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Use of an old laptop for windows home server

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    Have a look at this thread.
    Sunday, May 13, 2007 7:20 PM
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    However, official support or not, more than one person has posted of a successful installation on a laptop.
    Monday, May 14, 2007 9:25 PM
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    There are no workarounds for most of the issues.
    • Laptops aren't expandable/upgradeable; in particular you can't add hard drives, and installing a larger drive is much more expensive than a desktop system.
    • Laptops are "thermally challenged" Smile
    • Laptops aren't particularly optimized for server operations.
    • Frequently there are no Windows Server 2003 drivers for some/all of the hardware in a laptop.
    Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:53 PM
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  • Question
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    Have a look at this thread.
    Sunday, May 13, 2007 7:20 PM
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  • Question
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    However, official support or not, more than one person has posted of a successful installation on a laptop.
    Monday, May 14, 2007 9:25 PM
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    Any idea why laptps are not officially supported? I just installed WHS on a laptop (and am now having trouble getting a network connection) and I like this option as it comes with built in "battery backup" and a very small profile. For thos eof you who have tried a laptop, what issues should I expect? Are there work-arounds?

     

    Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:00 PM
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  • Question
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    There are no workarounds for most of the issues.
    • Laptops aren't expandable/upgradeable; in particular you can't add hard drives, and installing a larger drive is much more expensive than a desktop system.
    • Laptops are "thermally challenged" Smile
    • Laptops aren't particularly optimized for server operations.
    • Frequently there are no Windows Server 2003 drivers for some/all of the hardware in a laptop.
    Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:53 PM
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    Thanks for the quick reply. The laptop was going to be my evaluation environment to see if I like the WHS interface and find enough advantage over my current network setup at home. Especially interested in how it handles USB connected external hard drives, which I have a few of and would like to utilize.

    So, I'll probably try another clean install on the laptop (did the first install of WHS while on my work network rather than on the home network, which may be the cause for my network connectivity issues right now). I did not run into obvious driver for the laptop hardware (which happens to be a Dell X300 with expandsion base)

     

    Thursday, January 17, 2008 9:06 PM
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    A laptop is fine for evaulation or demonstration purposes. Just don't expect it to be a great solution for a production server. Smile
    Thursday, January 17, 2008 9:19 PM
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    Just a thought about 'you can't add hard drives' ...

     

    I've had three Dell laptops that had 2 hard drive bays. With today's huge drives, you can get as much as 640 Gb on a dual-drive laptop ...

     

    You can add USB and/or Firewire external drives with PCMCIA or PCI Express. Hardly perfect, but you could easily get to 1 Tb or more by adding only a couple of drives this way.

     

    No I'm not saying it's the ideal way to go, but I've thought about it. My current laptop is due for retirement fairly soon, and it has 6 USB ports, 1 firewire and a mini PCI Express slot where I could add even more. And I know where I can get hold of some ice ...

     

    Anyone else love spider webs? ;-)

     

     

    Thursday, January 17, 2008 11:59 PM
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