Hugh,
     I am no expert, but am willing to share my experience.  Unfortunately,
your network guy is more right than you think.  10.3.9 is panther and it
came out roughly in 2003.  It has no security, browser, or java updates
since late 2008.  It is the equivalent of running windows 98se on p.c.,
rock solid for it's time, but for all intensive purposes useless for
connecting to anything modern.
     If I remember correctly, 10.3.9 had version 3.0 of the samba
protocol.  That made connecting to win xp possible.  However, I am under
the impression that vista and 7 use samba 4.0.  (Microsoft smb2). I don't
know an easy solution to try and fix that.

Sorry,
Derek

P.S.
Samba is a free software re-implementation of the SMB/CIFS networking
protocol, originally developed by Andrew Tridgell.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Message_Block

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