>Consider using SQL Server or SQL Express for data. Data integrity improves, ease of RELIABLE backup improves, speed likely improves, and it is an excellent selling point.

Nice, isn't it? M$ keeps screwing up the networking for file server based apps - mind you, this isn't the first glitch of the kind, remember the infamous write caching being set on and having to be manually reset on every reboot, or the QoS glitch early on in XP? And they actually don't fix them, they make them obsolete by introducing new ones in newer Windowses, and that's an excellent selling point for buying - what exactly? More bloatware from the same vendor?

I understand that we make more money by catching that train, but what's the point? File server solutions are nothing new, networks which support that are around for almost twenty years, how hard can it be to keep them working? What's changed? We have a better file system which now somehow fails to do what DOS 5 (or Novell 3.x, 4.x, x.x; Lantastic, RPTI, even WFWG or DOS 6 or DOS 7) was capable of? Or it somehow isn't reliable anymore, so let's start selling solutions which require SQL server for anything over 4 workstations?

This isn't about technology at all. This is about M$ making more money. Once we accept that, everything else follows.