Recommendations for SMB/CIFS file server configuration

[James Dugger]

I'm new to PLUG and new to LINUX but I have jumped in head first.  By
head first I mean I have removed XP off of 4 desktops and Vista off my
HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop and installed Ubuntu 10.04 i386 on each.  I
have built an new headless server with and AMD Athelon (tripple core)
64bit chip and 2GB of DDR2 DRAM to be used as a file server, and print
server to 3 printers.  I have installed 3 - 1TB drives in a RAID 5
array (Configured as RAID on main board BIOS, no PCI controller) and
software controlled using the OS which is Ubuntu 10.04 Server AMD
64bit.

I am trying to configure the file server but with so many options and
settings I admit that I am a bit lost.  My file server will need to be
accessible to a couple of work computers that run Windows.  Also I
have an Apple TV box that I am trying to convert to XBMC, the media
for this will be stored on the file server.  With this I have
installed Samba onto my server and desktops.  However I don't know if
I should use samba (SMB) or CIFS for configuration.  With several
different mount points and different security settings for each mount
point, is SMB or CIFS better?  I want to minimize or more accurately
centralize the administrative control of user access to the file
server.  I know there are different ways to accomplish this and wanted
to ask what others have found to work best given the small size and
scale of this network.

I am looking for recommendations in file server type (SMB, CIFS) and
recommended configuration i.e. use of groups for users, passwords
stored in database or text files and or matching user accounts in OS.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

-- 
James