Where are you buying OptiPlex's for 50? Get one for 30.
I would say look into i3 (more power efficient) and get some cheap budget SSDs or dirt cheap HDD (it will be plenty fast).
Because win11 requires TPMs there businesses had to replace office drone email terminals, so there are plates of those getting scrapped. Maybe less, so most probably have been turned to shredded metals.
My solution to this is setup an SFTPgo drive or mount a restic drive and have docspell (alt to paperless with worse UI) to watch for changes.
Main advantage of docspell that it consumes files without being destructive to consume folder. Having a network or cloud drive was already the way I stored my files, so I did not need to change much.
Here are her choices:
Improved workflow + time investment in cleanup OR BURN BABY BURN THAT MONEY!!!
Jokes aside. She needs to start splitting photos she is actively working on and the ones that are effectively archived. I am sure there are ways to make the it still available either making a lower rez copy that lets her browse them in Imitch or some other tool that she would find more palatable... but there is going to be trial and error phase... not fun.
As for the money burning bit start... just buy bigger SSD... you can put them in DAS (direct attached storage) which is similar to NAS but is available only that one machine has deeper integration inside of system so may overcome the bugs lightroom is throwing at her.
I had a chat with only ISP that was willing to consider pulling cable to the consultant gave me "3.6k for fiber+ 50 EUR/month and I am saying that only because 3.6k is the cap... Engineers may look at this and say NOPE" also I do not need fiber they just made it clear that if I do not buy pricy plan they will not even consider doing anything.
NASA people were using Davmail because MS Exchange was locked down to not permit SMTP
My age.
I remember about a decade ago when wiping your phone daily to install the new ROM was not that much big deal. I think a lot of stuff was unstable more unstable than it is now but we relied less on it. Now. I can not imagine loosing some data or some things that are important to me.
Also regulation. I worked in ecosystem that if it was a cloud service you would have to sooo much extra time on paperwork for only a chance of not getting denied. There was also some other legislation out right eliminated a number of services. Local became only real option.
I have a setup where Wireguard docker container that is connected to my local network and if I use any other container to get local access I use `network_mode: service:wireguard-container` for that remote container have the same access as my VPN container.
This has pros and cons. Major pro that the host machine has no access to my network, so it works as regular server. Cons are that if I want to expose say a web panel for one of my local services I have to apply proxy settings to the VPN container and if you use a multiple copies of the same container that does not allow to change default port... you get collisions.
Yah ZT apps SUCK. I do not know why it takes them soo long to fix anything on there.
ZT has the benefit of maintaining P2P connection if controller goes down, but for mobile tailscale probably offers better experience. Also look into cloudflare's zerotrust offerings.
I did some online shopping and my experience is 50/50.
50 % of goods I was looking for were at their normal price with discount sticker slapped onto it and 50% had actual meaningful discounts.
Since I was buying the discounted stuff I added a few things that I knew I will need but was in no rush to try and bundle some shopping costs.
Cost. But I do not agree with 'Whi would i pay for a service when i could host it myself for free?'
It is not 'free' it is cheaper. Today I got a quote from utilities company saying that api access to how much heat I use is 20 EUR/month a software defined radio recover is 20-40 USD + shipping. To do a full setup and research it takes about half of day some exiting HW and electricity but even summing all of that up. It is cheaper and utils company has already lied to me at least twice this year, so... their stacking motivation for me to independetly monitor the metering.
It is cool that it exists but in EU we use qualified electronic signatures eIDAS that has cryptographic identification verification and national governments provides ability to sign documents using that protocol.
Signing pieces of paper is still a thing but emulating it digitally looks a little strange to me.
You can host Wireguard or any other tunnel that you want inside of a container in the VPS.
I use VPNs inside of a container because they do not grant access to my network to host machine. Then on VPS you can also host something like traefik and that would apply to the VPN container.