How to Upgrade

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firlandsfarm
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The time has come to consider upgrading my existing home set-up. It would seem none of the computers in the household can be upgraded to Windows 11 meaning they will get left behind in the future. Power and speed cost money so I'm wondering how about just getting an online VPSCloud facility as a relatively cheap way to obtain a high speed machine and run all data and apps. (including Office) on it just using the household computers as windows to the VPS. Basically treat them as dumb terminals! Does anyone do similar.
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jimibt
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firlandsfarm wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 11:17 am
The time has come to consider upgrading my existing home set-up. It would seem none of the computers in the household can be upgraded to Windows 11 meaning they will get left behind in the future. Power and speed cost money so I'm wondering how about just getting an online VPSCloud facility as a relatively cheap way to obtain a high speed machine and run all data and apps. (including Office) on it just using the household computers as windows to the VPS. Basically treat them as dumb terminals! Does anyone do similar.
for BA back in the day, this is exactly how i did it as i was so often in different remote locations that i needed to be able to log on and do some stuff.

I still do this with the crypto/futures stuff and have office, visual studio and other smaller supporting apps (notepad++ etc). it's worked out for me to around £20 ish a month for: 4 core cpu, 16gb RAM and 160gb storage (which surprisingly, has loads of free space, even after installing all my apps and storing my data). This config is currently running windows server 2019. There are options obviously to choose whichever flavour of windows that suits, i just plumped for server 2019 as i was used to it :D.

Like many on here, i use simply hosting. you can review their packages: https://www.simplyhosting.com/vps. Apart from convenience, my reckoning was that for £250 a year, it'd take 4-5 years to match the upfront cost of a semi decent setup, by which time my setup would be facing obselesence.

good luck
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firlandsfarm
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jimibt wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 12:25 pm
Apart from convenience, my reckoning was that for £250 a year, it'd take 4-5 years to match the upfront cost of a semi decent setup, by which time my setup would be facing obselesence.
Thanks for your input Jimi ... that's exactly what I'm thinking and over the 4-5 years you can keep it up to date whereas the personal device will suffer gradually increasing obsolescence ... and it will stop the wife complaining she always gets my hand-me-down! :D
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ShaunWhite
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firlandsfarm wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 11:17 am
Basically treat them as dumb terminals! Does anyone do similar.
It's a crazy business. That's exactly what everyone did in the late 70s early 80s (mainframes) then the industry realised there was more profit to be had selling more and more desktop power. But now that's reached a level where a std machine could run a spacestation they're trying to sell the mainframe model again but given it a catchy Silicon Valley name like "a cloud".

Just imagine the cost to the environment caused by selling billions of machines rather what would have happened without the drive to rip everyone off.
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firlandsfarm
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Yep, hence my use of the term. :) When I first started looking for personal use a terminal gave more choice than a standalone desktop at the time but clearly it had to be an 'intelligent'' terminal! :D

My current flock of computers are not dumb, I am thinking of setting them up as the back-ups to the VPS to serve that purpose and also allow some work if the VPS is down (though I understand a 'cloud' service should never go down, it just switches everything to an exact clone, though I wouldn't be surprised if real life is not quite as the services are advertised!).
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jimibt
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firlandsfarm wrote:
Mon May 16, 2022 3:09 pm
My current flock of computers are not dumb, I am thinking of setting them up as the back-ups to the VPS to serve that purpose and also allow some work if the VPS is down (though I understand a 'cloud' service should never go down, it just switches everything to an exact clone, though I wouldn't be surprised if real life is not quite as the services are advertised!).
just wondered how your research on this had gone. in particular (since I'm not actively researching new VPS at present), wondered if you'd unearthed any great deals out there!!
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firlandsfarm
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Hi Jim ... not taken it any further yet, what I have works so it's not an urgent task. From previous forays into VPS's there are plenty of 'bargains' out there but it's when you need some support some of those bargains as not as good as expected! The first filter is managed or not. If managed then to what extent and if not then how prepared are they to help/guide on an ad-hoc basis.
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jimibt
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firlandsfarm wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 8:59 am
Hi Jim ... not taken it any further yet, what I have works so it's not an urgent task. From previous forays into VPS's there are plenty of 'bargains' out there but it's when you need some support some of those bargains as not as good as expected! The first filter is managed or not. If managed then to what extent and if not then how prepared are they to help/guide on an ad-hoc basis.
yeah, it's a balancing act. the other extreme of course is AWS... but let's not go there just yet :D
Anbell
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jimibt wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 11:25 am
firlandsfarm wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 8:59 am
Hi Jim ... not taken it any further yet, what I have works so it's not an urgent task. From previous forays into VPS's there are plenty of 'bargains' out there but it's when you need some support some of those bargains as not as good as expected! The first filter is managed or not. If managed then to what extent and if not then how prepared are they to help/guide on an ad-hoc basis.
yeah, it's a balancing act. the other extreme of course is AWS... but let's not go there just yet :D
Have you tried lightsail?
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firlandsfarm
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jimibt wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 11:25 am
yeah, it's a balancing act. the other extreme of course is AWS... but let's not go there just yet :D
Anbell wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 11:56 pm
Have you tried lightsail?
OK. a slight dip into my lack of terms ... I thought about "AWS" and came up with Amazon but as a sailor "lightsail" had me thinking in a totally different direction until I Googled it! :lol: But then when I get to the Amazon website/page and try to open an account at their invitation I'm met with questions I have no idea of and they don't provide a link to an explanation simple or not! Do I want to "Try the $10 per node for free for three months when using Containers"? I don't know, what is a node? And "containers", are they suggesting their service fell off the back of a lorry! :lol:

I always feel these website pages describing an Internet product are authored by the people who either created the product or have spent their 40 hours pw working with the product. Their webpage designers should be kept away from the product until ready for market and then put the explanatory pages together based on their first impressions of seeing it just as any potential new customer would. I always remember the CEO of a biscuit manufacturer who said that the CEO of all manufacturers of products in packaging should have the unwrapping of the packaging tested by the oldest person in their family! How often do I think of that comment when trying to find the magic tag that 'easily' opens a packet of biscuits! :x
Anbell
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AWS is indeed confusing!
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ODPaul82
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A container is pretty much a snapshot/image of an application and any associated items that it needs to run. If your software runs perfectly with no issue in a container on one machine, you can take a copy of that container and run it elsewhere.
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firlandsfarm
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ODPaul82 wrote:
Thu Jun 02, 2022 6:40 am
A container is pretty much a snapshot/image of an application and any associated items that it needs to run. If your software runs perfectly with no issue in a container on one machine, you can take a copy of that container and run it elsewhere.
OK, thanks Paul, so if I'm understanding you then as a guy who just wants things to run in one location (in this instance taking The Cloud as one location) and has no perceived need to move things around I would have no interest in a Container, yes?
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ODPaul82
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Exactly. It's good for companies as you can have a build of a networked application and you want to clone what you have to run on a different server & it will just work. For users of BA there's zero need for it.
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firlandsfarm
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Anbell wrote:
Tue May 24, 2022 11:56 pm
Have you tried lightsail?
I think I have got to the bottom of it and decided to try the basic Lightsail service. It also seems I should open a Root account and an Iam account. I understand the principle of using the two accounts, the same as Windows recommends. Just wondering if I can assign no control privileges to an Iam account i.e. the person can log in, access their files and run apps. but nothing more ... they would have no authority to change anything whatsoever (I have my reasons! :)).

When accessing files and apps within the service and performing an activity (say excel and entering a value into a cell in a spreadsheet from the PC keyboard at home to seeing the result on the screen at home) is it noticeably slower compared with having everything on the home computer as now?
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