Mac OS X helps ease university IT demands
updated 01:35 pm EST, Wed February 11, 2004
University uses Macs, OS X
Computerworld reports that support costs and demands fell as Edith Cowan University's communications school (as well as recently purchased 60 G5 machines--with more Xserve G5s and an Xserve RAID on the way): "Our teaching machines are a mixture of iMacs, G4s, and the new G5s which isn’t a bad thing as OS X will boot of all machines regardless of type. The desktops support roaming profiles and directory access which works well. OS X stores everything on the servers and only writes locally when it needs to so there is no local caching. Also, each client allows secure logins via SSL which addresses one of the concerns universities face."
Fresh-Faced Recruit
Joined: Jul 2001
Not realistic
We have experienced the exact opposite at the Uni I work for. The roaming home directories are too large to properly manage. If you have any macromedia packages installed, you had better make sure you have enough storage to handle the home direcories. There also seems to be a problem if you use NFS as a means to connect to your home directory server. I think it was a good idea, but truthfully, even microsoft saw the flaw of roaming profiles in a large computing environment. Though they still support it, they do not recommend it.