Well, nothing like starting the day with a non-confrontational subject and after seeing my 2 yr old son take his first poop in the baby potty this morning. Only another parent could truly appreciate that comment. Life is good.
On a serious note, my largest client just migrated from Windows NT4 to Windows 2003 Server and experienced a problem with sharing NT4 printer drivers on the 2003 server. Me thinks Microsoft has implemented a feature to force users into upgrading NT4 workstations to XP Pro in order to print with server-based queues. Why do I mention this matter on a decidedly-Linux users list? Because I am thinking about chucking a Linux box in the corner with Samba and CUPS to arbitrate print queues. The big dog at corporate wants to install HP Internet printing on each NT4 workstation to print directly to the HP Jetdirects. Isn't it better to let a print server arbitrate print traffic control and queuing instead of having each individual NT4 workstation do its own job? What happens when more than one PC wants to print at the same time unless you have a print server arbitrating traffic? I'm afraid it will slow down some of those old 300 MHz PCs trying to squeeze off some big spreadsheet. With the server migration, I had the bright idea to isolate the two servers on an independent network with a spare Linksys switch to prevent file modification while migrating data. It puked hard and was pitifully slow. I was very disappointed, yanked it out, plugged into the HP4000M and watched the servers fly like greased lightning. After that experience, me thinks I need to look at better switchgear that provides options to nail down duplex and speed instead of this plug and puke variety. Any recommendations? I've been pretty happy with the El Cheapo garden variety until now. I like having the ability to telnet into the switch or access one using web-based administration in order to see what is going on collision-wise or to manually set parameters. Lastly, we had one more person (welcome, Raymond!) join us last night at our advanced topics lab session that meets on Thursday nights from 7-9 pm at my house whenever TriLUG does not meet as a whole group. With the regulars, that leaves one more open seat without exceeding the arbitrary class size of 8. Let me know if anyone else is interested, and I'll forward the details. Microsoft rocks. I am so glad they create problems that I have to go fix and that I consider fixing with Linux, Samba and CUPS. I'd be delighted to hear about the experiences of others with that type solution in environments with the propensity for more than one print job to occur at the same time. Regards, Jim Jim Ray, MCSE Network Engineer Neuse River Network, Inc. 2610 Vanderbilt Ave Raleigh NC 27607-7247 tel: 919-838-1672 x201 toll free: 800-617-7652 http://www.Neuse.Net
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