>Thomas,
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>Thought I would move this to a new thread.
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>Interesting.... If you have a removable hard disk, why the four machines? I'm thinking of doing something similar; what are your machines and basic configurations? Any issues with hardware differences between you and your clients? Are they networked? Thanks!
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>>At home I have four computers on my network, each machine with a removable hard disk (removable tray). Each client has a dedicated hard disk with the development app on it with the same version operating system as used by the client. This allows me to get repeat customers, add on contracts and referrals.

Renoir;

Why four machines? It grew! Out of control and all that. I develop on one machine, and like to deploy the app on first a clean machine for full installation and functionallity. Then I copy to a third machine and look for contention problems. The fourth machine is normally hooked up to the internet. Just a bit of a happening I guess. I have a Hub for 8 ports - but I think my wife will prevent me from any ambitions of increasing my machine count.

All my clients are networked and I run whatever they use on a minimum of two of my machines. Thank God I have not had a Novell user for about 3 years. You might guess I am not a lover of Novell. So I have Microsoft network for small offices and NT Server 4.0 and Windows 2000, along with Windows 95, and 98.

My computers run from 200 to 800mhz, trying to emulate most clients set ups. I am careful about hardware configuration and spell it out it any contracts. Also, I like to include known drivers - I get into the details. If the client changes a video card and there is a problem - it can be very easy to resolve. Drivers and hardware conflicts are things I like to avoid.

Tom