convince my boss

Companies think ROI. With so many less expensive choices you're facing grim odds. If it were me, I'd buy it myself & enjoy all the advantages new Macs have to offer.

mavrick1903 said:

Anyone know of any decent white papers I can refer to when making a case to my boss for me to have a MBP? I'm a IT trainer, delivering training for desktop apps, document and video creation, and video collaboration. I've got some of my own thoughts, but would really like some more meat to add to put together a "proposal" of sorts that makes a winning case for it. Multi-threading between PC versions of products and Mac versions is good, but I need to hit a home run.

any thoughts?

Click to expand...

Why do you feel you need a MBP instead of a PC? If you have a compelling enough reason then present it in a face to face proposal and show him. If you own your own MBP then bring it it do the presentation on Keypoint and wow him.

mavrick1903 said:

Anyone know of any decent white papers I can refer to when making a case to my boss for me to have a MBP? I'm a IT trainer, delivering training for desktop apps, document and video creation, and video collaboration. I've got some of my own thoughts, but would really like some more meat to add to put together a "proposal" of sorts that makes a winning case for it. Multi-threading between PC versions of products and Mac versions is good, but I need to hit a home run.

any thoughts?

Click to expand...

Does a significant fraction of your customers own a Mac? If not, I can hardly think of a good reason to buy a more expensive machine and an extra copy of Windows + program licenses.

Well, is there really any justification for a more costly alternative platform for your line of work? What do you think? I mean, its understandable that you want a MacBook Pro I'd be the same. But I'm not sure it makes sense in the business world

One tactic that I used in 2003 to get my boss to switch our office over to Macs was long term cost saving. We got 10 G4 iMacs in 2003, we still have those 10 G4 iMacs are our primary work stations. They will be upgraded very soon to something Intell based, but they'll still be a Mac. Even though they are 9 years old, they've preformed well with only one bad hard drive and a ram upgrade in 2007. One of them has been one 24/7 with an average load of 94% on the CPU.

When I had to do a cost analysis for the next office upgrade, I retroactively planned out what could have happened if we had gotten 10 Dell's instead of the iMacs. The 9 year cost was almost twice as high (including original purchase), because of the Dell's needing so much more of an upgrade to run Vista/7. Needless to say, I think my boss is now a Mac guy.

Total Cost of Ownership is important to businesses, which is why Macs do make sense for many companies. While initial cost may be higher for hardware, resell value is much higher and tech support/downtime costs tend to be less. You can even throw-in some additional software cost as mentioned above and still come out ahead.

Here is a well-written 2007 Salon article that isn't just an opinion piece; it has figures to back up its claims. An excerpt:

"I ran such comparisons on many Windows and Mac systems sold during the past four years, and in nearly every one — whether the machines were laptops or desktops — the Macs sold by enough of a premium over comparable Windows machines to make up for the greater amount you would have paid when buying them."

http://www.salon.com/2007/11/07/mac_price/

And here is a TUAW article with a link to a detailed TCO analysis and spreadsheet about the difference in cost between a Mac and PC. (Business guys LOVE spreadsheets!) While it was published in 2006, I think that the conclusion is applicable in 2012. The analysis found that "owning a WinTel box for three years costs twice as much as owning a MacTel." Intell posted while I was composing my reply. It's interesting that his own cost-benefit analysis and first-hand experience support the same conclusion.

http://www.tuaw.com/2006/03/07/analyzing-mac-tco/

I have other articles, but these two are among the cream of the crop in my stash. I can review others if you need more info; I haven't gone through them in a while.

Depending on the size of your organization, it will be difficult to convince your boss.

I mean if there's an IT department, they usually set the policy of which computer to buy, and support. They many not allow any computer outside of what they contracted for, i.e., dell, HP, Lenovo. Plus organizations buy PCs from one vendor, so they get a decent discount, buying a one machine means it will be more expensive. I'm talking from a larger company perspective. Smaller companies operate a little more fluidly and less bureaucratically

Even with small companies, they need to consider support, software purchases, how long will it be projected to last, ROI etc.

I can't speak for the longevity of a Macbook Pro yet because I just got my fist one this past Christmas. But obviously they have a great reputation. We have Dell desktops for work. I know they're old. They can only take up to 4g of RAM which was just updated in the last few months. I work at a company that can afford better, but they act as though they don't have it in the budget. Go figure. And we still need more RAM. Too many crashes. Of course they don't think so, but what do we know. We only work with them EVERY DAY! Sorry, little venting there. But you have to consider I work in a call center with a couple hundred computers. We have 1 IT person. She's a female and very good at what she does. I see her constantly running around with desktops on a cart. Kinda like a rolling hospital bed for computers. I'm sure if we had Macs, she'd almost be out of a job :roll eyes:

The OP isn't asking for reasons why his request cannot possibly succeed; he asked for information that he could use to persuade his supervisor to agree to his request.

"If you don't ask, you don't get." That precept has served me very well over the years. More often than not I have gotten some or all of what I wanted simply by asking for it, sometimes in situations that most people would say it was not possible to do so.

Some years back I was involved in an intellectual property dispute with a large, well-known corporation. The impending lawsuit could have cost me in excess of $100,000 to litigate. Frankly, I couldn't afford it and I would have had to let my claim go.

So I did the unthinkable: I contacted the in-house counsel for the company and explained the situation to her. I asked her if there was some way that we might resolve the dispute that would work for everybody. She responded that she could not think of how we could accomplish that goal; I ended the call by asking her to let me know if anything changed and thanking her for her time.

I figured that was the end of it. But a week later I got a call from the attorney. She told me that she had been thinking about the situation after our conversation and that she had come up with a possible solution. She thought that she would be able to convince her boss to go along with the plan.

I put her in touch with my attorney and over the course of a few days we negotiated the details. To make a long story short, in the end I got what I wanted and the company felt that its interests were protected. My total cost: $2000.

After it was over my attorney called me and told me that she had never seen anything like it. The company had absolutely no reason to expend any effort to negotiate with me; it essentially held all the cards. But the in-house counsel told my attorney that my call had convinced her that I was a straight-shooter and that I wasn't trying to scam the company. She was so impressed with what I had said to her that she took it upon herself to come up with a reasonable compromise and then went to the trouble of convincing her boss to agree to the deal.

The moral of the story: don't assume anything when approaching a problem. Every situation and the people involved is unique, so start with the idea that you can succeed. In other words, don't give up before you start. Only fold your cards when you know you are beat.

mavrick1903 said:

Lots of feed back here. Thanks for the input. I'm specifically looking for preformance points. ie: Mac renders video faster.

Click to expand...

I'm no expert but I think you need to give a little more information regarding your specific job requirements. We pretty much use macs at work for anyone in the tech or sales department. The rest of us get crapy pc workstations ( mine runs XP) I think I need to transfer departments!

I work in a government office, we have our pick of laptops for the IT team, and then everyone else, gets an option of Desktop, Design Workstation, Laptop, Desktop Replacement Laptop.

I personally use an ASUS UX21E for my work machine, I would like to use my MBP so I can carry one machine for everything, but I personally don't want to have to go through a heap of crap when/if I leave with removing the Win Partition and deleting all the network passwords out of the OSX partition.

mavrick1903 said:

Lots of feed back here. Thanks for the input. I'm specifically looking for preformance points. ie: Mac renders video faster.

Click to expand...

No offense intended, but it would have been nice if you had been more specific in your original post regarding your requirements...

There is no good reason to chose Mac over PC other then personal choice.
Both use the exact same hardware, CPU, GPU, RAM, hard drives, you name it it is exactly the same. The only difference is the operating system.

Mac's are not made any better or worse then any other notebook computer costing 2/3 as much. Mac's fail just like any other make or model computer.

If you company is Windows based then that is what they will want you to use for many different reasons. Support being the main reason.

You want a Mac because you thing it will work better and looks nicer then whatever PC notebook you have.

mavrick1903 said:

Lots of feed back here. Thanks for the input. I'm specifically looking for preformance points. ie: Mac renders video faster.

Click to expand...

When I was able to show my boss how I could speed up out video output from what we were doing on a 32 bit PC editing platform to a 64 bit MBP editing platform, he was interested. When I told him that if this MBP would not make things faster, I would write him a check for the MBP so he would have no loss if I was full of bs.

There are videos that would do on a PC that were 30 minutes in finished length that took about 50+ minutes to output. With the MBP the same video outputs in 23 minutes. Needless to say my boss was stoked, not only did I not have to write my boss a check for the MBP, he gave me a bonus.

I am not a scientific guy on how to explain it all in the terms you would need, all I can do is tell you what my experience has been.

(*Everything is being edited in Final Cut X)

mavrick1903 said:

Mac renders video faster.

Click to expand...

No. It doesn't. Intel supplies the same chips to PC makers as well.

mavrick1903 said:

Anyone know of any decent white papers I can refer to when making a case to my boss for me to have a MBP? I'm a IT trainer, delivering training for desktop apps, document and video creation, and video collaboration. I've got some of my own thoughts, but would really like some more meat to add to put together a "proposal" of sorts that makes a winning case for it. Multi-threading between PC versions of products and Mac versions is good, but I need to hit a home run.

any thoughts?

Click to expand...

Are you asking someone on the forum to do the hw for you? You know, it would be funny if your boss run across this post and finds out you are asking other people on line to do your hw.

Most companies now a days look for ways to save money and improve quality and efficiency. If you can somehow generate evidence that a mac book pro can help you achieve that goal, then you MIGHT have a chance.

In my opinion, I don't think your company will go for it simply because of extra costs in the form of system maintenance and software licensing. They are not going to pay extra for your mac software license(s) when the PC counterpart can perform just as well.

In short, you are most likely not going to get your wish unless you pay for everything out of your own pocket.

Lunchb0x8 said:

I work in a government office, we have our pick of laptops for the IT team, and then everyone else, gets an option of Desktop, Design Workstation, Laptop, Desktop Replacement Laptop.

Click to expand...

As someone who purchases computers for local government, it will be difficult. Most government computers are purchased on contract through the State. Federal Government may have a different way of handling it, but government offices are generally directed to a website which lists computers which meet the government's standards. For example, ours are purchased without wireless cards and we have to install those ourselves.

This is through Library grant money, but it is the only way we are able to purchase employee and public computers. I'd say you will be in a similar situation.

We have one iMac from 2006. It was donated.