I know I am late to the party, but my first question to these requests is always "What are you REALLY trying to do?". Most people come at you with a problem to their solution instead of asking you for a solution to their problem. Once I sit someone down and have them tell me exactly what their problem is there is always a much simpler path to take instead of the putting the square peg in the round hole. In this situation you are describing I would be asking them what are you going to use this for? Are you expecting a handful of engineers on the enterprise hitting it? Or are you going for a web facing portal audience. How you plan to implement a SQL database really starts there.

I use a Dell M3800 for my everyday development. But to be precise, I don't do all my development on it. A lot of my work is done on virtual servers on the network. It's got all that I need and in a great format. Aircraft aluminum case and light as hell. So whether it's doing design on the run or sitting down at the office it gets the job done. My only issue with it is that it gets hot when running a heavy graphics load.

When SharePoint first came out with that ridiculously expensive licensing I ended up making a "replacement" for it on my own. It's simply designing a secure web portal that uses Active Directory credentials. Then underneath the hood you manage web folders containing uploaded documents from each user. You use a database (ie. MySQL or SQL Server) to keep track of who owns what and what is the latest version of the document. And Voila! You have the core of what makes SharePoint work. The rest of SharePoint are interesting web parts, etc that you can build on. But for your purposes a simple secure web portal will do the trick. And you will save money in the end.

I have a brand new laptop that is doing something similar. I wonder if the update is the problem. For some reason the wifi just stops working. It works fine then it complains there is no internet and won't come back until I restart or at least go into sleep mode then back on. Already reinstalled the driver, but it's still occurring. :wtf:

Always validate your parameters and assume your user is an absolute moron. Then set up logging and early reporting messages back to you so that when they call you up all frantic you already have the problem solved. ;) It's how Scotty does it... "Aye Cap'n"

I have full admin rights on my development laptop, but on the server not so much. Which makes installing and deploying new apps quite annoying. Just the other day I was asked to migrate an existing web application on to a new web server, but of course I wasn't going to be given admin rights. So of course I couldn't even open the IIS Manager. I wonder what they will say when I need to create a PFX for the SSL? There is a point where infrastructure has to start accepting that software engineers are admins. -Wynter