I swear, some people just get it. They understand what all of those "system requirements" mean on their website - but I am not one of those people. I have been given the task of purchasing a laptop for use at home (for reports and daily financial functions) and I have NO concept of what would work. Please send suggestions!!!
Try the HP Envy X2. It meets the system requirements, plus you can use it as a touch screen tablet when you want. The nice thing is that it's about half the price of what a good lap top cost 2 years ago.
My philosophy is... use a desktop if at all possible. We have found laptops and tablets to be more problematic, slower, poor battery performance, more likely to get broken, and more expensive. If you have to take data back and forth to the office, consider using a jump drive, and not moving the whole computer.
Most of the EMR programs do not have very high equipment demands, but fast reliable internet browsing often does. My minimum is a higher end dual core processer (2.4 ghz speed or higher) with at least 2 gig ram.
Pick your flavor as far as computer brand. Don't know if OM Cloud works through a web interface or an executable application on the local computer, if it's the latter than a Mac is out of the question. Get at least a Core i3 or i5 Intel processor and 4GB of RAM. A 6Mb connection is recommended, since you are using this from home, there may be others within the home using the Internet at the same time you are. Make sure your wireless router is 802.11n as well and using some type of encrypted security as per HIPPA.
And by every possible means, DO NOT use the "cloud".
The "cloud" is still a new technology, is having multiple teething pains (like when the Google cloud went "down" and knocked about 50% of the country off line).
It may cost a bit more, but having the servers in a closet or back room of your facility is still a far better way to go. If you have remote sites, VPN technology is proven and tried and true.
IMO, it is far better to be in control of your own databases and servers than it is to use something that you don't know where it is located, how it can be accessed by others, and is suseptible to mysterious outages.
I agree the Cloud is not such a hot idea, but as far as laptops or computers go, I would not buy anything that isn't a quad core processor.
Is anyone having problems with OfficeMate and their Thinksmart cloud server?
We own and maintain 2 off-site servers, so in effect, we are using our own cloud. It supports our 10 offices, and we've never had an issue with it. We've been doing this for about 5 years now. It cost approx. $1500 per month to maintain, but the trade-off is that the hardware in our offices does not have to be expensive. If someone steals one of our laptops (which is predominately what we all use) there is no pt. information on them, as it is in a secure site somewhere else. Even the employees don't know where the servers are located.Quote:
Originally Posted by MikeAurelius
Makes sense, we have been using ThinkSmart with Officemate and nothing but problems. We had our own server, but thought the clould might be better.
We use OM in the cloud, with the hosting done by iManaged Solutions. I have nothing but positive things to report with the folks over there. Many are former Officemate Technicians, who know the product better, and provide better support than Officemates current techs. When I was having trouble with my equipment interface, they knew exactly the right tech I needed to talk to at OM, got the tech to call me.. and got everything straightened out in 15 mins. Much better than the 1-2 days OM and Marco were quoting me.