should i buy a mac server?

Okay so this is my work environment:
we have a primary domain server running windows 2008r2 which has our Active Directory setup. we have 2 other servers that are secondary domain controllers.

We then have many Linux servers which i was able to get to authenticate to Active Directory to use those usernames and passwords as login credentials.

we then have our Mac's. lots of macbook pro's for our developers and a few Imacs for our designers. our problem here is that we dont know how to be admins for these macs. we were able to get these macs to authenticate to our Active Directory but if the computer was taken home, or away from the network here, it takes a REALLY long time for the login to work.

i was thinking that a mac server would possibly help us admin these macs and be able to control their environment a little better.

basically, we want to be able to enforce policies, deploy packages, control login,... basically everything group policy in server 2008 can do for windows machines or close to it.

what do you think i should do?

Try having remote users attempt to login without being connected to any networks, wifi or otherwise until after they've been logged in.

MacsWork said:

Try having remote users attempt to login without being connected to any networks, wifi or otherwise until after they've been logged in.

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this is what causes the slowdown. ive tried to do this but each time they try to log in it takes around 4 mins.

would a mac server with its own open directory and setup fix this?

Take a look at this. I'm no AD expert but it would appear that this fellow had the same issue as you and has a fix. It's a fix for Snow Leopard so you might have to adapt it a bit for Lion (if this is what the machines are running).