"Leopard Server is the best release of Mac OS X Server yet, bringing more great innovations, like Podcast Producer, Wiki Server and iCal Server," Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, said in a press release. "With new setup features that have a server up and running within minutes and no client access licenses, Leopard Server is the ideal alternative to complicated and expensive server offerings for small and large businesses."

Leopard Server presents new features for setup, management and monitoring of systems on the network. Server Assistant configures server applications, network settings such as IP addresses and DNS configurations and user accounts with a few clicks. Server Preferences simplifies management of users, groups and key server applications, and a Server Status Dashboard widget remotely monitors activity and usage. Leopard Server also eliminates the need to manually set up Leopard clients by automatically configuring client applications, including file sharing, Mail, iChat, iCal, Address Book and VPN from user information stored on the server.

Podcast Producer offers a way for anyone to record content, automatically upload it to the server and convert it into a podcast optimized for playback on almost any device, including a high definition TV, iPod, Apple TV or multimedia-enabled cell phone.

With Wiki Server, you can create and edit collaborative web pages, called wikis,. Wiki Server has 20 Apple-designed web page themes and provides a complete revision history designed to make it easy to restore previous entries and merge or compare different versions. Wiki Server can automatically notify users whenever a change is made, and users can tag keywords to find content quickly.

You can share calendars, schedule meetings and coordinate events within a workgroup, school, small business or large corporation using iCal Server. iCal Server is an open, standards-based calendar server that works with calendar programs which support the new CalDAV standard and doesn't require client access licenses.

Leopard Server is fully UNIX compliant and its core services, including Apache 2, MySQL 5, Postfix, Podcast Producer and QuickTime®Streaming Server, are 64-bit. Since Leopard Server is fully 32-bit compatible, users can run 32-bit and 64-bit applications natively side-by-side.

Mac OS X Server Leopard will be available at Apple’s retail stores and through Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of US$499 for a 10-client edition and $999 for an unlimited-client edition. An unlimited client license of Leopard Server is included with Apple’s Xserve rack-mount server hardware at no extra charge. Online pre-orders can be made through the [url=http://www.apple.com]Apple Store[/url] starting today and current subscribers to the Apple Maintenance Program will receive Leopard Server as part of their service agreement.

Volume and maintenance pricing is available from Apple. The standard Mac OS Up-To-Date upgrade package is available to all customers who purchased a qualifying new Xserve system from Apple or an Apple Authorized Reseller on or after Oct. 1, for a shipping and handling fee of $9.95. Leopard Server can run on any Mac with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or G4 (867Mhz or faster) processor, a minimum 1GB of RAM and at least 20GB of available disk space.

Submissions are being taken for the "Macsimum Macworld San Francisco 2008 Coupon Book." For details email Dennis at daseller@earthlink.net