Mac Network

Good day to you all!

I am in the process of setting up my own business and I considering purchasing three macbook pro's for me and my two employees.

I have never used a mac in my life before but love the service i get from my iphone and thought that I might switch.

The only thing holding me back pressing the 'order' button is that I'm not sure of the capabilities of the Mac for what I need. (Cripes, I'm not sure of the capabilities of a PC either!)

I need all three macbooks to be able to access and amend the central files, in addition to accessing a shared calender - securely - the files contain sensative information so having a web-based 'thing that I am describing' will not really be an option.

Is this an option?

Thanks for your help in advance!

G

I'm no expert on networking, but I do have all my Macs and PCs networked at home with a NAS server for Time Machine Back-Ups and I use Google cal sync and MobileME for syncing files, calendars. contacts and bookmarks.

Three MacBook Pros and a Mini Sever would probably meet the needs you listed. I'm sure some of the experts here will give some better advice.

What type of files are these central files? What program do you use to access these files.

There are ways to keep web based groupware secure. If your files are connected to the internet then there is always a risk. Web based utilities can be secure. If you couldn't secure it do you think banks would be going online?

Anyway - the key I think is what files are you generating/accessing?

The files used would be microsoft word/pdf files/scanned docs. The purpose would be to access indevidual files, view them and add additional documents to them.

I'm going under the assumption that a Mac has the same kind of function as windows (folder type files).

Thanks

G

Word, PDF, and the like are supported under Mac with several programs. Office 2011 just released which brings the ribbon look and feel to Mac office (love it or hate it)

As far as getting to data - there are a myriad of ways to get to the data. I personally use ssh/scp/sftp and tunneling to get to all my internal resources. I am fairly paranoid. I finally gave up and and started using team viewer as I can get to files and computers with no configuration.
TeamViewer - Free Remote Access and Remote Desktop Sharing over the Internet

I am looking into pogoplug. My friend bought one and is pretty high on it.
Pogoplug
It uses servers to find your data but doesn't keep anything - just passes data to and from the pogoplug.

Of course there is Mobileme to sync calendars and idisk to share files.

I also have been using google apps for groupware(calendaring/email/docs) - the free version works fine for small groups.

Thanks for that my good fellow!

I bought three macbook pro's today - I shall figure out which kind of file sharing i'll do from there - I checked out the office 2011 which has some pretty nice features for what I want it to do - thanks for the info!

G;D