A friend of mine has a small business (4 employees now) and I've been helping him out here and there with his PCs. He just moved to a new office building and he recently asked me how he could go about setting up e-mail for his company and an inexpensive network printer. Now I've installed and messed with Exchange server at home, but since my experience with it is limited there is no way that I would feel comfortable setting up an Exchange Server for him. Also, I don't want to deal with the responsibility of having to keep servers up and running. I have a full time job and I like having free time to myself and not running around fixing computers all day.
So the question now is what options does he have? I briefly looked on yahoo and they offer a service where you can get your domain name (his would be his company obviously) and 5 business e-mail addresses for $9.95 a month with a one-time $25 set up fee. I've never used this service, but to me that sounds like a good deal.
He also is maybe interested in getting a network printer but he doesn't want to drop alot of money (he's looking at spending about $400). His network right now consists of a DSL line, router, and network drops in every office. I've priced some HP LaserJet printers (which is what he would want to buy) and it seems like anything that's network ready is out of his price range. The place where he wants to put the printer has no PC so I can't just buy any old printer and share it off a PC. I need to be able to take it out of the box, plug it into the network jack, and share it out from there.
I looked around HP's site and found this print server and it seems like a viable solution, but I've never used a product like it before so I don't know if it's any good.
So can anyone point me in the right direction here? I realize 1 server could take care of both of his problems, but like I said earlier that's nothing I want to do. I want something simple and economical that will do the job and not create any more headaches for me.
Oh, and I didn't know which forum to stick this in so if there's a more appropriate place for this thread then feel free to move it mods.
So the question now is what options does he have? I briefly looked on yahoo and they offer a service where you can get your domain name (his would be his company obviously) and 5 business e-mail addresses for $9.95 a month with a one-time $25 set up fee. I've never used this service, but to me that sounds like a good deal.
He also is maybe interested in getting a network printer but he doesn't want to drop alot of money (he's looking at spending about $400). His network right now consists of a DSL line, router, and network drops in every office. I've priced some HP LaserJet printers (which is what he would want to buy) and it seems like anything that's network ready is out of his price range. The place where he wants to put the printer has no PC so I can't just buy any old printer and share it off a PC. I need to be able to take it out of the box, plug it into the network jack, and share it out from there.
I looked around HP's site and found this print server and it seems like a viable solution, but I've never used a product like it before so I don't know if it's any good.
So can anyone point me in the right direction here? I realize 1 server could take care of both of his problems, but like I said earlier that's nothing I want to do. I want something simple and economical that will do the job and not create any more headaches for me.
Oh, and I didn't know which forum to stick this in so if there's a more appropriate place for this thread then feel free to move it mods.
