We are a small shop and we are running 3 VMs on a single HP Proliant G7 Server. It has enough memory and resources that it could probably run an additional 7 VMs if we wanted to. HP is having to face the reality that the people are buying less hardware because realistically the ratio of VMs to servers is high as 10:1. HP is trying to gouge customers on the warranty because they can't make it up in server sales. Our Proliant DL380 G7 hit the 3 year mark a few months ago and is now out of warranty. The additional cost of the most basic warranty (4 hours/day phone, no onsite) for a single Proliant server is approximately $3000 for three years. That is easily half the cost of the server. And that's the cheapest warranty option. Don't even ask about the 24/7 onsite warranty. This change effectively kills the secondary market for HP hardware. Denying access to firmware means that it will be next to impossible to install or update your OS. I've had to run the HP SPP firmware upate several times to address issues that would otherwise have rendered our Proliant server useless. In fact I have an unresolved issue with our server where it refuses to reboot to the OS, unless I boot from the HP SPP tool first. If I need a critical firmware update in the future, the only option may be the Piratebay. Ugh If HP doesn't reverse this decision, our next server will most likely be a Dell. Unless Dell decides to follow HP into the dark side as well.

A Vista 20p panel is a good recommendation. If you don't want to go the wireless route for the keypands and sensors, then stick to the wired 6160 Honeywell keypad. The 6160 has a larger display then the other keypads, which makes gives you more characters for reading the sensor names, and makes programming easier. http://www.homesecuritystore.com/p-154-6160-ademco-alpha-keypad.aspx As far as wired sensors go, the two most important in my opinion are the door contacts and motion sensors. With these two types of sensors you can create an effective coverage that would detect most thieves. You can sign up for cheap monitoring with the Vista20p. Some monitoring companies have their own smartphone apps, that will let you arm/disarm your system with your phone, run reports for which sensor was tripped, etc.

Tesla Model S uses a proximity sensor to detect the key fob in your pocket and extend the door handle with a motor:

http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/news/2013/05/video-sci-fi-wizardry-of-the-tesla-model-s-doors/index.htm

To quote from an article:

"From the instant you walk up to the Tesla S and the door handles motor out of the door, you know this isn't going to be like any other car you've ever driven. You open the door and the air conditioner has fired up, and your music is already playing. You put your foot on the brake, shift into gear, and you are off and running. There is no âoestartâ button. When you arrive, you just get out of the car; it turns itself off and locks up as you leave."

Tesla originally had a sleep mode for the inboard computer that was supposed to consume around 1%/day. But they found that the sleep mode often resulted in the car not detecting the key fob. So they disabled it until they could patch it. Not surprisingly, it sucks a lot of power while its sitting in non-sleep mode waiting for someone to walk by with the right key fob. If they had stuck with a manual door handle and a push start button for the engine, then the idle power issue would never have come up. In any case, Tesla is working on it and will resolved it eventually.

I was drawn to Magento because compared to most other open source shopping cart it appeared to be the most polished one out there. But after installing it, and trying to figure out the backend, I ended up in the forums. Most of the discussion turned out to be people asking for help for things which should have been trivial. I was amazed at the totally obtuse and confusing steps to do most things. The community developers were few and far between, probably because coding any plugins was so much harder than it needed to me. I've tested many carts and Magento ranks really high among all of them for complexity, and not in a good way. Its too bad cause Magento offered some features that is usually only available in very expensive carts, such as multi-store support and powerful attribute modifiers. I experienced the performance issues that have been mentioned earlier, and it appeared the only way to get it to an acceptable level was to use a dedicated server.

I was in the same shoes after my web host (for several years) got their server hacked by some script kiddies. When I ran a security scan (using Acutenix) I found that pretty much all the server software was out of date: Apache, MySQL, Php, etc. I sent a report outlining the results of the scan to the web host, and they told me that they would "investigate". Needless to say I started looking for another host immediately, and settled for HostGator. They passed several of my requirements:

1) Security: A scan showed that the server was up to date, patches had applied, no serious vulnerabilities, etc.
2) Customer Service: Friendly, helpful and available after hours.
3) Price: Very cheap for shared hosting. The higher tier, such as VPS, were also very reasonably priced
4) Bandwidth & Storage: They advertise unlimited, which I've always been wary of, but their CEO posted an explanation for marketing unlimited which I found reasonable. After several months with around 100GB of traffic, I've run into no problems. The only real limitation they claim is limiting you to the number of files to around 250K.
5) Reliability: They advertise a SLA of 99.9% which is still a couple of hours every year, but I haven't run into any downtime yet in the few months I've used them.

the greater the fall.

I agree, it has more to do with the nature of the job making IT people arrogant asses. If you are working in IT for a mid-sized company, you are probably coming in contact with a lot more people than in most other professions. Most of these people are faceless, being either behind a phone or an email, so they appear less like actual people and more like "users". These users exhibit all multitudes of behavior, from embarrassed & apologetic to rude & impatient. They are solely calling you to do something for them, while expecting to give nothing back, other than maybe a quick 'thanks, you are teh bomb, blah blah'. Sometimes they ask you to do something trivial, or something impossible (with your limited resources and time).

Frankly these users are technically less competent than you. They are usually clueless to the effort involved in carrying out the requested task, and completely oblivious of time constraints that you may have due to other job responsibilities/tasks. You may perform a minor miracle and no one will understand why it was a miracle. For every stupid question you answer, you are asked a dozen more stupid questions. No amount of hand holding will ever make the "users" any smarter. Even the most affable-natured IT person is worn thin by the constant barrage of requests, especially ones coming from irate users. In the end, you learn that no amount of effort is ever going to make the users happy, so you learn to adapt. You get of your ass and only make an effort when the requests comes from the big bosses or those that you report to. For all other users you adopt a policy of minimal support. If it is not an emergency, you find a way so you do the least amount of work. The longer you are at the job, the better you become at this. And so you become an arrogant ass (in the eyes of the users).

So how to get IT people to work for you? You can get the big bosses to light a fire under their ass, and they will work for you, admittedly grudgingly. Or you can find a way to differentiate yourself from the other faceless users. Be extra nice, let them know that you are a real person by showing your face. Always thank them, and let them know that you value their time, even if you think its their job to be helping you. Of course you may do all this and get nowhere. In that case go back to tip #1.

And yes, I've done my bit in IT.