Networking Macs at School

I am a teacher in Australia. Our State government lease IBM notebooks and iBooks for all staff [we do pay a minute amount for them].
My question is - most staff, including myself, have always opted for the IBM option due to our Technical Support staff telling us that the 2 are not compatible on the same network. I have read enough of this forum to know that is simply not accurate.
HOWEVER - can anyone supply me with hard evidence, facts etc that I may use to confront these people with. Our school is running a Windows 2003 Server setup.
I wish [and several other staff do as well] to opt for the iBook option when my lease is up for renewal next month.
If anyone has had a similar experience and can provide me with actual steps needed to enable the iBooks to function happily on our network - I would be VERY grateful.
I know it is simply a matter of the Tech Dept. learning another OS but without hard facts that is not going to happen. They've been using this prejustice for years now in our school as we were originally a Mac school [like most Australian schools'.
Thank you.

Gary

Hope this helps:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/windows/

I can't provide hard evidence, but I for one run in a mixed(mostly Mac) environment, and they network beautifully..Everyone has access to each other(with appropriate authentication - you must authenticate yourself).

Only thing to remember is to make sure that you set your mac to the workgroup that your PCs are in...Macs really don't "care" about workgroups, but, to be a good citizen in the PC world, go to Mac HD>Applications>Utlities>Directory Access - Double click on SMB(Samba, the network protocol used to communicate between the two) and type in the PCs workgroup

Enjoy

Authenticating

ApplejustWorks said:

Hope this helps:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/windows/

I can't provide hard evidence, but I for one run in a mixed(mostly Mac) environment, and they network beautifully..Everyone has access to each other(with appropriate authentication - you must authenticate yourself).

Only thing to remember is to make sure that you set your mac to the workgroup that your PCs are in...Macs really don't "care" about workgroups, but, to be a good citizen in the PC world, go to Mac HD>Applications>Utlities>Directory Access - Double click on SMB(Samba, the network protocol used to communicate between the two) and type in the PCs workgroup

Enjoy

Click to expand...

Thank you for your prompt reply. Could you please explain what you mean by 'authenticating yourself - and how would I do that on a Windows network?

Thank you.

When I say authenticate yourself, I simply mean that:

When on the Mac, trying to access a PC, it will promt you for a user name and password
When on the PC, trying to access a Mac, it will prompt you for a user name and password as well.

Simple as that.

I only stated that you need to authenticate yourself because of the way I said "Everyone has access to each other." When writing it, I felt it portrayed it in a manner that said "Unwarranted access will be accepted as well." So, adding that you would need to be authentiated(because, in reality, if the owner doesn't want to givew you access, they won't).

Enjoy