The IEDR is a hotbed of infighting and interference. Started by a few select academics in Dublin's UCD, it is still being meddled with non-stop. I sure as hell don't care whether or not they want to register adult websites, but the IEDR are particularly nasty even to legitimate domain registrations. For example, a private citizen can't register a personal domain unless they're a company or publicly known celebrity like a politician. Leave the policing up to people better able to do the policing.

This technology was very recently deployed in Ireland. There have been severe problems with it, including both the video and tag system simultaneously billing some customers. Funny thing is a lot of people forget there's a toll there at all any more - there used to be constant protests about the motorway in question.

Try a second-hand one - Power Mac's are available very cheaply these days. The vertical integration is what gives Mac OS X its stability and quick release cycles.

So, for example, try running something non mission critical such as the Alumni database, or a webcasting server or a software mirror service on a FOSS box. Then people start to say how fast it is/doesn't break down. Then try something with some bite in it - maybe a read-only Samba server. Then maybe a read/write Samba server for a small group, which is linked to AD. Make the move in small steps, a bit like the Embrace & Extend strategy.

Presumably apart from server load it wouldn't be a big deal assuming the users are working on a read-only login?