Once the servers are in place and the hardware is in, it's time to start building some systems. I haven't found that there was any particular disc that should be used to install the OS, but unless you're encountering a Virgin Power On, then I'd recommend doing a fresh install of the OS. Most people already know this, but whatever you install from, always make sure to use the latest Combo installation patch on the system (as of this writing, 10.3.7) and not the Delta, incremental upgrade. Apple has released some skunky patches to their OS and it seems that there is a general rule that the even numbered OS X patches are like the odd numbered Star Trek movies (don't give me that, if you're reading this, then you're almost definitely a fan) in that they're really not very good. My theory on this is that they get off on the right foot with the .1 release because they have a lot of time to get it right, but .2 is rushed because they have a schedule they're following and then .3 is just fixes to .2 with .4 being a rushed patch and so on. Make sure you don't use 10.3.6. That was a really bad patch with a lot of problems. 10.3.7 has proven to be very good, although future patches will hopefully make things better.
Under no circumstances would I install the Classic Environment. Everything a user needs will work in OS X now and the Classic system is really and truly bad. During our transition, there were several users that required this for one reason or another and it made life hell for me and my staff because a lot of things just won't work at all no matter what you do to them. Use Classic at your own risk and don't say you weren't warned!
While you can have all your accounts have full access and set up a machine to work just how OS 9 did in accordance to really only having one true user account, I would recommend the Windows approach where there is a single, all-powerful Administrator account and you create other accounts with less power. We have a decent amount of turnover at our company and being able to set up a new user account like this has proven to make things a lot easier. I would also recommend limiting access to certain applications (such as Font Book--no good, Explorer--buggy in OS X, Mail--not needed with Office) and games that you think aren't needed. Sometimes this will make things difficult as most users don't like being limited, but figure out some way to explain what is in your best interest is really in their best interest.
One small note about the user system in OS X is that it really isn't very good and is downright frustrating to a certain degree. The whole Log In/Log Out system wasn't very well set up and there are some permissions issues that will drive you nuts. For instance, you will often have to manually set user permissions for some preferences files (such as Quark) in order to get them to work right. For basic functions, it is an "okay" system, but don't be surprised if you run in to these problems or others that are looming on the horizon.
Once your OS X is installed and all patched up, it's time to install some applications. Office X is easy, since you can drag and drop it from and installation disc. For the Adobe Creative Suite, just run the installers with your Administrator account (assuming you used this method for user accounts) and it is quite automated. Once done, patch everything up. There are critical patches for both InDesign and InCopy you must install, including the nefarious 3.0.1 or its later revision 3.0.1 (i.e. the August 2004 update.) Why Adobe did this no one knows, but it's the later 3.0.1 that you need to install. If your machine is an editor's machine, then install InCopy instead of the full Creative Suite at this point. It's very much the same except that the disc will work on both Windows and Apple, but Font Reserve Server Client won't, so the joke is on all of us.
Now set up Font Reserve Server Client on the machine. I generally use the Custom Install and install everything including the plugins for the software that is running on the system. Anything that doesn't run on the system I leave unchecked. I have no solid reason for doing it this way, it just seems cleaner. For a designer's machine, the plugins will drop in the InDesign plugin directory just fine. While you're at it, get the InCopy plugins for the Bridge Workflow off the InCopy disc and drag them in to the plugins directory for InDesign. Without these, you won't be able to export stories for InCopy users to edit. For an InCopy machine, get the latest plugin for InDesign from the Extensis website and put it in to the InCopy plugins directory. Despite the weirdness of this, it seems to run just fine.
The only thing I would really suggest is that if you have the money to spend on all these new machines and software that you should spend the money to upgrade gigabit switches for your backbone. They have come down in price drastically since they were introduced and are very affordable these days. There are several 24 port models you can purchase for less than $500. We ended up using a rack mountable Netgear model that was about $380. The boost in speed is extremely noticeable and with how large files are getting these days, you can probably justify the cost to your purchase authorizer by explaining the gain in productivity time, as well as purchasing a longer life out of your network hardware. I'm sure he/she will understand by your detailed explanation and be so happy that they'll give you the money out of petty cash right then and there...
Photoshop and Illustrator are pretty much no-brainers at this point and honestly, I can't see much in the new versions that worth upgrading to, except that they're very OS X friendly at this point. If you are doing any kind of film/video work, then Photoshop CS has some useful new features to deal with the anamorphic aspects of DV and film.
Microsoft Office X is reasonably stable as a standalone product. We chose to go with very X instead of Office 2004 for our initial release because SP1 for Office 2004 wasn't release when we did our upgrade. There are however some problems with Office when it comes to integration with the Font Reserve Server software, which I'll touch on later.
That brings us to Extensis Font Reserve next, which offers the choice between the standalone Font Reserve and the newer Font Reserve Server system. The choice between these two is something that I think revolves around the size of your operation and need.
The standalone version is a fine product and we were using it for years with the only problem existing in that our font database had never been cleaned by anyone, resulting in a 200 megabyte, 10,000 font database that contained fonts we didn't own and contributed to instability. This allowed for our designers to use fonts that weren't ours, which is a big problem as workflow gets set up around these fonts. I think I would I recommend the standalone Font Reserve for use when you have less than ten people or so who need to access the server and don't have any immediate large-scale growth plans.
Now, the question comes in as to Server or not to Server. We ended up going with the server package for several reasons. The first of which wasn't cost, because it actually costs a bit more once you buy the server component (around $1000.) The decision mainly came about in a large part due to the aforementioned problem with the standalone version where anyone can introduce fonts in to the system and your font database gets unwieldy on each machine. Font Reserve Server does not keep fonts locally on the machine. Well, let me rephrase that. It does keep up to 500 of the last used fonts on the machine, but they don't really belong to that machine, they all belong to a central server which keeps the fonts stored in a searchable, extensible, SQL database that can back itself up.
Beyond all of this, we had a large group using our font database at the office. Between designers and editors, there were something like 70 people who needed at our font database. This was another reason we wanted to use the Server system, because if a designer introduces a new font in to the system (with IT permission, since we don't allow anyone to at fonts at will) it will then be available for everyone. When an editor opens up an InDesign document in InCopy, any font that the designer used will be there for them. I hope you can start to see the advantage in all of this and trust me, once the designers get over not being able to add whatever they want in to the font system, they see the advantage as well. There are some big things that will trip you up in the installation, but I'll get in to those shortly.
Here's where the fun begins, as well as the great debate because for years, Quark has been dominant in the publishing industry at the best desktop publishing software. It seems that this success has somewhat gone to Quark's head as they have been very slow to release updates, fixes, and provide a general quality of service needed for people in the print industry. There have also been people who have said that Quark 4.11 was the best version that Quark made and it's been somewhat downhill or at best, humming along in mediocrity since then.
Now Adobe on the other hand has not had software that people wanted to take seriously yet. PageMaker left a lot to be desired (a co-worker of mine calls it RageMaker) and InDesign was something of a hobby project through ID 2.
It was with the release of InDesign CS 1 that a lot of people stood up and took notice. Adobe has always been known for listening to those in the industry and it was obvious to many that they had done their homework prior to releasing this version (InDesign 3 technically.) It was such a huge change that many designers starting to see the benefits of it, including a whole lot of devoted Quark people.
By the way, the huge change in this software has also created a system that can't save down to previous versions (which CS 2 fixes slightly as it will save down to CS 1.) While this will ultimately be good for the software, since it only runs in OS X, it may cause some headaches that can only be gotten around by creating a PDF from the ID 1 file and then embedding that in to a new ID 2 file. Not great, but something of a workaround if it has to be done.
We did our research at the company before upgrading. It was obvious that ID was a far superior product to Quark. Of course it was going to be hard to convince a lot of the designers of that, since nearly all of them had been working in Quark for many, many years. To speed along the desire to adopt, we managed to get Adobe to come down and do a demonstration of the products for us. Depending on the size of your company, you might be able to get them to do the same and I highly recommend pursuing that, since designers are visually-oriented people and seeing what a software can do will go a long way to helping them want to change.
Beyond the fact that ID appeared to be a better software, there were two other things that were also important in deciding to switch over to it.
1. InDesign is a far cheaper option when upgrading your design software to OS X. The Creative Suite 1 package cost somewhere around $800 and included Photoshop CS, Illustrator CS, and InDesign CS. Quark was around $800 by itself. It was much cheaper to buy the entire CS package than to buy single titles. So, in buying CS and then buying Quark, you are going to spend $1600, while if you switch over to ID, you can skip Quark and get everything for $800. You're basically getting ID for free. Obviously this is some nasty marketing on Adobe's part and naturally it is quite appealing.
2. InDesign has another software you don't hear much about called InCopy. InCopy is a great concept because it creates this system called the Bridge Workflow (which has caused a naming conflict in CS 2 where the �Bridge� is a document management system independent of the InDesign/InCopy setup.) What this does, is let multiple people work on a document at the same time and it allows a person running InCopy only have access to text-based areas of a document that a person who creates the document in InDesign wants them to get at. So, in an environment where you have a lot of editors changing the text on something the designer has created, this works great so that they can all be in it at the same time. This also means a large cost savings, since you can pick up InCopy for about $250 thus stemming the need to get ID for your editing machines. It needs to be noted right now that this isn't a perfect solution and there are some quirks with it, but I'll get to those later...
Once you've got an idea of how much machine you need, what do you specifically buy? For us, the upgrades that made the most sense for designers were dual 1.8 Ghz G5 PowerMacs. Now, why would I go out and buy one of the dual setups, when I've just gotten done saying how they're not worth the money? Simple really, it was the cheapest option available at the time due to a massive shortage on G5 PowerMacs and they weren't producing a single processor G5 when we needed the machines. Even with choosing these machines, it was still a two month wait to get them after we had placed our order. The machines were pretty much stock, except that we had an extra gigabyte of ram put in to them. This is one point that I can't emphasize enough. Always and absolutely make sure that you have budgeted in at least a gig of ram for a design machine. OS X is a massive hog on resources and even the 512 megs that comes stock with these machines can barely power the operating system, let alone the heavy-duty applications your designers will be using. With the extra gig of ram, we bumped up the G5's to 1280 megs of ram. While we only have a short amount of testing on them at this point, we've yet to find that that was not enough ram.
Our eMac machines were also completely stock from the manufacturer, except for the fact we bumped them up to 512 megs of ram. As I said before, OS X is a resource hog and most users are extremely bad about having every application available to them open at the same time. Naturally, you tell them not to do it, but they always end up going down that same street and thus, the need for half a gig of ram is needed and probably more down the road.
You might be asking at this point why I haven't brought up using X Server machines? There are three big reasons for this:
1. Even if we hadn't switched sales over to Windows, we would always have an accounting department running Windows and thus the need for Windows machines. Instead of fighting this and trying to limit the Windows invasion of our offices, I figured we might as go with it because really, all we needed the servers for were file serving and running a couple of server-based applications (Font Reserve Server, QLA, and a backup system.) Mail and Web were already on Linux machines.
2. The cost of the X Server is ridiculous. You can get Windows-based server for a significant cost savings and in all honesty have a machine that does the same exact thing. While a Windows server isn't going to look as "neat" in a server rack, this really doesn't matter much when this thing spends most of its time in the dark room and just needs to do its job.
3. OS X Server is not a finished system. It will do most of the things it needs to do, but at the same time, I get the feeling that Apple really wanted to create something that was their own, which I don't understand, since taking what is great about Windows and Linux would have been a much more worthwhile endeavor. The net result is a system that's about 80% completed. A production environment is no place to reinvent the wheel on a daily basis and I'll choose a Windows machine, because despite all their faults they've worked out a lot of kinks in the 10+ years of creating server software.