I'd think $7-8 might be relative to where you are. In a smaller environment, this could be a lot. I've had plenty of servers cost 5 figures or even 6,...

First I'd think about 64-bit, and especially think about upgrading to 2005 or 2008. I'd recommend looking at 2008 for next year. Which means learning SSIS a bit now.

There have...

If you need to move them, I think you have to rebuild on the new filegroup, dropping the old.

If you are working with multiple filegroups, I'd be sure you always...

Good call on the CHECKPOINT. Didn't think of that.

Please let us know if you find anything.

Import into a staging table, use an Identity to capture the order, delete the items with ID < 5.

Reseed the table each time you do this. (DBCC CHECKIDENT)

I'd do what Roy has mentioned to minimize downtime.

also, be sure that you have looked for SQLAgent jobs or DTS packages that people might be expecting to exist on...

You cannot make a dynamic view.

You can make the same view in every db and then call it with the 3 part naming (db.owner.view).

So I can create MyView in every...

It matters after a point. I'd say if you've never managed anything larger than 50GB, and you're asked to run a 500GB database, you might not be prepared.

At some point...

Are you sure you have exact copies? Data distribution matters as well. Perhaps increase the statistics sampling size?

I'm with Grant. Something has to be different.

Depends on production DBA, development DBA, etc.

Lots of debate on this:

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/dbaroles/517/

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Administering/thevalueofadba/1806/

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/State+of+the+Business/deathoftheproductiondba/432/

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Certifications/3176/

http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/Miscellaneous/2989/

To add to David...

With DTS you could deploy this to run from a workstation or other location (watch file paths) and distribute the load. It does not need to run...

The only way I know is to save them out as VB files and then check them with some editor.

I'm afraid this is probably a manual process for you to...

How did you move? Backup/restore? Statistics usually comes to mind here.

You can also use the DATENAME functions in SQL Server to get the name

The sp_dropserver/addserver doesn't work?

I'd be surprised as this is the same codebase as the Workgroup/Standard/Enterprise versions.