I work at a small law firm. Since I'm the youngest by a decade, I'm the only person in here who knows anything about computers. We used to have a guy we would pay a hundred bucks every month for support, but he was ripping us off and I didn't quite like him, so we got rid of him.
It's been good for a few months without him. I have had to fix the usual shit, computers not connecting to the internet. Printers not printing etc.
Thing is, my boss might be open to upgrading the computers (god knows we need it), and if we do, I'm gonna be in charge of both buying the components, set the computers up and making sure everyone can access the server and the printers.
What would you recommend for 4 basic computers which are going to be used almost exclusively to write word documents? I want something snappy enough but reasonably priced. Ideally we are talking new, since I live in the middle of nowhere and the second hand market sucks balls here.
Also, how would you replace all the old computers? Cloning the drives would work, but wouldn't it just cause problems in terms of drivers and system stability? I feel confident enough to connect all the computers to our server and between themselves, but I have a feeling there is an easy way of doing all of it, and since some of you are proper I.T. people, maybe you could give me some pointers as to how to go about it?
Upgrading my job's computers
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Even in the middle of nowhere, where I work as an IT guy, a good 3rd or 4th gen i5 office machine is exactly what you are looking for. They are amazingly cheap to ship because they tend to be microatx. Pick any company, HP or dell or whoever so long as it's not pajeetnobrand and you'll also have no problem with drivers as 100% of them are baked into win10 at this point. And an i5 for word processing is an i5 for word processing no matter the generation.
Anything Dell
Not actually an I.T. but if you can find 4 refurbished any gen i7 refurbished with 8gbs of ram from a dealer with warranty you'll be fine I guess.You prob won't have any upgradeability paths but they will be snappy enough...Also you could make the new systems boot on lan and install windows on them simultaneously.After that just copy the files manually.Thats my take on your problem.
Do you have these computers set up in a workgroup?
What are the current specs? Also be sure to have SSD boot drives. I've seen dual core laptops from 7 years ago go from unusable to servicable only by swapping an SSD and more dedodated wam in.
I know that would be the best option, but I live in a group of islands with a different tax code than the country we belong to. That makes ebay not really an option. I still appreciate your answer tho. So there won't be a problem if I clone the OS drives and just plug the clones in a new machine with completely different hardware?.
I'm gonna go ahead and google what booting on lan means, because it sounds like it could save me some time. I like your pragmatism.
Not a homegroup, just direct connection between them.
i3 from 10 years ago, no gpus, 500gb hdds. That's pretty much it. You might be right. I could just try to plug in a new ssd and see if it makes it any better. Much more cost effective. Worst case scenario, I can use those ssds into the new machines if it isn't enough.
Anything i5 or i7 (2c/4t) and 4-8GB of RAM. Put in an SSD and it will be fine. Wangblows is a pain in the arse, but I'm sure you will manage.
pcpartpicker.com
here you go fag
>pcpartpicker.com
Thank you, fag. Sounds good.
Don't listen to this idiot. This is not your gaming rig this is a business computer. You should be looking at business computers that have the same hardware and a warranty. Also what do you have running as the server?
>video card
>word processing machines for a business
lmao
Non-stock coolers are generally retarded too.
So is building a PC in general but you know.
One of these bad boys
buy.hpe.com
This. Why would you build PCs for a business? That is for gamer toys, not for work machines.
They need Retina Macbook Pros. Outdated, ugly looking PCs aren't for serious professionals.
You're not wrong but the shill language isn't really helping. It's not a matter of TOY vs WORKING, a matter of pick-and-choose solutions which are best for specific individual needs vs rolling out something to multiple people that's easy for a third party to maintain.
There's a definite place for custom built workstations in certain respects, but those places are where you have an IT department and not just some half-techy dude in a law firm.
>for custom built workstations
I'm sure most companies would rather have the warranty and support contracts associated with pre-built workstations.
>work for small business
>boss is pissed at current IT people
>I am young and know basic networking
>I am now the new IT department
I relate to your situation, user. Godspeed.
What’s your disaster recovery plan? One of these end users will be dumb enough to click on a malicious link and wipe the whole network out
>clone a 10 year old hard drive
user just start brand new. Just make sure to copy their documents off their local drive because they’ve probably not been saving to the network share
Off site back up on my personal external drive, Basically is something were to go really wrong, I would wipe all computers, reinstall, reconnect and copy the data from my offsite back up. We also have a onsite server with a raid 1 set up. It's not bulletproof, but it's much safer than what I found when I got here.
I both like it and despise it. I like being praised for literally knowing about whatsapp web's existence, but I also hate having to drop all my work to fix the secretary's pc since my boss depends on her for every single thing, so if her computer is out, we are all fucked. Ying and Yang I guess.
This sounds reasonable. I might hate having to move all the data back into the pcs, assigning them ip's and connecting them, but the OG drives are old and probably filled with malware after years of working for someone that doesn't even know how to turn a computer on.
Why are you assigning client PCs static addresses?
If you do this, make sure you keep a backup of the drives. You don't want to be responsible for losing that one fucking document they saved in C:\Program Files\[program] for whatever fucking reason. Doubly so in a law firm.
I like being able to access them by typing them out on the adress bar. That's the sole reason.
Is there a reason not to do that?
Weakest i5, stock cooler.
Easiest to clean, won't get too hot since it's for browsing and office.
No dedicated GPU, you simply don't need it, and drivers can cause later headaches.
Samsung 850 EVO SSD, absolutely the best, won't die probably.
8GB of RAM since you can't utilize more.
Keep it simple, it's easier to manage later. Also graphics card is useless in that setting and can only cause problems.
Buy Intel nucs.
It’s not going to scale very well and then you’ll have to worry about IP address conflicts. You can run bginfoon their computers so they can tell you what their IP address is.
But what exactly are you trying to do by accessing the computers like that when you are there?
Just access files form their computers. Nowadays I barely have to because they save most files in the server we all have access to, but sometimes I needed to access their pc for a random file.
I was thinking about the nucs, but the IO is minimal and I was even thinking about getting dual monitors since we are constantly copying, redacting word documents. But yeah, nucs, wouldn't be half bad.
These lawyers don’t care that you’re accessing confidential information and storing it at your house?
>It’s not going to scale very well
As long as you don't try maintain it past 10 devices or whatever it's not exactly a lot of work to fix. There's nothing stopping you just using DHCP for future devices.
Lmfao imagine actually trusting this law firm with anything sensitive.
Dell Optiplex 3060 is what my company uses. They're extremely reliable.
I'm sure the 2200g's built in GPU is way fucking better than a 710 good fuck that's a waste of money.
The vast majority of documents in a law firm aren't confidential. Sure, some are, but a very large amount of them wind up going through the courts anyway. Even the stuff that is confidential is just that; confidential. They're not like bank info or classified shit where there's specific laws about their handling.
Most lawyers are penny pinching jews with an ironically poor understanding of information security laws and would rather throw $10 at some intern to install McAfee than hire a real IT department.
t. Paralegal assistant
For what it's worth, I'm also a lawyer in the firm. It's all good.
you can probably run a 2nd monitor off the thunderbolt port.
An SSD, 8gb of ran, and windows 10is probably all they need. Take a copy of their profile with transwiz.
Unless you're going to tell me they're running an old and processor or anything older than the Intel iseries. Seeing as $100/mo is a rip off for support for you I will assume it's possible your PCs are older than 8 years. Since you fired him and you're solo who is taking care of backups? What about email services? Are they super cheap pop/IMAP? Are you backing up your lawyers PST files?
These things are important
Just upgrade them to SSD