Mac noob, need a few pointers..

[Arthur]

Not sure how it works for businesses and education establishments.

It's simple. You need one OS X license per Mac. The Apple website has more info regarding volume purchasing of Lion: www.apple.com/uk/mac/volume-licensing/

The Lion OS is also a full install as well as far as I can tell so in theory doesn't require an upgrade path. However, does it require 10.6 under the T&Cs? If so I'm not sure why as there is no alternative "full version" to purchase instead.

The only reason you need a Mac running Snow Leopard is to download the Lion installer from the Mac App Store. Once you have that, you can deploy it to however many Mac's you have licenses for. The other alternative would be to buy the Lion USB Thumb Drive from Apple for £45.83.

Why does Steve Jobs say you need to have Snow Leopard then?
Because you do. The reason you need Snow Leopard is due to Lion being distributed only through the Mac App Store. The Mac App Store requires Mac OS X 10.6.6, thus installing Lion requires you to have Snow Leopard so that you can open App Store and download Mac OS X Lion. That is why Mac OS X 10.6.6 Snow Leopard is listed in the OS X Lion System Requirements, this does not mean you can only upgrade Snow Leopard. (Source)

[SC92]

Yes we are using a mac server with workgroup manager installed and all macs are bound to the domain and in a group within Workgroup manager.

Open up Workgroup manager and select your student/teacher/client group. Then click on the preferences tab at the top. Now click on the 'Login' icon the appears. Once in there, go into the 'items' tab at the top (furthest right). Simply tick the 'Add network home share point' and it should read the Active directory account of the currently logged in user and map itself accordingly. If there are other drives you want mapped you can enter this command into Safari: smb://SERVERNAME/DRIVENAME. Then whilst that is typed into the url bar in safari, simply click and drag it into the Workgroup manager box where the network home share point is located.

[jimmy38]

Thanks I have tried what you mentioned and the general shared area for students appeared on the desktop using the smb://*******/*** but the users did not get their homedirectory? anu ideas?

[jimmy38]

I have now got it working!

I had a setting called something like "force local home directory" ticked in active directory binding. Unticking this has fixed the problem.