OS X Snow Leopard or OS X Snow Leopard Server?

[0hms]

Hopefully some of you more informed people will be able to help me.

I work for a medium sized business that has multiple sites (5 in total) in the UK (shops and offices).
We are looking at having a central file server/computer for everyone to be working from (excel/word/images etc)

I have been tasked with looking into what we can do and eventually setting it up, mainly as I know the 'most' about these things - I'm a very competent OS X user, so was thinking of purchasing a Mac Mini as the machine.
Just don't know if to just use OS X or jump into OS X Server, the things we need and/or like it to do are:

• Central file location/server - that can be accessed by all sites (only allowing files to be worked on [read/write] by one user at a time).
• Backups - no problem here, though would like to know if you can have a mirrored HD (RAID 1 iirc) setup with OS X or is this only available with OS X Server.
• eMail management - would be nice, our email is handled by our webhost - but we don't have imap (or so I'm told) capability, which is very annoying especially for our info@, so ideally this machine would pull in all our emails and distribute them accordingly - but not essential the main thing is as a central file location for all sites.

As I mentioned our locations are across UK, so I understand that I'll have to do some networking, may get someone in for that, also we're a mix of Macs and PC's though hopefully in the long run will go all Mac.

Any help and or advice would be VERY much appreciated

Many thanks in advance

 

[iDisk]

I would ask someone who is more of the tech person for your company (which doesn't sound like you).

Usually the Tech people understand whether or not they need a server OS or consumer OS. Since they've already educated themselves, and either have experience with servers or consumer oriented OS's.

If you educated yourself slightly your results would probably point you to OS X Server. Not to mention you said your were looking for a server in your post

 

[0hms]

I'm a graphic designer/web developer - as I said I've been tasked with looking into and eventually setting up....
if this means contracting someone in then so be it....

all I really want to know is if client side OS X can do the things listed or if we need to look into OS X Server...

Then we'll have to look into getting an educated person in, as you put it, should we need too