Equipping A Small Office

[rogerdee123]

I'm setting up a small office in Bkk ... about 120 meters. Only one full time staff (office manager/secretary) and a few part time staff (accountant, cleaner, messenger, etc). The office is to be used as a working space for about 5 other exec staff (posted in Asia) when they are in Bangkok and an additional 6-7 from US and Europe who will drop in ocassionally. All these staff will have their own laptops (wireless equipped).

The office will have a couple of workstations and also the meeting room will double as workspace.

My questions are :-

- I need good reliable (reasonable fast) internet. Given experience of others here in Bangkok:-

- which internet provider is the least risk (i.e. most reliable) ?

- should I hard wire for ethernet connection or go for wireless ?

- what kind of printer set-up would you use? I will need at least one good color laser printer but given my experiences re complications of using networked printers ... should I buy a few ink jets or cheap B&W lasers?

thanks for any comments .... I am particularly interested in what people actually have experience with and how it works rather than what should theoretically work. I know about all the latest technology, I just want to know what works here in the reality of Krungthep. I don't have time to be constantly trouble shooting LANs, printer or internet connections for individuals not tech savy, etc etc

[monty]

Go for wired LAN.

Although wireless lan's are pretty reliable nowadays, the wired version will run with much less hick-ups. You might put up 1 wireless accespoint if you have staff who might use laptops, they're cheap anyway now.

On internet in Bangkok you'll have to wait for posts of Bangkok residents, although in my opinion, if you go for the more expensive sme (business) packages pretty much all ISP's are quite acceptable, although very expensive compared to what we get in the West!

I run one Epson C1100 color laser, and am very happy with it. I do not have the network capable version, so the PC it's hooked up to is always on. Works a charm, although every so often the printer will come up with an "invalid data" message, together with a bad print. Happens only when printed from one of the networked PC's never when printing from the PC it's hooked up to.

No problem in a small office but might be annoying when you're printing from a different room!

Since the PC with the printer is always on, I also use it as a central storage server, with automated back-ups to an external drive...