While setting up a Mac in the lounge room for internet surfing, I discovered a way to have roaming profiles without the need for an OS X server.
I started by creating an account on the new box. This account has an automatic mount to my main Mac. With this done, I then created symbolic links between the new account and some major folders within my account folder on the main machine:
ln -s /Volumes/main_mac/Users/user_name/Documents ~/DocumentsRepeat for each different item to be linked, and if the folder exists already, you would probably want to delete it first. Of course, I may be wrong, and I haven't tested this one...]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20030805192935616