Mac mini με Snow Leopard Server

Pity the small office when it comes to technology. With anywhere from several to several dozen employees, there's often no budget for an IT director to manage all the network services required for a modern company of any size. Offices may need to handle email, file-sharing, calendar and contacts hosting, collaboration tools, and other matters. Especially in this economy, how can an office of that size—perhaps your office?—afford the technician needed to install and keep a Microsoft Server 2008 installation on the rails, plus the initial cost in per-seat licenses. Unix and Linux distributions may be free or have relatively inexpensive purchase and service contracts, but you pay for that in requiring more expertise in house or on demand.

That may lead firms to Google's door, turning to Web hosted services via Google Apps. But the $50 per-user, per-year fee can add up, and Google Apps doesn't offer everything a small business needs. Some companies may not want to go this route, or may be subject to regulatory issues that prevent proprietary or confidential data from being located offsite with Google—or anyone. That seems to leave a large niche in which companies want an affordable product that runs on commodity hardware and doesn't need the constant ministrations of an IT expert, even if one's required to set it up.

Apple has such a product, Mac OS X Server, but has been weak at exploiting this niche despite the server's long history. Apple has focused instead on support for large corporations' enterprise networks, data center and cluster use, and academic deployments. Releases before version 10.6 (Snow Leopard) had numerous difficulties for those who couldn't quickly fire up a command line and start entering commands from memory. Further, OS X Server was often too focused on providing services for networks mostly comprised of Macs; a lot of lip service was paid to Windows support, but it's only seemingly fully matured in 10.6.

But what makes OS X Server 10.6 a perfectly reasonable choice for small-to-medium-sized businesses is new pricing coupled with a custom Mac mini configuration. For $999, you can buy a perfectly speedy office server with a full, unlimited-seat license.

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Με λίγα λόγια. Αν θέλετε ένα οικονομικό, εύκολο στη χρήση και να είναι και Apple προϊόν, μην κοιτάτε αλλού. Το Mac mini με το Snow Leopard Server απλά τα σπάει! Ακόμη και χρήστης άλλου λειτουργικού να είστε, πάλι θα ευτυχήσετε. Συνδυασμός τιμής και προσφερόμενων λειτουργιών χωρίς αντίπαλο!