>I am writing a small multi-user app (VFP) - starting with 2 workstations - then moving to 3 or 4 (max). I was planning on running this app on a peer-to-peer network - at least until I thumbed through some threads here on the UT.
>
>Some of these threads go back a while. Does anyone have any recent
>experience with peer-to-peer (Win98 2nd Edition or NT Workstation 4.0?).
>
>My major concern here is data corruption. I plan to battery backup
>all of the peers and am willing to put NT (W2K?) on each if necessary.
>Each client will run its own copy of the app, write its work files
>locally ... The "server" peer will be a new one (PIII-500 or better)
>and will only share the data files. What I'd like to avoid is
>(at least initially) maintaining a dedicated server box for 2 clients.
>I don't ever see this app expanding beyond 3-4 clients (this is
>my wife's business and we don't want it to get any bigger than that).
>
>NT Workstation would obviously be more stable and I presume would provide some protection against killing the network if, for instance, VFP or Word locks up. Is its peer networking also more robust than Win98?
>
>Appreciate any insight. I'd like to proceed with this project, but want to pin down some costs first.

The cost difference in NT Server and workstation shouldn't be that great for NT Server and 5 licenses. It's the only way to go.