PIII 500mz desktop opinion

We have a 500mz pentium III running win98se 512mg ram - being replaced by
2.8GHz P4 in near future.

The goal is to have it on the wireless network as a print & fax server and
telephone answering/voice mail system.

One thought is increase RAM to 1Gb to assist with system resource freeing,
and use WinXP PRO to add stability. (98 has always sucked for us - lots o'
reboots)

Printer servers have also been discussed. (Only 2 printers right now)

Other thoughts appreciated. TIA

Gemstone Talent
www.GemTal.com

wrote in message
...
We have a 500mz pentium III running win98se 512mg ram - being replaced by
2.8GHz P4 in near future.

The goal is to have it on the wireless network as a print & fax server and
telephone answering/voice mail system.

One thought is increase RAM to 1Gb to assist with system resource freeing,
and use WinXP PRO to add stability. (98 has always sucked for us - lots o'
reboots)

Printer servers have also been discussed. (Only 2 printers right now)


I have precisely that setup at work. Old P3-550 built from scrap parts,
256MB RAM, 10GB hdd. Runs Win2k server because I wanted terminal server
capability and maximum stability. Has 4 printers connected to it, 3 on
parallel ports and 1 USB, a cheap USB scanner for faxing and document
filing, ADSL PCI modem for broadband connection and 2 ISA analogue modems
for controlling 2 telephone lines. Winfax Pro 8 does the fax and voice mail
duties, MS ISA server does the internet sharing and security duties, AVG
does nightly virus scans. The PC has no problems whatsoever coping with all
of these duties, is rock stable and only gets rebooted after a software
upgrade. Because of the terminal server it can be remotely controlled but it
does have a local monitor and keyboard as well connected via a KVM switch
which also connects to 3 other servers.

wrote in
:

We have a 500mz pentium III running win98se 512mg ram - being
replaced by 2.8GHz P4 in near future.

The goal is to have it on the wireless network as a print & fax
server and telephone answering/voice mail system.

One thought is increase RAM to 1Gb to assist with system resource
freeing, and use WinXP PRO to add stability. (98 has always sucked
for us - lots o' reboots)

Printer servers have also been discussed. (Only 2 printers right
now)

There are a few problems with this.

First, Windows XP is not a server OS. It will only accept 10
connections max. So if more then 10 people try to connect to it, it
will refuse their connections. Add in the fact that even after someone
prints, their connection to the computer will stay open for a while.
Next, you have no redundancy. Putting 4 different serving jobs on a
server is not a good idea. I have no idea how big your company is, but
I would ditch the print server idea. A PC as a printer server is
overkill for two printers. Hook up a 3 port JetDirect to the two
printers and have your clients do direct IP printing to the JetDirect.
And then having it on the wireless network: tell me you have a hard
connection going into that computer and are not just running it off of
a wireless connection!

Personally, I would have one server for fax, and one server for
voicemail. Just imagine if the server goes down, eek! All fax,
printing and voice mail stops working. Bad! I would get two copies of
Windows Server 2003 and two server class machines and set them up: one
for fax and one for voicemail. If you don't have the money for this,
just get two regular PCs and get a copy of Windows 2000 server for
each.

Adam

We have a 500mz pentium III running win98se 512mg ram - being replaced by
2.8GHz P4 in near future.

The goal is to have it on the wireless network as a print & fax server and
telephone answering/voice mail system.

One thought is increase RAM to 1Gb to assist with system resource freeing,
and use WinXP PRO to add stability. (98 has always sucked for us - lots o'
reboots)

I have precisely that setup at work. Old P3-550 built from scrap parts,
256MB RAM, 10GB hdd. Runs Win2k server because I wanted terminal server
capability and maximum stability. Has 4 printers connected to it, 3 on
parallel ports and 1 USB, a cheap USB scanner for faxing and document
filing, ADSL PCI modem for broadband connection and 2 ISA analogue modems
for controlling 2 telephone lines. Winfax Pro 8 does the fax and voice mail
duties, MS ISA server does the internet sharing and security duties, AVG
does nightly virus scans. The PC has no problems whatsoever coping with all
of these duties, is rock stable and only gets rebooted after a software
upgrade. Because of the terminal server it can be remotely controlled but it
does have a local monitor and keyboard as well connected via a KVM switch
which also connects to 3 other servers.


I remember TALKWORKS PRO that never did work right for us. I have WINFAX
ver 9 loaded right now, but probably have ver 8 around somewhere. Does it
handle voice mail and fax?

BTW, we have 3 notebooks and another desktop on our small wireless
network,


Gemstone Talent
www.GemTal.com

wrote in message
...

I remember TALKWORKS PRO that never did work right for us. I have WINFAX
ver 9 loaded right now, but probably have ver 8 around somewhere. Does it
handle voice mail and fax?


WinFax Pro 8.01 plus TalkWorks and Rockwell chipset ISA voice/fax/data
modems work perfectly together under Win2k. However, the Answering Machine
and Telephone applets do not work at all. This is not a problem as
everything can be setup from TalkWorks / Setup menu.
Our copy was first installed in March 1999 and it still contains all the
undeleted faxes and voice messages from that date even though the PC itself
has changed several times since then. There's a way to keep all of the data
and move them to a new installation.