[DS3Circuit]

For those of you who have experience in this migration I would love to hear any personal experiences, important links, and horror stories. My employer has placed me at the head of migrating a base of 100 users to 10.2 (its a support issue)

Beyond the testing of all the software and moving personal data and preferences, I would also like to:

1. Automate the process somehow ... apple script perhaps?

2. Have the users log into a native windows 2000 (now) 2003 (later) domain context.

Any thoughts, responses, questions, and links would be appreciated.

I am beginning to see that the 95 to 2000 migration of 2 years ago, was far easier.

[Essess]

Actually, the migration is a lot easier. for one one the older machines you can still retain all your ald settings and OS. You would have to upgrade all 9.x machines to at least 9.22 to maintain this compatibility.
Problems
1. OS X 10.2 is actually a different OS not an upgrade. All, and I mean all programs will have to be reinstalled with OS X compatible programs.
2. Will probably have to get to your printer manufacturers website to find if you have printer drivers for any of your printers. Older drivers will not work.
3. Many of your network and privilage settings are more robust in OS X, however the old option of having shared folders is lost, you will have a series of public folders for each user. Not as friendly as the old system. I am still trying to find a work around, so if you do find one please inform me.

Windows
Logging into the windows domin system is easy. As long as your windows machine allows one to log in, you will from OS X. Dont even need anything special. It uses Samba for this. You'll probably need to install it, but thats all. Just make sure each user on the machine has permission to log in from windows if you want them to log in from windws. Can be set at your system preferences.

Others
All your users will complain at first. No control panels, fonts hard to find, no previlages to certain places. And where is the f***ing chooser? With more use, they will like it.

Just remember to get OS X native versions of all your programs and drivers then you'll probably not have any problems.

;( Check at apple (www.apple.com) for a list of compatible computers. some of the older ones will not load OS X, and some others will require a BIOS update.

[DS3Circuit]

This has become a political thing ..... it appears that the users themselves will be the hardest part of this upgrade.

For loging into the domain, I plan on using MacAdmin.
For the odd-ball printers I plan on using http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net

Thank you for thoughts and opinions, its always nice to hear from someone else who has been on the "road less traveled."