Home Technology 2021 Edition

 Last Spring, I decided to clean out all of the older machines in the home.  I tossed out my 3x HP Compaq 7900s, my 7600, and my 7800.  I pulled the internal drives and backed them up to my 6TB Home drive. Then I pulled out anything that could be used on them and tossed them into the dumpster.  I also tossed out a great deal of other older computer stuff I no longer needed.

Last month, I got rid of my Optiplex 790 by giving it to my Father in Law.  That left my HP EliteDesk 800 and ProDesk 600 and an old Dell Precision Workstation.  I still have a couple of older i5 laptops that I will eventually get rid of, but I'm having a hard time getting rid of them right now.

Christmas 2020, I bought myself and the boy brand new Dell XPS Desktops.  Gabi has an Optiplex Micro 9020 for use as the bedroom computer.  We have have the EliteDesk as the living room computer on the 48" TV.  I actually just upgraded its HDD to a Samsung 970 500 TB SSD to give it a bit more performance.  I was planning to put my last Samsung 500TB SSD into the ProDesk as soon as I get another 3.5" to 2.5" adapter.

Eventually, I would like to get rid of the HPs altogether and replace them with another Optiplex Micro PC.  Right now, there isn't much need to replace them.

Gabi still has her laptop I got her after starting at Diamondback, but I was planning to order her a brand new laptop once I pay off the two Desktops we got at Christmas.  I'm not sure what to get her, and she doesn't really know either.  So its ont he back burner for now.

I still have my two G7 laptops I bought in 2019, but am leaning towards getting rid of the 15" laptop and taking the 17" machine to work for use there.

The home network is mostly the same as before with the exception of adding an Aruba Access Point and disabling the wireless networking on my old router.  I set up two Virtual Wifi Networks for the boy to use for his computer and PS4 and another for use with our cell phones. 

All of the networks run on their own IP range and don't connect into each other, so they can remain fairly secure.  I still run occasional troll Wifi networks, but for the most part have cut them back.

We no longer run network drive, but have dedicated drives for file storage.  It was a great idea and made it possible to stream our shared movie library across the home network, but with streaming services offering most of what we want to watch, it just isn't necessary.