[Samba] Single Sign On, authentication, and Windows XP Home

[Chris Smith]

On Thursday 27 December 2007, Gary Dale wrote:
> Not necessarily. If you have a business where each person only logs
> onto one computer, then Home is probably all you need. For example, a
> small business with only one computer in a department/section or one
> with multiple computers but each staff member only uses the computer
> assigned to them. This latter case covers a lot of businesses - but
> many larger businesses in this class still should prefer Pro over
> Home for domain policy setting.

There's always the exception but in most cases I find centralized 
authentication invaluable. No need to have local accounts whatsoever. 
Plus it's not just the system being used for login purposes, there's 
all of the other shared resources that need to be managed. IMO any 
business with 5 or more systems (and sometimes even fewer) can save 
lots of time and trouble by implementing domain control.

> Surprisingly, the place where probably Home shouldn't be used is at
> home. At home you are quite likely to have different people using any
> given computer and keeping passwords sync'ed is a problem.  However,
> home users put up with it because they usually aren't running a
> server.

I agree, but not for your reasons, only because Home has too many other 
limitations (only safe mode for acl editing).

> The expensive mistake  both home and business users are making is
> using Windows in the first place.

That we can agree on.

-- 
Chris