@jmoore I tried Asus a few years ago with poor results. Leaning towards Dell at the moment.

@hobbit666 I've always had a good experience with Dell and HP. My current laptop is a Probook 635 and it has given me zero problems. I did an SSD swap and maxed out the RAM, but it is just under-powered now for my needs. One feature I will miss on the newer models is the serial port. I don't use it often, but it has saved me more than a few times. I hate carrying dongles and adapters for everything.

Researching laptops. Mine is 6 years old and is struggling. Thinking of going with Fedora or Ubuntu and having a Windows 10 VM for managing Hyper-V, etc. There are too many choices. Looking at Dell and HP. A friend is pushing me towards Lenovo but I don't think I want to take that route.

I need to experiment and come up with a plan. He wants to buy some new hardware too as his is getting up there in age. He knows there is better/faster equipment out there now. I already did an SSD swap in his laptop (W10) and his iMac (2012). Right now, he is talking about a new Mac Mini and multiple monitors. Parallels is installed on the iMac so he can run Win XP for some old PC games.

Virtualbox is a possibility with Linux VMs but I can't say I've ever used it on MacOS. Parallels is another option.

We have been using ZixMail for years and haven't had any issues to speak of. Support is responsive if you need them.

@scottalanmiller I need to load up a test machine with Ubuntu or similar and let him try it out first.

@IRJ There is a client now. I'm thinking it uses java.

@Dashrender Apparently there is a Linux client even though they recommend Windows. Could run Ubuntu VMs to avoid licensing issues.

@coliver I wasn't aware that you could load more than one instance. I asked about that option and I believe he said it will not load another. That is what prompted my question.

My FIL is retired and spends most of his time playing Runescape. He has multiple characters and is totally involved in the game. He wants to be able to have at least 3 instances of it running at the same time, but on 1 large monitor where he can "play" them simultaneously.

I am thinking this is entirely possible with some VMs as you can only have 1 instance of the game running at a time on the same PC. The part I am unsure about is how to have the console of each VM running and usable from 1 monitor, mouse, and keyboard.

Does this seem logical versus having 3 separate PC setups going at the same time?

Switching from Vanilla KVM (CentOS -> Fedora -> Ubuntu) to Proxmox
@scottalanmiller Never thought I would hear those words from you!

@JaredBusch That brings back memories. Used to cut and split wood years ago. Hard work.

If you could manage shares from Cockpit it would be a game changer in the NAS category.

Finished moving a group of Hyper-V servers, firewall, and switches to a new MDF room. Also had to re-splice the fiber from the ISP because mice got into the tray. ISP decided that it could wait until next week. Customer gave me the green light after he spoke to the ISP's owner. Fun times.

Server updates.

While not technically monitors, I was using a pair of Mackie SRM150 Powered Speakers as PC speakers for a while. Very nice and powerful. My son just swapped out a pair of monitors for speakers today.

LSI cards are pretty popular and can be found on ebay for cheap. Even the rebranded Dell/HP cards can be used most of the time. They are PCIe. You can change the firmware on them too.

I paid for 3 years of web hosting and email but the SSL cert for the email was only good for 1 year. If they don't have a Letsencrypt option, then it is time to change providers.

@JaredBusch All the movies we ripped are still in .mkv files. I want to compress them to conserve storage in my Plex library but can't make up my mind on what I want to end up with.

@siringo I have heard similar stories where Verizon deployed it in the NFL stadiums and it does not cover the entire stadium. Any obstruction kills the signal.