I need some guidance.
I started a new job about a month ago.
There are approx 9 workstations in the building and two hp laserjet 5si's and a xerox work centre for printing. All of the employees access the same email account with the exception of the owner who has his own.

All the workstations are mapped to each other and the backups are sent to an external hard drive on computer G. However we also work off of the external drive when editing databases.

My question is should we look into a server and get all the printers on the network and try to setup an email server w/ different accounts for all the workers or would we be fine w/ just a central file server to access our databases and backup from that pc?

Suggestions on straightening out our network or making it more efficient are welcome.

You will find people with all kinds of ideas on minimum size of a network for a server and the like. My reccomendation is to get a server any time you have multiple people accessing the same files. Without centralized management thier are few guarantees on data integrity. What is your Anivirus/Antispam/Antimalware solution like? A server will give you management of these crucial services. I have always brough it up as "How much money is your data worth?". Do you currently have a central computer that you use to store data? Microsoft's Small business Server line is very cost effective.

Currently we have no antispam implementation other than that from the ISP. We use clamwin antivirus and ad-aware.
We do not have a dedicated machine for data storage/access at the moment. Unfortunately we have very limited resources so anything open source would be the easiest to get going.

Having previously worked at a company with a decent network structure and "best practices" in place this is particularly frustrating.

A succinct summary of when to get a server.

http://www.computing.net/networking/wwwboard/forum/29586.html

A big factor in the question about whether or not to persevere with a peer-to-peer network is: how well-behaved and amenable to policies are the users?

Open source: check out

http://www.novell.com/products/openworkgroupsuite/index.html

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure." - BILL CLINTON

An external hard drive is not a backup. Burned DVD or tape IS a backup. The drive doesn't protect you from
1. dying
2. overwritten files
3. disk corruption

Forget everything else for now. This is your primary focus.

Give a person a fish, they eat for a day. Suggest they internet search and they learn a skill for a lifetime.

I agree with the above guys...First and formost, protect your data, and a external HD is NOT a proper backup...you need something "permanent"...and that's tape or DVD...

If you feel the need for a domain, I would consider W2003Small Business Server...that gives you the option of Exchange if you decide to...if you have HEAVY file usage amoung the users, databases...big need for file sharing, mulitple printrts, then you should consider a server and domain...you don;t have to spend a lot of $$$ on it...just think it thru and ask qauestions...

In small offices, I prefer to have your ISP provide email and then set up POP accounts...let someone else maintain it for you...

Even with the smallest network you need some sort of permenant storage solution, like the guys mentioned above. Letting your ISP handle your email is a lot cheaper and easier to manage than bringing in an exchange server.

You could get everything done with a single server easily, but that all depends on how much money they give you for IT purchases. It sounds like a very small company and i'm sure it's tight, but ask them what they would think if they came to work the next day and saw that their office was burned to the ground and they lost every single piece of data they ever had? I bet money wouldn't be much of a factor then!