Topic: Setting up new office network...

[Ian]

I'm about to set up a network for 12 or so users. What spec of PC would be sufficient to act as the 'always-on' server?

It's just going to be filesharing - synching wirelessly with laptops as they come in and out of the office.

All using XP (except for 1 Mac with OSX) with MS applications (Word, Excel etc)

We have a wireless router and ADSL already.

Thanks

Ian

[Sandra]

Hi Ian and

I am not sure about the Mac as I have never used one  

Any PC capable of running windows 98 would be suitable as your always on one.
I have an AMD 450 running as a server which has been on almost 24 hours per day since around last November.
The limitations of an older/slower PC is possibly the restriction in the size of the hard drive that it can use, (65gig max in my PCs case).
A slow PC will still be faster than your network, so that isnt a problem really.
I do find it a bit frustrating at times altering stuff around on my server pc as its so slow compared to my main pc (Athlon XP 2100 + ) but as far as reliability and networking speeds theres no problem.

Hope this helps a little  

[Clive]

I have 2 PC's and a Mac laptop connected to a wireless router and it works quite seamlessly.  You will need to have Airport on the Mac.

[Ian]

Thanks for the prompt replies. 8)

The Mac has an airport card.

So just a basic £600 new computer would do the trick then?

[Sandra]

That should be fine Ian, the router will be doing most of the work.
The PC itself is almost incidental, a lot of pcs are used for servers when they get too slow for anything more useful, even old 166s would do apart from the limitations of the hard drive capacity  

[Ian]

Yes - the chances are we'll need a lot of storage.

Thanks for the advice.