Am I doing the right thing.

[Grampa]

Let me introduce myself. I am a 67 year old farmer in the Ozarks hills country of south central Missouri, in the USA. I have been using computers for only a bit over 3 years now. I have only recently tried linux (Zenwalk 6) about four months ago; I like it but learning to use it has given me fits at times. I would like to say I'm the sharpest pencil in the box, but that isn't true, and age has dulled the lead quite a bit. I have recently aquired a broadband cable connection to my cabin and want to set up a method for my children and grandchildren to send family photos or swap photos with one place (me) being the storage spot. A computer shop in a town close to me told me I would need a fairly expensive computer and Windows home server to do what I want to do easily. Can Amahi do what I want to do or will I have to resort to the Windows Home Server software? Is the program fairly easy for even a older, new to linux person like me to work with? If I'm barking up the wrong tree please say so.

Thanks for any help,
Grampa

[gmw]

Congrats on going where my kids grandparents (my parents) fear to tread!

If you can install the Fedora operating system then Amahi will do it for you.
So, you will need
1. a machine to install Amahi on,
2. a Fedora installation disk (download and burn a DVD).
3. some time to install

Then so the kids can access your machine securely they will need to install a VPN client for accessing the machine (it is called HDAconnect for Amahi).

Note: you can get online support/help from the chat room: http://talk.amahi.org/

[moredruid]

concerning the cost: any midrange system should do the trick fine. You may want to focus more on storage capacity than speed.
Dell sometimes has great small-business server offers:
Check this model for $ 279 (originally $ 606) without S&H and taxes.
The best part is that you can order it without an Operating System so you won't pay for something you won't use anyway
The default options for this system are fine, you may want to choose larger disks (default is 2 x 160GB) and a 3 year hardware NBD (Next Business Day) swap warranty if that makes you feel better. Note that these systems are designed for server usage and therefore are more robust than a normal desktop.

[gmw]

Note: if you just want to share some folders another solution would be to use DropBox.com
This is independent of Amahi and will likely be cheaper (you get a few gigabytes of storage replication free.)