I would never attach a customers drive to my office machine. I wouldn't want to take the risk of being compromised or tie up that machine doing scans or cloning.
I do 90% of my bench work from 1 PC. This PC is also my Main PC that I game on, surf on ect.
Intel Core i7 3.20 GHz Six-Core, 32GB Ram, 1000 watt PSU, 3 network cards, ect hooked up to 5 screens. I run VMware for all my customers work. Everything is done on VM's, including "MY" image/OS (Windows 7 that I use for gaming). I can run multi machines (again VM's) off this one system and still surf, game, research if needed.
Sure, I have 2 other systems and 3 laptops within the house, but this is for personal use between the kids and wife.
The way I see it, most of the new systems out there can handle multitasking just fine and for the most part, we don't even come close to pushing them to their limits. With one system, I am using less power and less space.
For the record, I also have a NAS server running Raid with 2 2TB HD's backing up all my VM images (Linux, Windows XP, 7, server 2008 and what not). So at all times, I have at least 3 copies of everything.
Here I am testing a VOIP system for a customer. The system sits to the left hand side.
Living in Arizona heat, in an issue. Running too many bench systems causes a lot of heat, which requires me to spend more on power for both AC and the cost of the systems. I find this to be a win win situation.
Why more techs don't work with VM's is my question!
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