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My wife and I decided that desktops hog up to much space in our house. With having 2 desktops running it took up almost an entire room for desks and chairs and everything that went with them. So we setup a plan to accommodate our network so that we could remove both desktop machines and replace with laptops and some dedicated storage for music, movies and documents, along with backup space. Our home office was going to be renovated for other plans.

The Plan

1. Setup Rack for 1 or 2 PC sized servers.

2. Move router and DSL modem to basement.

3. Run cable to our kitchen for print and scan server.

4. Get laptops for everyday use.

5. Keep everything under $2000.00

While looking at Lowes one day I came across this shelf unit. I could easily stack 1 to 2 PC sized servers inside of this along with all my networking components. Total price was $38.00. I bought this took it home and setup the closet under the stairs in my basement. Since we just put in the stairs I had already had electric outlets run in the closet for this reason. The shelf fit perfectly. Next I ran the phone line from the outside box to the closet. I then went and bought a surge protector for use in the closet. $49.00 I moved my DSL modem and router to the closet. At this point we purchased my wifes laptop.

I decided on a Dell Inspiron B130 system. My wife is a, surf the internet, check email, download music, watch an occasional movie user. The system is a bare bones laptop with a wireless networking card. Windows XP home edition and open office. Once we got her machine Setup and all her information setup we tested wireless through the house and had no issues with signal quality.

Once my wifes desktop was freed up, we thought a good way to save some money was to recommission her system as a server. After tinkering with different Linux distributions I decided on Ubuntu feisty fawn server. Setup Samba for file sharing and open ssh for remote admin, then moved the box to the rack. Total cost was $0.00. She already had a large hard drive installed for all her music. So we had a functional server now with document storage, music storage, and Backup of my desktop and my wifes laptop.

At this point in the process we hit a small snag. We could no longer get DirecTV service due to trees. So I found an alternate via TED and Joost. This required another system to accomplish this. In hind sight I would have created a Vmware system to do this. It is currently in my to do list. Fortunately for me a I had just helped a friend migrate to a laptop and they were going to throw out the box. I took it graciously and put it to service right away. Now my rack had 2 servers and no real extra cost was spent.

So then came my laptop. I’m a power user. I do not play games or do graphic editing, but wanted a nice laptop that could handle a little abuse. I was not worried about size, the only thing it had to have was wireless support and a decent battery life. It just so happened that my work had just purchased me an Inspiron 6400 dual core laptop with integrated wireless support that week. So this put me way under budget for a computer for me.

A recap of what was spent so far.

Wife’s Laptop $645.00

Rack $38.00

Surge Protector $49.00

Server Software $00.00

TV Server $00.00

Cable and misc supp. $25.00

My Laptop $00.00

Total $757.00

With the total being under budget by far I started planing for more stuff. One thing we really do need is some sort of power management or a UPS system for our closet. We loose power at least once a week, but for only 20 – 30 seconds at a time. This is just annoying that everything is rebooted when you get home. I purchased 2 APC XS1200 UPS units used from a computer shop at $75.00 a piece.

The next thing on our agenda was printing needs. Okay I don’t print a thing. Unfortunately my wife prints between 30 to 40 pages a day for her work. So we had to have some sort of printer in the house. We opted for a nice laser printer with network support in our mudroom. I ran cable from the server closet to the mudroom and installed the printer. We purchased the HP Laserjet 3055 for $379.00. This also gave us the ability to fax and scan. We don’t fax anything usually but it is a nice feature to have. With the scanner it helps big time. I will get into my paper management post tomorrow.

The last piece of the puzzle. We needed an entire backup solution to take care of the entire network. I opted to use my old PC with and external USB 500gb Hard drive to store everything on. Using a system called FreeNAS I was able to turn the PC into NAS storage for all the backup needs. Using rsync to backup everything from the server works great with no interaction from me.

Wife’s Laptop $645.00

Rack $38.00

Surge Protector $49.00

Server Software $00.00

TV Server $00.00

Cable and misc supp. $25.00

My Laptop $00.00

APC UPS Backups $150.00

Printer $379.00

USB 500GB HD $130.00

Total $1416.00

Budget Remaining $584.00

Please share your home network setup and I will post them here on my site. Think I could do something different tell me.