I have been reading a few posts for quite some time and figured I'd go ahead and fire my first one off here. My name is Humpty (Ok, no it's not-if you don't know the song, I just dated myself). I bought the 120 day(?) eval version of HomeServer from Microsoft after years of having a win2k3 server running file and print stuff. So for me, I was all over this "new" interface and the ability to just have one place for all data. For those that have lots of data, storage can be a problem when you run out of room on one drive and offsite storage isn't an option, I had multiple drives all in the case and no raid. Yes, I understand RAID as I am a system engineer by trade, but I'm poor-like everyone else. Back to the story. Around the 100 day or so of the eval and buyoff from the family, I purchased WHS and completely redid everything and all was right with the world. That is until the old frankenbox that I had created starting having errors, random reboots and hardware failures. I filled out a request form with the accountant and she said fine and to hurry up. I ended up with an EX485 which I have had since last May and I could not be happier.
After years of being frustrated with buying my own parts and building my own system only to find out that the very same components were 20%-50% cheaper within a few months, I decided to buy off-shelf. With the exception of two PCs, everything else is HP in my house. Even now, while I type this, I'm still shocked that I've stopped building my own. (of course I still tweak and add components in and prefer to custom build)
I am a long time gamer with PCs, xbox, xbox360, monopoly, chess and tiddly-winks. As for work, I strongly lean toward system adminstration (it's my job title-go figure)and we are moving toward 80% virtualization within ESX. So, yes, I'm busy.
Ok, if you're still reading, I'll try and wrap it up. I love catching up on the podcasts as they are both informative and entertaining. Hopefully, I'll start reading more in the forums and actually post this time.
Jay
