Before I Start........

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After deciding to carry on with my Microsoft qualifications I've decided to start the 290, but I have a couple of questions. After reading through these posts I know which books most people recommend, but is it only the MS one that has the eval copy of 2003 server?
Also, I'm currently computerless (is that a word?). Now do I buy a couple of cheap 2nd hand PCs to test on? Or can I get away with one? We have several 2003 servers at work but I'll have no chance getting on them.

 

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I would not buy cheap 2nd hand PC's. There is a reason they are cheap. Most of the time the processor is not fast enough to run windows 2003 with a good pace and also memory and harddisk space can be to small.
I would invest a bit more money to get a better machine.

 

I would suggest you do what I did, ask your work if they would be willing to supply a machine or two, on loan, that you can install the server OS onto for your studies. Its particularly more advantageous if you need to understand these things for your job, even to some extent.

My work wouldnt pay for the books or the course, but it was happy to supply me with an out of spec (but still reasonable) machine for my use. (Not their fault it broke a few months later). You never know what they will say, and if you ask for it as a loaner, then they will be getting it back (or so they assume - mine was never returned, but the guys knew i was leaving the company and still had it), so will be more agreeable to the request.

I used a p3 2GHz, with 512MB of RAM (Or something around that spec), it was able to run server2k3 and a VMWare 2k3 hosted on it at the same time. Sure it was a little slow, but to be honest, you dont need fast for your studies, and I found it to be fast enough for me.

 

If you got just one PC, providing it had plenty of grunt and plenty of ram you could setup a virtual lab on it. Virtual PC 2007 is free from MS to download and does the job.

Depends how much money you have to spend really, you could do yourself a C2D based system with a couple of gigs of ram quite cheap. You could probably do an AMD X2 based system even cheaper as long as you aren't looking to future proof it.

I just priced up an AMD X2 system on Ebuyer.com. You could possible down spec a couple of components, or you may be able to provide a DVD writer yourself to save a few quid, but It came in at just over 200 quid, that included vat and was free delivery.

spec:

A 2.3Ghz dual core system with 2GB of DDR2 ram is not bad for 218. The motherboard in barebones case includes an onboard video / sound / network. For an extra 25 quid, you could make it 3GB of ram in total. You could also spend about another 100 quid, to get a none barebones system, with a half decent video card in it and use it for games as well.

Then buy the MS Press 290 book and you will get an eval copy of Server 2K3 to practice with. You got yourself a virtual server farm right there!

 

You can download a trial version of the software from the microsoft site.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/bb430831.aspx

 

I'd like to see pics of that!

Used computers are sometimes OK... but it's hard to justify spending even a little money on a old junker when you can buy a brand spanking new one from companies like Dell for very little cash.