Comments on: Macs or PCs for Business?

By: Oskar Syahbana

Oskar Syahbana — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 03:44:45 +0000

I use my Macbook for work but mainly runs windows on top of that. There’s not much financial tools available in macintosh and for what I encountered, the Office runs ALOT slower (due to Rosetta of course), and since MS is ditching most of VB programming in the upcoming release of Office for mac (which is playing an important role on my ‘hobby’), I think I’ll stay to Windows on business (but still uses my gorgeous macbook)

By: Lordmike

Lordmike — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:47:36 +0000

I don’t think the company I work for will change to MAC or Linux, because we got about 40-70’000 employees running Windows 2000 with AD accounts, exchange servers etc hundreds if not thousands of 16-32bit scripts.
We run programs like SAP, MATLAB, Facil+, PSS/E, MS Office 2000, Adobe Acrobat 7, Eldorado and many more. Some but not all of those wont run under mac or linux.
Plus we got some siemens, abb, areva programs which are windows only.

10-15 years ago we had MAC and PC, but the company got rid of every non windows environment to many peoples dismay.

I’d love to have MAC, but don’t think we ever will switch. Next year we “might” switch to Windows XP.

By: Will

Will — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 15:59:21 +0000

I find that once you get comfortable and experienced with OSX, there is a major advantage that is to be found over competitors operating systems.

As is, I’ve never had problems with crashing or security and I feel at ease when I think about it. I don’t have to worry if my 12 hour project will go down the tubes because of a new type of spyware.

Linux is becoming the same way to with distros like uBuntu.

By: Honza

Honza — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:25:06 +0000

Alex, it’s true. Whoever decided to roll out a non-standards based VPN client that only works on windows, to 300,000 employees, must have been mentally deranged. There is no other way around this (apart running another windows box at home just for VPN access).

By: Alex Morse

Alex Morse — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 14:11:29 +0000

Honza,

That’s a fair point, but I consult a higher level than that. My question would be, what is it about that specific VPN client that you require? In 99% of all cases I see where there is some piece like this that seems critical, there’s another way it can be done. In nearly all of those cases, the reason for sticking with whatever non-standards piece are not only sketchy, but sometimes the people that made the decision don’t even remember why!

By: Honza

Honza — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 19:54:01 +0000

“I have absolutely no reason to use or recomend PCs. There’s simply nothing you can do with them, that you can’t do on a Mac.”

I agree, I can’t recommend PC’s to any of my colleagues, family, or friends, but this is only a general rule. There’s always an exception.

In my case, I cannot use my (PPC) Mac for work because a Mac version of the VPN client that we need to use doesn’t exist. Normal standards based VPN clients just don’t work.

By: Alex Morse

Alex Morse — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 17:41:34 +0000

I’m an international business consultant. I use macs exclusively and have for about 2 years now.

I have absolutely no reason to use or recomend PCs. There’s simply nothing you can do with them, that you can’t do on a Mac. Sure, I see plenty of companys entrenched in the MS Office world, but in almost all of the cases that is a symptom of a problem rather than a valid business choice.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 16:16:05 +0000

While it makes perfect business and technical sense, the thing that worries me most, having gone through a few companies that “got too big for our own good” is what will happen when the tide turns in favor of Apple?

How will Apple handle this? Steve and Bill, even though very different are business beasts and see markets the same wys. Would Apple flex it’s muscles on customers as Microsoft did and leave us out dry? That is my main worry.

In the meantime, there is Ubuntu, I guess.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 02:06:53 +0000

Been using mostly Macs and a few PCs in a medical business for 9 years. Just tossed two old PCs… now just one iMac that runs Windows a few minutes every day. Stupid vendors who require ActiveX for web aps!!

I did need a support call from that vendor the other day. They actually took over my iMac (running Windows) and fixed the problem. They never figured out that it was a Mac!! And that is a “good thing” as their official party line is that they do not support their application if it is running on Windows on the Mac.

When IT types can’t tell it is a Mac then they will support. If you tell them it is a Mac then they wond support. My new Motto: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

By: monkey

monkey — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 22:25:49 +0000

We use Mac’s exclusivly at work. They’re ideal for our designers and us web developers can work with Firefox + Firebug, and run Windows in Parallels so we can check IE5, IE6 and IE7, along with the Mac browsers.

The web development software is a joy. We can install Apache and Ruby on Rails alongside PHP and MySQL in a decent Unix environment on our own machines and the only software thats lacking is SVN clients. The Mac ones suck. But that’s our one complaint. :)