Just FYI..
A friend works in a small office - 6-7 users. All workstations are XP home, various configurations, shared network with 4 other companies, no server, really bad setup. I get indigestion just thinking about it.
Anyway, last summer, I took one of my lab servers - a dual P3 1.2 GHz w/ 4G RAM, loaded SBS 2003 standard, and then loaded MS Virtual Server (which is free). I created a virtual XP Pro instance, sysprepped it, and deployed 5 instances under virtual server. The external users, using any crappy pc/config, would make an RDP connection to the virtual XP system console.
The virtual systems were tightly controlled via GPO, and maintained via WSUS, central AV, and kix scripts. Performance was adequate (considering the low end workstations they were already using) but it proved that the concept would work for a small office system given adequate hardware. I'd probably be comfortable using a dual P4 2.6GHz or better system, and would likely invest in the Enterprise? version of SBS to leverage additional RAM.
Glenn
_________________________
Actually I
am a Rocket Scientist!
