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Family Home Rant

The Home Network

Lately I’ve been on a kick upgrading the computers in the house.  Most of the machines are dual Xeons with 4Gb or 8Gb of ram.  I just added a 1.5Tb drive to one machine that was running out of space.  It had a 40gb drive in it and it was full.  I went through looking to dump what ever I could, but it only amounted to a few Gb free.

I also had to add a 8-port switch.  I have a 16-port switch downstairs where I have the server gear, but I need more ports in the den.  I’m wondering if it was a good idea to go with the 8-port switch and not the 16-port switch.  At the time the store I was in only had the 8-port switch and I didn’t feel like driving around.

The one purchase that I made that has just proven itself to be so valuable was a D-Link print server.  It can handle up to 4 printers.  I know, it was a simply thing to add, but what a difference to be able to print from anywhere.  I’ve got the laser printer and the Epson photo printer attach to it.  The only bummer is that I have to go into the den to turn the printers on if I want to print.  A lot of the times I’m in the family room with the laptop and have to walk to the other end of the house. Yes, on occasion I get lazy and yell for one of the kids to turn on the printer or retrieve the printouts for me.

The one box that I haven’t upgrade is the Apple G4.  I did add some ram to bump it to 4Gb.  That box has found some new life with my daughter.  She likes to play her games on it.  She likes the idea of having a machine that is basically only used by her.

That leads me to another thought.  I am amazed at the kids.  I have XP, Vista, Mac OS X and Fedora Linux in the house on various machines.  Majority of the boxes run Linux, from Fedora Core 5 to Fedora 10.  But it doesn’t matter to them.  They jump from box to box without thinking about the operating system.  Most adults I know have issues running a single operating system.  Not them.  Its seamless to them.  I cant help but wonder what the technology will be like when they are adults and start having difficulty adopting to it.

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