DSF

I'm currently in the process of putting expanding my event offerings and having shelled out for a new 3110dn and mounted it in a flight case I was planning on using my laptop, which is an xps1330 with intel core 2 duo @ 2.00ghz with 4gb of ram with an ssd it's plenty fast for photoshop (I'm only really talking about opening, basic editing for personalisation and printing ..
course I was thinking as I have some spare space in the flight case if I get a 1u computer it would be better than messing with the laptop. I found a cheap Dell PowerEdge 850 Web Server on the bay and on the face of it, it's a 64 bit Intel Pentium Dual Core 3.00 Ghz computer with 2gb of ram, with an ssd it should be somewhere close to performance of the laptop? or have I missed something?



Thanks for reading.

Don't see why it wouldn't run Windows 7 and Photoshop, especially for basic use, but ideally you'd need to stick maybe another 2gigs of ram in. Only issue I can see with this is that you'll also need a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, which kind of takes away from the portability a bit. You might be better off buying a 2U rackmount slide out drawer, for your laptop to sit on.

Nice idea rackmounting the gear though! By the way, I'd be very careful with the Ricoh in there. They aren't really designed to be tipping sideways etc, especially with ink in them.

should be fine ... i'd want a proper flightcase rather than a cheap SKB type one though, preferably shock mounted ... printers aren't generally designed to be on the road ... that one is designed to sit in an office printing letters, documents and power points.

it's not going to be manhandled and thrown about, and certainly not carried or stored on its side, it's in the flightcase so it can be carried to and from the van and somewhere safe while in use at events..

This has to be better than putting it in and taking it out of a box between journeys, and it can be plugged in, inside of the box as once it's got the ink installed it'll be plugged in and on when not in use.

Cs6 for very basic editing is like pulling out shot gun for a fly
instead of putting extra memory in, you could consider photoshop CS2 as is free and 2 gigs will be plenty enough for your editing at events.

makes sense.

You got me interested in this, because I actually need to change my aging desktop, but cannot afford a lot, so I asked the people selling it about putting Windows 7 on it and their reply is:-

[FONT="Helvetica]Here is a list of the compatible OS’s for the PowerEdge 850:
Operating systems Windows™
Server 2000 Standard;
Windows Server 2003 Standard and Web Edition;
Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® v3, v4, EM64T v4;
NetWare® Standard and Web Edition v6.5; SUSE ES9 EM64T

So maybe window 7 might not work on it. Mind you a while ago I got a desktop server, bit like an ordinary desktop PC, and stuck windows 7 on it and it is still working today!

James[/FONT]

I think they are talking specifically server os's there's no reason why something that takes windows 2003 server wouldn't take windows 7

You could be right. I did ask specifically if I could put windows 7 onto it, but that was the answer that they came back with.

I was also interested in the fact that it has two VGA posts, and wonder if it would run two monitors!

James

I would guess they are listing the OSes that they support, have tested and have drivers for. I'd be very surprised if it didn't work with Win 7 or 8 - you may have to hunt around for the drivers you need to get everything working properly, and I don't see why it wouldn't run two monitors if it has two VGA ports- but will you want two displays on a portable system?