Multiple Concurrent Users, 1 Mac?

I have been tasked by the owner of the business I work for to find out if it would be possible, instead of buying multiple Mac systems, to buy one serious Mac, and have multiple users connect to it to work.

These people will be doing a lot of graphic design and some flash video work. My original proposal was that each would have their own Mac for this, and would store files on a networked location for retrieval and backup purposes. I realize there are limitations to doing so. But I think these limitations are very much like what would be encountered with multiple users running on one machine.

My interpretation is that we still need a license for any software being used, to account for every user making use of that software at one time. The purpose of this is an idea from the owner that we shouldn't need to buy multiple computers.

Since he's the one who can fire me, obviously I need to find out what can or can't be done in this field.

(And don't flame me for this... I confess I'm predominantly familiar with something OTHER than Mac, because that's what almost all of my IT experience to date has been.)

Any pointers you could offer would be much appreciated.

Sounds like your boss wants to have a few macs but only pay for one.

If you are going to have people doing graphics work, they really need their own computer.

The mac is not a terminal server - sounds like your boss remembers computers from the 80s.

In short- I know of no way to log multiple users on a mac at the same time, and even if there was a way, performance would degrade with every user you add.

What might be better is to ask him for a budget and work with that. 3-4 mac minis would be far more cost effective than a Mac Pro - trying to find a technical fix to get multiple users to use one machine

Sounds like your boss is an idiot by the way

That's kind of what I was thinking based upon what he'd described wanting to do. I knew something like this could be done with a terminal server, but the more crunching you're making the 'server' computer do, the poorer the performance is going to get. The more the client side machines are doing, the more it's having to pass back to the server.

Everything I'd seen so far kind of led me to the... I'm gonna have to break it to him. This isn't the way to go.

I'm not sure idiot is the right word. Simply not well versed in modern computers.

Thank you though. For reinforcing what I already suspected would be the case.

louishen said:

Sounds like your boss wants to have a few macs but only pay for one.

If you are going to have people doing graphics work, they really need their own computer.

The mac is not a terminal server - sounds like your boss remembers computers from the 80s.

In short- I know of no way to log multiple users on a mac at the same time, and even if there was a way, performance would degrade with every user you add.

What might be better is to ask him for a budget and work with that. 3-4 mac minis would be far more cost effective than a Mac Pro - trying to find a technical fix to get multiple users to use one machine

Sounds like your boss is an idiot by the way

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