Verizon has sim cards now for the LTE network. I have a few devices (mini wifi router and 4g usb stick) and both require a SIM card; both are on Verizon.

Thing is - and I speak from experience - dental software (which would be considered "medical software" is HEAVILY reliant on the juggernaut that is Microsoft. Throwing out WINE and proclaiming that it will just work without some headache (which is honestly what every other solution other than paying the company is) is absurd.

But that's kind of what you stated anyways. Won't be cheap. Well, it's hard to convince most clients to not be cheap. It's a way of life in certain businesses!

This is what I was thinking.

If you are a large organization working with a twitter, facebook or other type of social media - there should be a larger form of authentication and verification in place. For instance, PKI, only allowing communication initiation from a specific network (I know, lame but it at least keeps honest people honest) and THEN passwords for "company" accounts. Compensation at that point could be used to secure this type of additional security, and I think it would be top on the company's list to ensure that these things get implemented so that compromises would be minimized.

Some vehicles go out of their way to protect the transmission and driveline, it doesn't allow you full control. My vehicle won't allow me to downshift into first unless I'm moving less than 20mph even though redline would be closer to 40-45mph for first - but in my area, the distinct lack of hills usually have me just hitting the brakes.

welcome our electron-bombarded-protected overlords!

If it was automated, couldn't a virus just hook into that?

A long time ago it was broken on my WM6.5 phone; there's somewhere on Facebook's site that you can get an email address that's linked to your account. You can then just email pictures to that address and it'll post up on FB. Easy peasy.

In most neighborhoods there are noise laws for this. In mine, if a car can be clearly heard from 50 feet there's a fine involved. Of course, police can't be everywhere.

I'm one of those guys with a loud system - inside of the car. Outside? No rattles and less noise than the engine idling. I feel no need to advertise my music to everyone, and I learned a long time ago that most everyone doesn't care to hear it anyways.

I bought an amd for my recent file server build. 120$ for chip + mobo (and integrated graphics, who needs a video card?). 35 watt tdp, and most of it's time is spent idling away.

I could have gone Intel - don't get me wrong, but a decent motherboard with all the features of the AMD I bought runs closer to 150 by itself.

One would think the timing could be set... oh you know. to a standard....

I would say after driving in Germany for just 2 weeks, having a requirement of drive right pass left would be a GODSEND to the United States. Of course, there were a few cars in the travels that didn't particularly obey that, but overall the experience driving was night and day different.

Maybe the universe would collapse if you tried to grow a kidney in a kidney.

Well, it certainly looks like it's been in the same form for a long time, so I'd say we have a winner.

I found two compounded issues when using an older chip/pc for a file server:

1. IDE. Suprising lack of higher capacity IDE drives, but that's technology for ya.
2. Bandwidth. Even though the A7N8X-E board has a gigabit ethernet port, getting the entire system to run >30mb/s wasn't happening.

I know, it's definitely an old chip (Athlon XP 2500+) and an old platform, but the speed I now get out of my relatively cheap AMD A4 "NAS" is blinding in comparison. Does it need the horsepower? Nah. But it is nice to be able to move things around at full gigabit speeds now.

1. I would strongly recommend an upgrade to Windows 7. If that's not possible (and I know the submitter didn't want anything but XP) then XP it is.
2. Install a router that has the ability to VPN in. Might require dyndns and knowledge of openvpn (dd-wrt user here.) There are other ways around this - port forwarding to the host machine and the like, but nothing short of being on the actual PC beats getting onto the same network as the affected PC.
3. Use some software to take a snapshot of the PC running in good condition. This might require running the PC for a few weeks so Mom gets everything right, then snapshot it. This would be the easy "remote fix" for a PC that is totally screwed and you have no other option.
4. Get a few backup drives and have Mom cycle them out. Once a week should be fine. Bonus points for getting them into either a safe or a safety deposit box. This fixes most lost file issues if #3 needs to be used to bring the PC back to life.
5. Run through a disaster program and have a document handy to cover #3 above. If all else fails, KNOW that Mom can walk through the document when you can't get to the machine at all without any bit of prodding.
6. Invest in good antivirus and anti-malware. I typically use Security Essentials, but I also know that they're probably the top target for malware - seeing as free guarantees a wide user base. MAB would help snare some things that good AV just doesn't catch.

If you truly don't have the time to invest, creating an alternative option to what you have now is going to be all the more difficult. I typically play clean-up on my parent's PC and network over the holidays when I visit, and can remote in when away - and they're fairly savvy. My most recent fix was a router that wouldn't maintain any user-side connections for more than 2 minutes - new router, problem solved; but I had to be there to see it. My parents just thought the internet was slow....