Gary, I am a one man show but only after my son joined the Army. Before that, he ran the computers for 6 years. I can do this by myself, only because my customers have had over 6 years of training on using the viewing stations. My viewing stations are very simple. I use ONE computer (Pentium 4 3.02 GHx) running Windows XP Pro. I have (2) Western Digital 10,000 RPM hardrives, one for the 2 programs I use and the other is for Windows Temp file. I have a Seagate 750GB hardrive that has the photos on it. I have 3.5 GB of memory. Software is Windows XP Pro and Betwin software. Betwin software allows me to set up 4 viewing stations on one computer with each viewing station acting independently of each other. I have 4 video cards, 4 mice and 4 monitors hooked to the one computer. I use the viewer inside of windows for viewing photos. Since 90% of the world uses windows, I do not have to train them on how to use the computer. When I transfer my photos from my processing computer to the viewing stations, I use a Gigabyte network and I only have to transfer to 1 computer instead of 4 different computers. It makes the transfer 4 times faster.
My processing computer is a Intel i7 2.66Ghz quad core
processor installed on an Asus p6T motherboard using an Nvidia video card w/ 512MB of memory, 12 GB DDR3 memory, 2 Western Digital VelocRaptor 10,000 RPM hard drives (one for programs and one for Temp files), 3 Western Caviar Black 1 TB 7200 RPM hard drives for photos. I use a Dell Ultra Sharp 2209WA Monitor. I am using Windows 7RC for operating system, Photo Mechanic for download photos & adding IPTC.
The key to making this work is to use the fastest computers along with the fastest software with an efficient workflow. I use the Omniflash UBMA USB compact card reader and Transcend 8 GB 300x compact flash cards. This downloads my photos faster than 150x 1GB cards on a non UDMA reader.
I build my own computers because nobody makes a computer that fits my needs and I don't need a warranty. If something brakes down in the field, I need to fix it there on the spot or I am out all the business for that weekend.
