up allowing CFMX to install properly. (I wont go into all that again for the 4th time today). My production servers are serious Win2K servers housed in a major data centre on a huge bandwidth pipe - load balanced over OC192 fibre, 2GBPS, OC3 (155MBPS) and DS3 (45MBPS) connections. The servers are only used as production web servers. It is OUR one of THESE that is now causing problems as we try to add the updater3 to CFMX. I should also say that I'm grateful that Damon Cooper of Macromedia has personally taken an interest in the issues at the data centre on my production servers and discussion is going on between Microsoft Support and the Sysadmin at the data centre. I'm leaving them to it for now. I am most grateful to Damon for making that all happen, which may well have a positive impact on a lot of web sites. Again, I'm really interested in any ideas from any source that might help me run my business better, but - EVERYONE - do please know what you're talking about before you tell me what to do. Cheers, Michael Kear Windsor, NSW, Australia AFP Webworks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?forumid=4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/index.cfm?method=subscribe&forumid=4 FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq This list and all House of Fusion resources hosted by CFHosting.com. The place for dependable ColdFusion Hosting. http://www.cfhosting.com Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4
