MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
Looking to tap into the STW PC boffins collective knowledge this morning.
Over the next 6 months Im looking to upgrade my computer systems and am looking for some ideas of what way to go.
To meet my needs at the moment I currently have:
P4 2.8, 2Gb, Vista, NVIDIA 6200 card
40GB HDD for Apps and OS
110GB HDD for file and important media backup
230GB HDD in a NAS box for primary file storage, served as a mapped drive across the wifi router to laptops.
USB sticks and SD cards galore for syncing work data for taking on the road.
A netbook for internet/email and emergency Excel on the road (I use client site PCs for work usually)
An HP1018 laser printer (networked via Vista)
An HP6310 all in one networked (internal card) printer for colour jet, scanning and photocopying.
3 speaker amp
Wireless keyboard and mouse.
Wifi ADSL Router.
I want to serve an all in one printer (colour laser scanner?) and work/media files to other computers over Wifi
I want fewer boxes, lower electricity useage but responsive serving of files and wifi to netbook/laptop (how can I serve on demand, but keep energy consumption down?)
I want safe file storage.
SO, what about cloud computing? Google OS? having all my files on google servers? Can I run MSExcel locally? What about other apps that might need lots of RAM/CPU? I like the idea of thin computing, but then also the flexibility to run whatever little apps I want?
DO I go new barebone, RAID HDDs, W7 and super hardware?
Or do I go thin and fast, wait for Google OS. Rely on Excel Web App and hope I can run little apps on a thin computer/laptop?
Whichever way I go, I have to commit to it, as I dont want to have to switch over too soon.
If you were setting up a system from scratch for the next 5 years, how would you do (Budget up to £2k)
if you want to run excel, and do it properly lots of ram on a "proper" pc. i have seen excel run on Citrix and yes it works, but it is a pain.
the other issue is that excel is the de-facto standard and there is no full alternative, I would be interested to see if the next gen Mac-Excel actually matches the windows version in all aspects, ie full windows matching VBA.
The other thing to think about is that office 2007 and 2003 are very different beasts, in my role i will soon be upgraded to 2007, but all the reports i have to prepare will be for people running 2003, the upgrade is due to the upgrade to the data-warehouse and the newer version of Cognos that is being implemented.
I refuse to migrate to Excel 2007. Its like Excel written for the Fisher Price/Apple generation 😉
I suppose I could go half way - build a powerful barebones for local apps, but try and run most of my life as thin as possible, with as much in the cloud as I can so that I can access it from anywhere and let google deal with redundancy.
I already have moved over to google apps from personal management and it's superb. I just wish they would do a file management product!
MS office 2007 is actually really fast to use after the 1st month. I hate using office 2003 now. glad i made the change
word and powerpoint are alright but excel 2007 is the devils work.
Office 2007 was forced on me by the computer janitors at work
6 months in & I still hate it
Stoner,
As you use spreadsheets seriously, I suggest that you have a look at a program called Morphit which was released only last week by some friends / ex-colleagues of mine after nearly 5 years of development.
It makes the application of formulae to spreadsheets much more transparent and thus easier to code and check. Tell them I sent you.
[url= http://www.edge-ka.com/articles/show/46?type=PressRelease ]Morphit by The Edge[/url]
or just use matlab...
Cheers M.
WIll go and have a look.
An admin asistant at work was really impressed with excel 2007 as it was able to add up columns of numbers. A spreadsheet feature that was new to her and would really speed things up now that she didn't have to use a calculator 🙂