Please let me lay out my dilema, it may be some what long winded and for that I will appoligize upfront.....I have a small commercial screen printing business we are housed in a 7000 sq. ft. building metal exterior metal interior
the building is broken up into 2 parts, Back production area, and front offices, these 2 areas are divided by walls that are metal on the production side and drywall on the office side.
My broadband service comes into the building in a small room in the production area called the mechanical room (where the fuse boxes, water heater, phone system, water meters and such are housed.) the broadband service line is hooked directly into their broadband modem, this is hooked into a Linksys broadband router, the Linksys router is plugged into a 12 port cat5 terminal block which feeds all my office rooms ( Let me also say that the cat5 outlets in the rooms were poorly thought out and other than moving them, I now have to run cat5 cables across the floor to reach the desk areas.).
I have 4 desk workstations all hooked up to the internet right now, one is for all the artwork I receive on line, one is dedicated to online shipping services with UPS and Fed-Ex, one is dedicated to Quickbooks and on line payroll services, the last is used soley for paying on line taxes and business banking.
All of these computers share 1 printer thru a local area network that I some how got to work but don't ask how, I don't remember.
I now have to add three laptops in my offices for customer services and online ordering, this is all getting very costly for we are a very small family run business, but the manufactures we deal with are forcing us to invest in more and more technology every day, we don't have an IT dept. that would be me only because I know a little more about computers than everyone else here. And I can't afford to have one of our local tech houses set this all up for me.

So after all that here is my dilema.....
1. Do I want to go wireless because of the where do I plug all these in problems, and will it work through metal walls or do I spend a weekend running new cat5 cables from the mechanical room to the offices and putting new outlets in the rooms where I need them (This also effects the laptops I will buy, should I have the wireless N card installed in them, does this have better reach?
2. I am getting sick of constantly renewing my virus programs on all these computers 2 of them I have Norton and the other 2, I have Trend Micro, I am also constantly running spyware sweepers and such on them seperatly and this is taking up alot of my time, now I will have 3 more to contend with. I know nothing about servers and how they work but if I had my wish this is what it would be, having all 7 computers being protected by 1 security program, thus only 1 renewal every year, 1 program that sweeps all computers so I don't have to sit down at each computer and do this manually,
as far as sharing ,the only thing that I would want to share between all computers is the internet no programs or files, and each computer would have its own E-mail address that would direct my customers to that computer.
All these computers would share a printer(right now the computer that has the printer hooked up to it has to always be on in order to print from other computers) I don't know if this is the best way either.
also if I was wireless would I buy a wireless printer and what type of reach do they have. Do I need a server I see at Dell you can get them as cheap as $500.00 but I think you must also have a program to run them.

Bottom line I just don't know what the @#%$ I'm doing or need to do, can someone lead this IT idiot in the right direction.

Appoligies for such a long post, I hope I did not break any of CF rules, if so I
sincerely apoligize, just grabbing at any straws I can right now, my customers are putting pressure on me to start this online ordering, I receive roughly 50-75 E-mails a day right now, some I want , some I didn't ask for but I don't want to have scour between them all to locate or maybe miss any of my customers orders.

Thank You,
Cruiserx

If you are not actually sharing programs etc and just sharing an internet connection then wireless would seem a good idea but based on the layout of the building im not sure this would be the most reliable way of doing things. I think I would go for a server but probably best wait until someone with a bit more knowlege on this topic answers your post.

For #1:
Wireless probably won't be able to contend with metal walls. Plus for online banking you probably don't really want wireless, especially if you do not secure it with WPA. I would suggest investing in some CAT5 and prehaps running it across the ceiling [if your office area does have one that isn't too high up]. One alternative would be to run CAT5 to each room where you need networking and have a wireless access point in each, however, I would still suggest hard wiring computers which are used for online banking.
For #2: I would not suggest running Norton - it is by no means the best antivirus program. I suggest that you purchase NOD32. It is pretty much the best antivirus protection on the market and it doesn't cost too much either. As far as I remember, you get free updates for life once purchased.

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Thanks,
Ash
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intensely agree with ash i do. Norton probobly has to be the worst AV out there, if it even considers itself that at most. Besides, its insanley intrusive and the controls are in no means "User friendly". Defentely would go with NOD32 or in this case, ZoneAlarm Pro or ZoneAlarm Suite-- which is for Vista users.

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