Hey Al,

 

There is something called Portable Home Directories. Typically this is accomplished by running a Mac OS X server with its AD equivalent “Open Directory”.  However I found this link that discusses how you can setup portable home directories without getting OD (http://managingosx.wordpress.com/2006/03/15/portable-home-directories-without-open-directory/ ).

 

For Office 2011, it has pretty much the same functionality but some features are lost. For example if you are using Online Archives in Exchange 2010, Outlook 2011 users cannot access them and will need to go through OWA. Here is a link to that compares the features between Outlook 2010 and 2011 (http://mac2.microsoft.com/help/office/14/en-us/admin/item/a2a4d247-f9f3-4b35-b298-ceb147669dd7).

 

I have not seen any compatibility issues when going from office 2011 to 2010 so I don’t think you should have any trouble.

 

 

Joshua Wortz

RHCT - RHEL5 | MCSE - 2K3 | MCTS - Exchange 2007 | MCTS - Vista - Configuration | MCDST

Systems Administrator

Michigan State University

College of Agriculture and Natural Resources

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517.588.9344 (Cell)

517.353.4890 x232 (Office)

 

 

 

 

 

Hi everyone,

One of my users needs a new computer, and she has asked that it be a Macbook. We have a few Macs in our office, but nobody is using one as their primary machine. A few questions:

We are using folder redirection on our Windows clients, and user data is therefore backed up automatically with our servers. Is it possible to set up redirection on a Macbook running OS X? I’ve been doing some reading on this topic, and the answer I’ve come up with is “sort of”. It seems that you can change a user’s home folder to point to a server location; However, files would not be available offline if the user were to disconnect the laptop from the office LAN. Am I understanding the situation correctly? If so, are there any workarounds?

 

Are there any issues in terms of Microsoft Office? Can I assume that the latest version of Outlook for Mac will play nicely with Exchange 2010, and that our Mac user would have access to all the same functions our Windows users do?  What about document compatibility between PC and Mac versions of MS office? I assume there are no issues as long as we’re talking about MS Office and not iWork?

Thanks,

 

Al Puzzuoli

Michigan State University

Information Technologist                                       http://www.rcpd.msu.edu

Resource Center for Persons with Disabilities  517-884-1915 120 Bessey Hall East Lansing, MI  48824-1033