


I'd just use the Mac until you get a point where you've developed some issues that you'd want the Domain to solve. If you had a lot of these around it would change the equation, but for a one-off Mac I don't think I'd bother. In a sense you don't have to wrap your head around what being on a domain means if you're not on a domain. You also never know when you're going to run into something odd and potentially blame being on the domain. If you're not used to Macs you're going to be slowed down already that the few extra moments a Domain could save you won't make much difference. Ease of login is nice, but if it's a single user machine there's not going to be much difference between having a few passwords for network resources added to a keychain vs actually joining a Domain. There aren't really any out of the box equivalents for 1 & 2, and in all honesty those are the most important. In general the reasons I join a PC to a Domain are:

I had a spare that I joined to the Domain for fun, and life just wasn't that much different. James - I haven't spent a ton of time looking at this, but when I got to my current job I noticed that none of the Macs were on the Domain.
