Okay, I'll start.

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@JaredBusch said in Family is looking to start a new business:

I would never use O365 first. I recommend Zoho all the time to people like this.

We have a bunch of clients using Zoho free level as it suffices for their needs.

Why buy Office 365?

1. He can buy a domain with GoDaddy or so other registrar for next to nothing for the first year.
2. Then go to Zoho and setup an account and get email for a few users.
3. For the computer(s), buy something simple from retail that meets the needs for the first year.
4. Stick with Windows because that is what comes on almost everything you buy retail, but reinstall clean.
5. Install Chocolatey to manage applications.
   • My recommended package list:
     • sumatrapdf.install
     • vlc
     • greenshot
     • libreoffice
     • 7zip
     • zerotier-one (if remote access is desired to machine)
6. select a hosted accounting product that works for him.
7. purchase a subscription to CrashPlan for $50/year to backup his one machine
8. Use Veeam Endpoint Protection to create a local image backup to a USB drive

I think he's going to like Wave. Would you recommend Zoho books over Wave because of integration with their email?

@Minion-Queen said in Family is looking to start a new business:

Here's the big question. Has he used any thing for email in the past? Use what he is comfortable with. O365, Google (not gmail) etc.

Plus one for @brianlittlejohn's suggest online accounting. Xero is great so is Wave.

Consumer level, he's used both gmail and hotmail. As an employee and student, he's used O365.

@brianlittlejohn said in Family is looking to start a new business:

Also start him off with cloud based accounting/invoicing software. (eg not Quickbooks)

Any recommendations? Square maybe?

@scottalanmiller said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Took the girls out for a walk to find pizza.

What? No spaghetti or lasagna or alfredo?

My Dad-in-law is looking to start a new business in home inspections. He will, of course, need email, calendar, and a website at least.

I am wanting to get him started in the right direction. My initial knee-jerk reaction is to go to O365 and purchase a domain. However, I also want to consider other alternatives that will help to lower his costs and keep him flexible into the future as he'll be the only one in the company. I'll probably work under consulting and get paid in shares/unmanaged partnership into his company.

Not looking for a brick & mortar office with physical servers and such. Maybe vultr with an email server or such? What would you recommend for somebody just starting off in a new business?

Maybe we need some controlled groups. I'd be willing to volunteer for the solely mango group.

@scottalanmiller said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:

@NerdyDad said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:

@NerdyDad said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:

@DustinB3403 said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:

I think microsoft will still have a foot in the door for a lot of places, especially as they move to a pay per service function. Like office365 is a continual monthly cost.

Which a lot of businesses see as reasonable.

This is seen as reasonable because companies don't have to spend money on a dedicated IT person for email, nor the costs of licensing, hardware, storage, backups, etc. If you were to cost compare O365 to 4-8 years of Exchange with CALs for mailboxes, Office licenses, hardware, storage, backups, and training (at least) for the current IT staff, then you're going to see that O365 is significantly cheaper than hosting your own Exchange on-prem.

However, there are a few caveats to this as well. O365 does distribute your data geographically, but does not maintain backups of the data. You will have to consider backing it up somehow, either via PS or Veeam.

Are you sure that they do not back it up? Not giving you access to backups is not the same as not having them.

This is about the only reference that I could find involving backups.

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn440734(v=exchg.150).aspx

Even that is not crystal clear as to how they handle backups, unless they are not handling backups but just copying the data geographically.

I just did this exercise when looking for new core infrastructure.

5.6 TB of actual production data with 3.6 TB in backups. This production data includes the data itself, along with the server and the program information as we backup the entire server, just like @BRRABill does.

Most essential data is little less than 1 TB. We have 1 TB of hosted cloud with our colo that is backed up to Virginia. This contains our file/DC server + connector for O365 and the SQL server for our ERP system.

We have about 500 employees across 2 production locations and 1 colocation (unmanned). Approximately 150 active users in AD. We are a butcher shop, essentially.

@NerdyDad said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:

@DustinB3403 said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:

I think microsoft will still have a foot in the door for a lot of places, especially as they move to a pay per service function. Like office365 is a continual monthly cost.

Which a lot of businesses see as reasonable.

This is seen as reasonable because companies don't have to spend money on a dedicated IT person for email, nor the costs of licensing, hardware, storage, backups, etc. If you were to cost compare O365 to 4-8 years of Exchange with CALs for mailboxes, Office licenses, hardware, storage, backups, and training (at least) for the current IT staff, then you're going to see that O365 is significantly cheaper than hosting your own Exchange on-prem.

However, there are a few caveats to this as well. O365 does distribute your data geographically, but does not maintain backups of the data. You will have to consider backing it up somehow, either via PS or Veeam.

@Dashrender said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Rebooting the PBX made it come back online. Might be a failing PBX

We have logs being sent to Mitel as I type this.

FreePBX maybe an option here soon?

@DustinB3403 said in Where do you see Microsoft in 5, 10, and 15 years?:

I think microsoft will still have a foot in the door for a lot of places, especially as they move to a pay per service function. Like office365 is a continual monthly cost.

Which a lot of businesses see as reasonable.

This is seen as reasonable because companies don't have to spend money on a dedicated IT person for email, nor the costs of licensing, hardware, storage, backups, etc. If you were to cost compare O365 to 4-8 years of Exchange with CALs for mailboxes, Office licenses, hardware, storage, backups, and training (at least) for the current IT staff, then you're going to see that O365 is significantly cheaper than hosting your own Exchange on-prem.

The only strong market share that I see Microsoft having is in consumer and client computers. The problem is retraining the user into using Linux and not being afraid of it. Because of the strong need for Windows on client devices increases the reason why AD is still strongly needed. I think that this is the only reason why Microsoft has a future anymore.

However, this story on Slashdot doesn't help much either.

@ChrisL said in Gaming - What's everyone playing / hosting / looking to play:

Well, a quick update on my N64 nostalgia run--I'm halfway through Goldeneye, working on gathering stars in Mario 64, and planning on starting Ocarina of Time tonight.

In other news, my personal productivity has taken a giant nosedive.

Loved Ocarina of Time as a kid. It was a load of fun as it made you think as to what age you needed to be for something else to happen, either in the future or the past.

I felt that Majora's mask was terrible and the mask got annoying after a while. Haven't finished Skyward sword yet as kids get in the way and such. They're always wanting to play.

Here is what I would suggest.

If you're already using VMware, check to see if you're using Ent+. If so, you could replicate the vSwitches across both hosts. Also, you could replicate the VyOS VM from your active host to your passive host for a level of redundancy. I would also suggest an unmanaged switch outside of your firewall for another level of redundancy. However, this may also prove to be a security risk as well.

I do off and on as well. Seems like the Arrival notification is sent based on geofencing and not on actual GPS location.

I'll use Waze when I'm going to the colo or to someplace that I haven't been before, usually when going to one of our SC meetings.

If you don't take toll roads, then Waze will take you down some pretty adventurous (and sometimes not so good) ways.

@DustinB3403 said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

@NerdyDad said in What Are You Doing Right Now:

Been working on this since Saturday. It's almost done.

That's an odd looking carriage.... doesn't it need wheels?

It's a loft bed. I guess we could decorate ithe as a carriage

Been working on this since Saturday. It's almost done.