Re: [WinMac] Basic server information

Liam Helmer(liamh[at]axion.net)
Wed, 16 Dec 98 09:34:22 -0800

>I'm sure these are basic questions to the people on this list but hope some
>of you can can answer my questions.
>
>I am a competent Mac user with a little experience on PC's. The company i
>work for is starting to grow (probably 12 people in the next six months)
>and we have a mixed environment of MAC's and PC's. Not networked although a
>Mac and PC do share a printer through a hub. There is a desire in the
>senior management to get a server, but I'm not sure anybody has defined
>quite what this server will do! (no surprises there) I think amongst other
>jobs it will be a store for documents, a database and a diary system of
>some kind. The accounts are run with Sage on a PC so i assume that will end
>up on the server also? Because our team are geographically spread it is
>important that some simple form of remote access is possible.
>
>Of course the senior management want an NT system (everybody has NT it must
>be the thing to have?) Are they right? I have little confidence in the
>technical knowledge of our people in this field including myself so.
>
>My questions, is NT the way to go? How expert do you have to be to maintain
>this/set it up or will we have to buy this expertise in? or training? Would
>a Mac server be a realistic alternative? Can it do the job i describe? If
>the server is NT should we start replacing the Mac's with PC's? We are
>moving towards more of the graphics/illustration work being done by
>suppliers so other than the need to be able to import their work from MAC's
>to PC's and the mac user preferences i'm not sure we really need two
>platforms.

NT is possible, Netware is possible., it just depends on your priorities.
Are you a graphics shop where *printing* and the *file server* is
absolutely crucial on the Macintosh side? If that's the case, you have
almost no choice at this point but to go for an AppleShare IP server.
It's the only server software I know of where Macs can really print
reliably and share files without niggly little difficulties. If you've
been on the list a while, you'll notice plethoras of people with Windows
NT that have trouble printing, plus files disappearing on the Macs that
are on the Windows NT box. There are fixes for *many* (not all) of these
problems, but who wants to deal with that? Plus, the netware software,
however stable some may think it to be, is still in *beta* (and has been
either completelymissing or in Beta for a couple of years at this point).
Also, the NT services for Macintosh might as well be beta -> it's feature
incomplete, it's slow, it's buggy -> you're much better off getting
something like Dave so that the Macs can do the work of connecting to the
NT server, than having Windows NT do the work, which it does poorly.

Basically, any of these solutions will work, for the most part, and will
work perfectly for Windows machines. But If you want to make sure that
printing and file sharing are totally rock-solid on the Mac, I'd
definately recommend the Appleshare IP server (it does Windows well too,
though, arguably, not quite as well as NT).

Cheers,

--=----------next-message-----------=

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Sun Dec 20 1998 - 15:58:59 PST