Spiceworks is a free browser-based network management and administration program. It provides the user with a single dashboard from which he or she can inventory, monitor and troubleshoot the network.
When you first install it, Spiceworks scans your network. It checks Active Directory, does a NetBIOS scan and pings the addresses in your specified IP range. It took us a fair bit of fiddling with the firewall to get all the devices on our network inventoried, and even then our locally attached printer wasn’t found. This was a bit odd, given that it was attached to the PC Spiceworks was installed on.
Once it has its inventory, though, Spiceworks is refreshingly intelligent in the way it uses your information. For instance, wherever it can it will identify a client PC’s make and model. It will then automatically link that PC’s entry to the driver download page on its manufacturer’s website. It will also show you the machine’s spec, the programs that are installed on it, the amount of disk space free and so on.
I have been looking at getting some real estate in the monitor front for a while now and looked at various models. My Current biggest monitor is the 21″ which comes in at 1680×1050 and remember the issue her is resolution not how big the monitor is because after all if that was the case I might as well stick a 42″ TV on the wall and run it at 1920×1080 – yes it will be big but silly when you can get the same resolution from a cheap 22″.
