Years ago, Macs didn't even acknowledge the presence of Windows networks, which made those LAN wine-and-cheese parties pretty awkward. Now, however, OS X machines are exemplary network citizens, and apparently can even manage Windows workstations under the right circumstances.

TidBITS linked to a roundtable discussion at Cornell University, where Philip Halcomb, of Cornell's Mann Library ITS staff, demonstrated managing user accounts in Active Directory. Now, this wouldn't be very exciting, except for the fact that he was using Mac OS X Workgroup Manager to do it. Sweet.

Phil's part starts at about 7:30. It's a long QuickTime video, too -- almost an hour -- but for IT folks, especially in an education environment, the roundtable series is a must-see.

(Thanks, MHA, for Phillip's name!)

Getting Office 2008 loaded and running on one Mac is easy enough if you put your mind to it. Getting it loaded and running on hundreds of Macs, with Entourage data to upgrade and users tearing their hair out over macros that no longer work? Bit more of a challenge, to put it mildly. In the interest of supporting the IT pros who are deploying the latest and greatest from the Mac BU in large educational and corporate enviroments, Microsoft is sending key managers and developers out to face their customers (no!) in half-day intensive Q&A sessions.

In addition to the usual draws for techies (free lunch, nice swag) the road show offers a rare opportunity to get feedback to the people behind Office 2008 face-to-face. The upcoming schedule (NYC and Toronto sessions have already taken place) is as follows:

• Reston, VA - Thursday, May 8
• Los Angeles, CA - Tuesday, May 13
• Downers Grove, IL - Tuesday, May 20
• Redmond, WA - Thursday, May 22

You'll need to register on Microsoft's site if you want to participate.

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ComputerWorld posts that ChangeWave Research has studied satisfaction levels for corporate users of Leopard and Windows Vista. As you might expect, the Leopard users are altogether more satisfied than Vista users -- up to 5 times more likely to report that they're "very satisfied" with their operating system -- but you might not have known the following:

• Leopard reinforces tooth enamel and ensures brighter, happier smiles.
• Leopard users are more likely to find attractive mates.
• Vista users are subject to early hair loss.
• Leopard helps eliminate embarrassing halitosis.
• Vista users are five times likelier to be audited by the IRS.
• Leopard washes your windows and leaves lemon-scented stacks of pre-folded laundry around your house.

Okay, well maybe not. Consult the ComputerWorld article for the (far less amusing) statistical results. One worthwhile number to note: while 7% of respondents said they'd be buying Apple laptops in the next 90 days, a hold-steady from the previous survey, the likelihood of most other laptop purchases went down since the last time they asked. A MacBook Air effect?

• Complete set of resources in the iPhone Dev Center
• Testing of your code on iPhone and iPod touch
• Code-level technical support from Apple engineers
• the ability to reach every user via the Application Store

Kerio Technologies announced version 6.5 of the Kerio MailServer -- 2 years in the making -- yesterday. We talked about version 6 recently, but this is their largest update yet and clearly shows their readiness to take a bite out of the Microsoft Exchange market. With version 6.5, Kerio is providing the groupware platform and tools needed to completely replace Exchange within a collaboration-centric organization.

The release is compatible with both server and workstation flavors of OS X with full support for Leopard, in addition to being fully Microsoft certified for Vista and Redhat certified for Linux compatibility. 6.5 also includes enhanced support for Entourage 2008, making full use of message flags and "out of office" messages which are synced on both mobile and workstation clients.

The biggest change of interest to Mac users is the addition of CalDAV support. Kerio users can look up information, share and subscribe to calendars and achieve 2-way sync whether they're on a Mac, an iPhone, a Palm or Windows Mobile handheld, a PC ... you get the idea. The server can provide a bridge between open and proprietary standards, making sure that you see the same data everywhere and allowing for smooth cross-platform interoperability.

The other major improvement, definitely of interest to users in multi-platform environments, is an upgrade to the Outlook Connector with a complete rewrite of its underlying database structure. It allows for easy data access, online and offline, with current and older versions of Outlook. And its full-text search capabilities search across messages, contacts and calendar events with support for Google Desktop search.

Not surprisingly, a release this big resulted in a pricing change. The standard package (10 users) now starts at $499 and adding additional users costs $20 per user. A version with integrated McAfee Anti-Virus for bi-directional scanning of all email starts at $599 and additional users are $24 each. Both versions include anti-spam, user management with authentication against Active Directory and Open Directory. Visit Kerio for more information.

Update: The US Apple Store is now carrying a base server (10 user) license and install media for Kerio MailServer with McAfee.

Despite the publicity around Parallels' flagship Mac product, Parallels Desktop (which we've contributed to in some small part), there are some other interesting tools in the stable of Parallels' parent company, SWsoft -- which is now being rebranded as Parallels, Inc. just to keep us on our toes. One of those products is Parallels Virtuozzo Containers (PVC), which launches version 4.0 today in a webcast event at 11 am (Eastern). While PVC is not a Mac-compatible server (yet), the technology choices Parallels made in developing it may illuminate some future paths for the yet-unreleased Parallels Server product for Mac OS X.

Virtualization products like Parallels Desktop, VMware Fusion, and Microsoft's Virtual Server work via a hypervisor model, virtualizing the hardware platform so that each virtual machine runs in its own full-OS environment. This approach does a great job of insulating the VMs from the underlying physical hardware and provides for OS and build diversity (Windows, Linux and eventually Mac OS X Server running on the same virtualization platform) but it has some drawbacks: each virtual machine consumes a full helping of RAM, disk space and CPU resources while running, as though it was a physical machine. VMware in particular is respected for its expertise in optimizing these resource demands with its ESX enterprise-level server products, but the baseline requirements for system resources can't be fully alleviated.

PVC does OS virtualization, which tackles the problem of resource allocation for virtual machines in a different way. Virtuozzo VMs, or "containers," are created as overlays on the base OS that runs on the physical server, like a piece of transparent acetate over an animation backdrop. All the basic OS processes, files and libraries are present in the base server OS instance, and the container holds the differential changes that allow the VMs their individual characteristics and configurations. While you sacrifice one big feature of hypervisor systems, the ability to diversify OSes -- since the base OS is fixed as either Windows or Linux, all the containers have to be built on top of that OS -- what you gain is substantial, as each additional running VM takes only a small chunk of RAM and a comparatively tiny swath of hard drive space to work in. Virtuozzo servers can handle high VM loading on relatively modest hardware without taking major performance hits, which is a big plus if your server budget is constrained.

In the OS X virtualization session at Macworld Expo, the Parallels folks suggested that we may see both hypervisor and OS virtualization approaches integrated in the Parallels Server product, as the engineering teams from PVC and Server have the opportunity to put their heads together. Parallels has also said that the management tools for PVC and Parallels Server will be integrated as development moves forward. Even though PVC doesn't support the Mac directly, if you're interested in virtualization you might pop into the webcast and check it out.

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