(FORTUNE Small Business) – You've probably seen Apple's Switch ads, with "real people" (who all just happen to be artists, writers, and musicians) advocating dumping Microsoft for Apple. You wouldn't expect to see a small business person, but with the release of Apple's latest operating system, OS X 10.2, commonly known as Jaguar ($129), it's not that implausible.

I've been running Jaguar for a couple of months, and it's a rock-solid, stable operating system with improved performance and a host of personal productivity tools and critical networking features. It's an Apple product, so the interface is slick but not cartoony. (Hear that, Windows XP?) It's not perfect, but small-office and home-office businesses could definitely benefit from its new features.

The most important addition is its networking feature, known as Rendezvous, which makes it possible to network devices such as computers, printers, and fax machines simply by plugging them in or inserting a wireless network card. Rendezvous eliminates the tedious steps needed to establish a new network or join an existing one. Other manufacturers will have to embrace the technology for it to take off, but so far, so good: Every network printer vendor is onboard to support it in the year ahead.

This has real potential to change work projects: Imagine walking into a meeting and having every laptop in the room automatically connected. Users could exchange files, display a copy of the current speaker's presentation, and capture ideas drawn on the room's digital whiteboard. No servers required, no techies invited.

Jaguar also includes a number of new or improved personal-productivity applications that bring it up to par with, or even improve on, Windows XP. An updated mail application provides a simple way to manage multiple e-mail accounts by automatically combining them in a single in-box. It also integrates an excellent spam filter, which for me has effectively reduced what was once 50 pieces of junk mail a day down to one or two. A new instant-messaging client, iChat, cleverly enables one-on-one and group chats and quick file transfers between colleagues, and is compatible with AOL.

I was disappointed that Jaguar did not support enough printers, particularly popular all-in-one devices that print, scan, fax, and copy. And although the new OS finally includes file sharing with Windows machines that works--a major improvement that makes it feasible to have some Macs in a mostly PC office without creating a major headache--the interface that lets you do so is a bit clunky. Overall, though, Jaguar positions Apple to be a realistic option for business, and not just another cool cat. --TERRENCE TALBOT