i'm running a multi-user solution with filemaker 5.5 mac os x, windows xp, windows nt (total of 5 office computers)

Currently my computer, windows xp, is being used as host...

there is one computer that is basically used as a remote computer so that employees who work out of the office, can log in from home to enter data and retrieve info...

However, it has become a burden to my computer because now that the database has grown to include thousands of record per file and an image database, my computer is locking up...

so...I would like to know if fmpro server is a good investment and if I got linux server...i was thinking of turning one of our computers into a server and I assume the people that log on from home would have to have a copy of filemaker at home to log onto server at office???

Also...how bad is it to use the filemaker server computer also as a file and email server? Will that screw things up?

thanks

Using FM Server will increase performance and reduce the danger of data loss significantly. Server is multi-threaded, while normal FM is not. It's recommended that you dedicate a server to FM Server and not use it as a file and/or mail server, depending upon the platform, severe problems can occur. Linux is the newest of the platforms supported, I have no personal experience with server on this platform, but no negative experiences have been posted to the forum.

-bd

On NT it will work. We have good experience with FM server with 15 users connected.

We did run: FM server, LanFax, Proxy, Email, filesharing and domain controller on 2x200MHz 128MB with 15 users with heavy load and it was OK.