I cannot believe the amount of whining on this user feedback regarding Samba.

If you are capable of installing SAMBA, good, if you are not then I suggest you go searching the internet for a Samba OSX How-To ( or equivalent) and learn. I doubt whether it is that complicated.

Additionally, for most part - I very much doubt that casual users would need to upgrade to the bleeding edge version of Samba. The versions that come with OSX (especially Panther) are quite capable and you should keep you OS up to date with Software Update. Occasionally Apple do release updates for Samba

If it wasn't for Samba you would NOT be able to connect to windows shares or Share your Mac directories to Windows machines. CTRL-K - Finder Connect To uses Samba - so, SAMBA is required. AppleShare is a thing of the past.

All the Whiners out there - Cheese with that?

yes, I recommend Samba.