05-02-2007, 06:19 PM
[quote davester]I have a mac and work in a Windows shop. Worse yet, the PC shop uses Windows Small Business Server 2003 for networking, email, web server, etc. It is truly a nightmare trying to get things to work right...and still, things don't work right due to the need to use ActiveX to remote access easily and because all of the filenames on the server get truncated by the mac. I don't know who's fault it is (I tend to blame microsoft by default), but things are definitely not easy.
I'm not sure Windows Small Business Server 2003 works all that well with Windows XP machines either. To be fair, the network that my employer is taking over maintenance of is not the most robust system and I think things need to be ultimately rebuilt from scratch, but still it is the Windows users who have the most trouble getting their email. The Mac users are generally okay, but daily I get support requests for people who cannot access their email.
Sure we login to the servers from Windows boxes to do all the maintenance stuff, but just from the basic email level, the network is a mess. When I suggest IMAP and webmail access for the email, a Linux run DNS server, and some of the other changes we can start rolling out over the new few months, everyone looks at me like I'm crazy. No, no, Linux it too hard to setup (yet WSBS 2003 is soooooo easy that is why email is a daily problem and weekly half the people can't get online--DNS issue). So there you have it. People who don't really know how to maintain a network chose the easy, yet expensive solution and still can't get the network running correctly.
Which is why I refuse to be a party to that contract. Give me the average Joe home users and true small businesses (the latter having maybe three computers and a simple network) any day of the week instead of the serious "We must use MS server products for 11 employees because we are a serious business" type BS. Yuck.
Nathan
I'm not sure Windows Small Business Server 2003 works all that well with Windows XP machines either. To be fair, the network that my employer is taking over maintenance of is not the most robust system and I think things need to be ultimately rebuilt from scratch, but still it is the Windows users who have the most trouble getting their email. The Mac users are generally okay, but daily I get support requests for people who cannot access their email.
Sure we login to the servers from Windows boxes to do all the maintenance stuff, but just from the basic email level, the network is a mess. When I suggest IMAP and webmail access for the email, a Linux run DNS server, and some of the other changes we can start rolling out over the new few months, everyone looks at me like I'm crazy. No, no, Linux it too hard to setup (yet WSBS 2003 is soooooo easy that is why email is a daily problem and weekly half the people can't get online--DNS issue). So there you have it. People who don't really know how to maintain a network chose the easy, yet expensive solution and still can't get the network running correctly.
Which is why I refuse to be a party to that contract. Give me the average Joe home users and true small businesses (the latter having maybe three computers and a simple network) any day of the week instead of the serious "We must use MS server products for 11 employees because we are a serious business" type BS. Yuck.
Nathan