[Angus_D]

First, some background:

My school originally had an all-Mac IT suite, running on LCs and old stuff like that. Due to lack of investment and general incompetence at a management level, this was still the case into the late 90s (1997 or so). I think about that time a Government inspection was highly critical of their handling of ICT, and since then they've had an expanding IT staff (now 3 full-time technicians, in addition to a fully staffed teaching department for computing) and curriculum (although it still leaves a lot to be desired). Of course, they junked the entire Mac set-up and it's an all-Windows shop now (entirely W2K based).

However, some departments have retained a smattering of Macs because they find them more appropriate for their needs (the Music and Art depts, specifically). I've always assumed that this was an officially-sanctioned solution, although I've noticed that the hardware has been ageing and is in some cases incorrectly configured. Now, I've discovered that all Macs on site are UNSUPPORTED and any attempts to purchase new ones are actively discouraged (the art dept fortunately has a guy who's willing to act unilaterally and purchased a new eMac saying he "didn't need support" or something along those lines). I was talking to one of the media studies teachers who was saying they really want Macs for editing, but they weren't sure if they'd be able to go through with it - and currently their machines are all broken and don't work too well (there's a PC machine for editing that is generally odd and has some serious issues).

The sad thing is that if they just bought a bunch of Macs and set them up correctly it'd be less hassle than maintaining some Windows machines for t he same job. Not to mention most of the students would rather use iMovie or Final Cut (and a lot of them already do outside of school).

Now, I'm generally well respected amongst the IT staff and also the management, and I was thinking I should probably point out that their attitude is wrong. Now, I haven't done too much evangelising for a good while, so I was wondering if any of you guys had any ideas on how to approach this, any resources I can point people to.. I'm thinking of even offering to help set them up and maintain them while I'm still there (another year).

I'm sure they aren't aware that OS X could integrate fine with their Active Directory domain, for example. Those that have been there for some time still have bad memories of the old setup, and as a result a good number have the impression that Macs are slow and crashy.

[voodoo]

<sigh>

I wish you best of luck.

[vmarks]

Here's what you do.

You call Apple, specifically the Apple Learning Interchange.

You want them to come out and talk to both IT and the teachers at the same time.

You want to have them shown the best possible class uses combined with the integration into the existing win servers.

Have the ALI people bring a tech with them to present to the IT folks as well.

http://ali.apple.com/

[email protected]

If you need to prove it, set up one small sample, a mac that auths with their active directory, to show it isn't old slow and crashy, and from there begin to show off the unix underpinnings and the amount of things it can do, in addition to their setup not replacing it.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by vmarks:
You call Apple, specifically the Apple Learning Interchange.

You want them to come out and talk to both IT and the teachers at the same time.

I don't suppose you'd happen to know if there's anything similar in the UK?

[lil'babykitten]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
I don't suppose you'd happen to know if there's anything similar in the UK?

What school do you go to?

[willed]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
I don't suppose you'd happen to know if there's anything similar in the UK?

heh, wouldn't count on it, what with Apple UK being **** and all. Good luck with the crusade. I really don't see why they won't allow purchases of Macs in special cases. It was the same story at my school - probably all over the UK; school buys Mac in early-mid 90s, crap upkeep/investment/IT staff, = everyone thinking Macs are crap, eventual investment in loads of cheap Windows boxes with arrival of new IT staff. Frustrating stuff.

[Millennium]

I wish you the best of luck.

Has your school been hit hard by any Microsoft viruses recently? If so, you may want to point out that the Macs were completely unaffected. You might also want to point out that any similar virus in the future which might target Macs could not target Windows, and so it is in the best interests of the school to minimize the impact of any future attacks by maintaining a better mix of platforms.

[ambush]

Don't mix mac zealoting and school.

That's the best advice I can give.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by ambush:
That's the best advice I can give.

I suggest you don't pursue a career in consulting.

[ambush]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
I suggest you don't pursue a career in consulting.

[mitchell_pgh]

It's a sad state of affairs at my University. While they don't go out of their way to say "You can't have a Mac" they do avoid it.

"You can either have a Dell desktop or a Dell laptop", "or one of those Apple things that nobody uses, har har har!"

[Cadaver]

I'm an academic radiologist at a Big 10 university hospital, and nearly the entire medical campus is running on 75% WinNT 4 sp6 and 25% WinXP sp1. Many of the PhDs and most of the graphical artists are running Macs, but I'm one of the few clinical faculty who runs a Mac.

The IT department wont officially support me, but most of the IT folks have been very forthcoming with server names/IP addresses, etc.

Plus, every time the mail server is shut down due to huge influxes of virus-infected email attachments, I always jibe in that at least my computer is completely immune.

I've come to find that many use one or another distribution of Linux at home and many of them privately use as few MS products as possible. Also have come to find that at least a couple of guys are strongly eyeing OS X.

[curious4me2]

Okay, I don't know if this would work, but i was thinking something along the lines of this:

First, gather up every telephone number of every IT person working there, home, work, cell, etc. Then allow the various departments to purchase their Wintels. Then distribute the phone numbers to every student/teacher using those Wintels. Instruct those using the computers that they are to call those phone numbers EVERY time there is a problem or question using the Wintel boxes...no matter the time of day or anything. Eventually, the IT people get frustrated of answering calls day and night and acquiesce into allowing the purchase of Macs, which will cut down on the probem calls.

However, I secretly think that IT people push Wintels so much so they can keep their jobs.

[MindFad]

Originally posted by ambush:

MindFad.com Consulting Tagline:

"Because even 16-year-old French-Canadians are obsessed with us."

[aer]

Where I work we are in a similar situation. We were able to ward off the PC trolls until this March- when we finally backed down. We were able to migrate the school district to OS X and buy eMacs and iBooks this last year. Things worked moderately well- but the migration to OS X wasn't without flaws. The teachers tend to blame everyday problems on the Macs- since the administrators (who use Win98 and 2k) weren't having the same problems. That was true to an extent- but the PC IT people spent three or four years getting to that point where there were few problems on the PC side. Not to mention, we had 300+ macs and 15 PCs- and much better hardware for the PC users than the Mac users (on the server side as well). On the PC side we had 4 dual Xeon Win2k servers, on the Mac side (for 700 users) we had four Mac servers- only one of which was "new" as of last year. The rest were sawtooth G4's and a 533 Mhz.

One way we were able to ward off the PC trolls was by pointing out the known average life span ot our Macs, vs. the PC's at other schools that were similar to ours. We also had the power consumption issue- the fact that an eMac requires 1 plug into a wall socket. An entry level Dell or Gateway requires atleast three and uses twice as much energy. And we also used the fact that there are 0 known viruses for Mac OS X. Plus the per-client fees for Windows "roaming" profile clients versus Mac OS X "managed" clients with networked home folders is a good one. For $499 per server license, you can have as many network clients as you like on the Mac side. If you go with the Windows solution, you MUST pay a significant fee per user which makes the cost thousands more. And then there is NetBoot/NetRestore- free with the server on the Mac side for cloning software configs on client machines. The PC admins use Norton Ghost, which ends up costing hundreds more with the "per-client" fee. And then there is the antivirus licenses. Windows machines have to have McAfee Enterprise Anti-virus- which again cost the school district over 20k. If you set up your Mac network with Network home folders and make no networked users local admins, then there is almost no chance a virus could run on the client Macs due to the built in security with OS X and BSD Unix. So we ran McAfee on our servers only and saved thousands. Since every single file downloaded to a client was saved on a network home folder, the servers caught everything that could be malicious before any damage was done.

But we lost too. According to the district, those costs are worth it- I even heard someone say "That's just the cost of doing business!" So we have our first batch of PCs staring us in the face. Already we are spending thousands of more dollars. Sure- Mac hardware might not be as cheap as Dell up front, but make sure you mention the hidden costs of running Windows- security, software, per-client fees, energy consumption and desktop footprint. And then there is the OS....

I think Bill Joy (creator of BSD, NFS and ex-Sun Chief Scientist) had a great criticism of Windows that would be worth printing it out if you can find it online. He says basically that Windows is engineered in such a way that "features" aren't planned and integrated into the OS so much as "bolted on". And he loves Mac OS X- which is excellent coming from one of the guys who made the internet possible and secure with his inventions.

The FBI uses Macs now. NASA has more that half of their work done using Macs. The Va. Tech supercomputer is 1100 Macs. Apple is a serious player now. Any IT person in their right mind that wasn't an egoist or a masochist would know this. Unfortunately, going to MCSE and MCSA courses, you really get indoctrinated with a bunch of BS that makes most people who know no different "Windrones".

[ambush]

Originally posted by MindFad:


MindFad.com Consulting Tagline:

"Because even 16-year-old French-Canadians are obsessed with us."

uuu like it don't lie!

[mitchell_pgh]

I've always dreamed of being an IT person that ran an entire school.

I would set up Apple's Remote Desktop application and monitor everything from my office on two 23" cinema displays.

http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

Most problems are user errors, not legitimate computer problems.

[Theodour]

Originally posted by curious4me2:
However, I secretly think that IT people push Wintels so much so they can keep their jobs.

Not so secret.

[Link]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
Most problems are user errors, not legitimate computer problems.

You should work at apple.

[dglass]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
[B]First, some background:

This site might be of some use to you.

http://www.macvspc.info

[zro]

Contact your local MUG (Mac Users Group) and ask what you and they can do to edify the people making this decision. There may well be some very respectable people in the MUG.

Attend an open meeting if you have to.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Link:
You should work at apple.

One of my first helpdesk situations was telling a person to make sure their computer was plugged in.

It wasn't.

I was also inundated with calls when other peoples servers were down.

[mitchell_pgh]

I feel there is a general movement in small to medium sized shops to go PURE Microsoft. The mentality being it will save money because they will only have to support one platform.

Our IT people know Windows, and don't want to spend ANY extra time learning a new platform to assist only 1% of the network.

[Scotttheking]

Windows on the desktops, linux on the servers. There is no other way to go.

[Sydney Tsai]

yea yea, Macs on our lap
they are running wirelessly

[voodoo]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Windows on the desktops, linux on the servers. There is no other way to go.

Solaris on the servers, Windows AND Linux on the desktops. That is the setup at my university.

They could also have Macs, but they don't.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Windows on the desktops, linux on the servers. There is no other way to go.

Maybe at larger companies where they can have Linux people on hand full time...

Most small to medium sized companies go Windows on the desktops, Windows on the server.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
I feel there is a general movement in small to medium sized shops to go PURE Microsoft. The mentality being it will save money because they will only have to support one platform.

Our IT people know Windows, and don't want to spend ANY extra time learning a new platform to assist only 1% of the network.

Yeah, that was sort of the argument I was looking for help countering.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Yeah, that was sort of the argument I was looking for help countering.

I've come to the conclusion that I'm NOT going to "convert" my IT people, and I'm guessing that you are in the same boat. You need to work with cold hard facts. Have your Macs had many problems? Try to get any documentation on service requests. How old are the current systems. How old are they in comparison to the PCs. Do the PCs get replaced at a higher frequency?

This is how I made an argument for my computer as I've had zero service requests in over 2-1/2 years.

[ghost_flash]

http://www.macnn.com/news/23913

[Ratm]

Originally posted by dglass:
This site might be of some use to you.

http://www.macvspc.info

http://www.macvspc.info/

[killer_735]

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:
I've always dreamed of being an IT person that ran an entire school.

I would set up Apple's Remote Desktop application and monitor everything from my office on two 23" cinema displays.

http://www.apple.com/remotedesktop/

Most problems are user errors, not legitimate computer problems.

and the fact that you would want to use Remote desktop is why you aren't an IT person who runs an entire school.

Real geeks use sudo.

[olePigeon]

OMG, he has my webbanner on there.

I made a spinning 3D Apple logo using LogoMotion and submitted it to some Apple Banner Exchange website because all the "Made with a Mac" banners were static. Then all of the sudden every webpage had my spinning Apple logo. That was my 15 minutes of fame.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by killer_735:
and the fact that you would want to use Remote desktop is why you aren't an IT person who runs an entire school.

Real geeks don't run school networks unless they haven't graduated in anything yet.

[fizzlemynizzle]

Originally posted by Cadaver:
I'm an academic radiologist at a Big 10 university hospital, and nearly the entire medical campus is running on 75% WinNT 4 sp6 and 25% WinXP sp1. Many of the PhDs and most of the graphical artists are running Macs, but I'm one of the few clinical faculty who runs a Mac.

Yikes, I wouldn't want to be in that situation.. Windows NT is beyond end of life and Microsoft is ceasing support after June 30th of this year. That's just a few months away.

Plus, every time the mail server is shut down due to huge influxes of virus-infected email attachments, I always jibe in that at least my computer is completely immune.

So they have no virus scanners on the email servers?

And this is a major university?

we're doomed.

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Windows on the desktops, linux on the servers. There is no other way to go.

No, a competent IT staff is the only way to go.