@coliver said:

The Xbox One OS would then have to be running on top of Hyper-V as well.

That's what I've read. That Xbox One runs a custom version of Hyper-V.

Anyway, to answer the OP question, I'm assuming you're talking referring to Spiceworks? I assume their conferences are one of their major revenue streams so I'm sure they've thought things through.

I don't know how popular the Spiceworks software is in mainland Europe, but the majority of European posters on the forums appear to be British and London is always going to be the best location for any conference that is dominated by Brits for two basic reasons:

1. Transport links. All roads lead to London, as they say... You can get to London and back in a few hours from most of England. Getting to other cities can be a ball-ache. Birmingham is also good, and that's why so many conferences at the NEC there. But there's a bigger choice of venues in London.
2. The majority of British IT is based in London and the South East, so it's local.

Sounds like I'm going to have to start putting some clothes on in my garden then.

Dear Carnival Boy ,

I am writing with regards to the letter I sent to you on the 1st December which advised that your organization will be completing a Software Asset Management (SAM) Review in line with the Microsoft Volume License Agreement (VLA) terms and conditions. In that letter, I advised that I would be making further contact with you via email to provide you with the spread sheet called the Deployment Summary which I am pleased to attach

Regards

Microsoft

Dear Microsoft,

What the f*** have our Linux Workstations got to do with you?

Regards

Carnival Boy

Love it. I may even hang it on my office wall as I could do with some positive vibes at the moment.

@scottalanmiller said:

From what I have seen in dealing with communities like Spiceworks, MSPs are extremely small.

That might be an error in your sampling data. Maybe larger MSPs just don't see the need for posting on communities. Personally, I don't know any small MSPs, but then I don't know how I'd get to know them.

Wow, sounds like a really tough time. Good luck.

@tonyshowoff said:

We currently have 16 employees, and we've had between 14 and 16 since I bought the business 8 years ago. Holy cow, has it been that long? Now I'm depressed that it hasn't become more successful.

Yeah, you should really be on a beach in the Bahamas by now, following a successful IPO.

@garak0410 said:

My all time favorites...and a little background...I am a devout Christian and I tend to like a lot of movies with Christian themes

How about the Life of Brian? One of my favourites.

I think it's the other way round. In households where one person is tech savvy there is a tendency to tinker, fiddle, experiment and ultimately break things. The non-IT person then has to either wait for it to be fixed, or give up waiting and fix it his/herself.

@RojoLoco said:

My users ask "are you doing something to the server? because ______ doesn't work"...

Yep! I'm glad users are the same the world over.

I also get "I can't get onto the system". Er...mind telling me which system?

Then there's "do I have to reboot because I've got loads of files open". No, not at all. Why don't you make a cup of tea and I'll logon and spend 15 minutes of my time trying to figure out what the problem is without rebooting because Lord knows it is far too much effort for you to have to close down a few applications and reboot and we all know your time is soooo much more valuable than mine.

@WingCreative said:

it sounds like you need a full version of Server 2012 running to have easy configuration through a GUI.

Really? I wouldn't know as I'm an ESXi guy. But I didn't think server core meant no GUI, I thought it meant you use client GUIs. I still manage my core servers with the same GUI's I've always done, I just run them on my PC. Which would be the same as ESXi, where I manage everything via vSphere Client running on my PC (other than installing the hypervisor itself) - there is no server GUI.

AFAIK, all UK fast food joints only pay the national minimum wage. Mostly zero-hours contracts as well. The good news is that it is now illegal to use tips to "top up" wages to the minimum wage.

Given that the new minimum wage is set to go up dramatically if you're above the age of 25, but stay low if you're below 25, I don't expect to see anyone old working in fast food restaurants for much longer as it will be nearly twice as expensive to employ someone above the age of 25 than someone who is 17.

I back them up, but not via Apple. eg photos to Flickr, I use Hotmail for my contacts, etc etc.

Working in care homes? They've yet to develop a robot that can wipe my arse when I'm old and senile. Though it will probably happen.

The one interesting thing I've seen in the last few years in the UK is that pretty much all car wash machines have now been replaced by manual car washing - almost exclusively East European immigrants. I can't think of another example where automation has actually been reversed.

If it is an application server then I would wait until the application vendor has qualified their software against the new OS. Depending on the vendor, this may be some time after the OS is released.

We have to order from screens in McDonald's now. I guess you have that over there too? I thought I'd hate it, but actually it's not been too bad because I can never decide what I want and prefer to order without the pressure of a massive queue standing behind me.

The vast majority of the PCs in my organisation were purchased in 2011, so they're mostly 4 to 5 years old. They were fairly low-spec at the time - I believe most are HP Pro 3130's with Pentium G6950 2.8 GHz CPU and 3 GB RAM. All are Windows 7. They're pretty slow now. Some of them are performing like dogs for whatever reason. Obviously they're well out of warranty now, but hardly any have failed so they're very reliable.

I'm wondering what to do with them.

Firstly, as far as the OS is concerned, I'm considering rolling out Windows 10 company wide fairly soon. I note on Spiceworks that the consensus seems to be to stick with Windows 7 for at least another year. I can't quite understand this as 7 will be three versions behind and is over 5 years old. Also, I'm not sure if HP will continue shipping Windows 7 after July?

Secondly, as far as the hardware is concerned, I could upgrade the existing PCs with 8G RAM and SSDs for around $220. That, combined with re-installing the OS and moving to Windows 10 should result in drastically improved performance and they could be good for another few years. They'll still be using the same old Pentium processors though. I'm not expecting any reliability issues as in my experience, apart from hard drives (which will be replaced) HP PCs go on forever and I can easily replace the occasional faulty power supply.

Or I could buy new PCs. I like the look of the sexy new HP mini PCs for around $400 plus another $50 or so to increase the RAM from the measly 4GB that HP still ship as standard. I'm guessing they should perform better than our existing PCs.

Also, I'm interviewing at the moment for a new IT person and one of the interview questions is to find out what he or she would do, since this will be one of their first projects. But I don't know what is a good or bad answer to the question - so I'm looking for feedback.

tl;dr: When are you rolling out Windows 10? Why wouldn't you roll it out asap*? Is it better to replace PCs or upgrade them with new components?

(* we do have some DOS applications that some users run in XP mode which will be a problem with Windows 10.)

@RojoLoco said:

1.5 inches of twig in the ground won't hold the marker upright if you ever water your garden....

I reckon it would. I'm fairly new to the whole gardening thing though...

This looks like a weekend project for my kids though!

Corporate O365 accounts get 1TB of ODfB. Personal O365 accounts get 1TB of OneDrive. I'm not sure what the issue is?