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advice on small business setup

D

dirthawk

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 9, 2009
4
0
starting a new business in a couple of weeks and need some advice on 'infrastructure'. everyone will use macbooks and iphones.

one idea was to use mobileme for projects and files, the big benefit would be not needing to buy an extra machine. but after reading the forums it doesnt seem like a good idea (mm seem to lack in stability).

what seems more realistic is to get a mac mini and snow leopard server when it is released. ical server, address book server & mobile access server should be really useful stuff. how hard is os x server to setup & manage? is it easy to learn?

what other alternatives are there? google has some nice free services (gmail, google calendar) and there's alot of online disk space services as well. so i guess it easy do it pretty cheap.

how would you do it or how have you setup your business?

thanks for reading!
 
I would take a look at Google Docs to see if that does what you want. I got the last company I worked for to convert over to that and it worked very well for them :)
 
I second google docs and services... I use to work for a place that also converted over to google services.
 
our design studio uses:

- mobile me to sync calendar and contacts to all computers and iphones (about 6 devices total)

- dropbox to sync task-lists (text doc) and time-trackers (numbers spreadsheets)

we decided against google docs because of 1) lack of native files and formatting options for task-lists, 2) lack of offline access (google gears does not work as well as it needs to yet, at least the last time we looked anyway) and 3) horrible UI for google docs in general.

if we take on another couple of employees we will likely move to some of the 37signals webapps for project management and time tracking.
 
thanks for the responses! i agree google docs doesnt look all too pretty.

Shake 'n' Bake said:
I can think of many, many, many ways to set this up. If we know your price range, we can give you better advice.
Click to expand...

cool! lets say our limit is around 3000$
 
I also use GoogleDocs ( for personal and small business projects )

It is good but it can be slow on big files. Sorting , loading etc can sometimes upto 10-15 seconds which annoys me a lot. Imagine you do several times sorting one after another.

I like Windows Office Live but on MAC version of Office uploading is not directly integrated into Office Suite.
 
chameleon81 said:
I also use GoogleDocs ( for personal and small business projects )

It is good but it can be slow on big files. Sorting , loading etc can sometimes upto 10-15 seconds which annoys me a lot. Imagine you do several times sorting one after another.

I like Windows Office Live but on MAC version of Office uploading is not directly integrated into Office Suite.
Click to expand...

This is why I don't think "cloud computing" will be as big as people act like it will be (at least until we have faster internet)
 
Shake 'n' Bake said:
This $3000 does not include the MacBooks and iPhones, correct? Also, how many employees? Because equipping just five employees with base MacBooks costs $4995.
Click to expand...

oh, sry for being unclear. no phones and macbooks included in those 3 grand. there will be three of us in the 'core team' ( will have free lancers but they wont work in house for the most part).
 
Forgot about this thread for some reason, but three MacBooks will cost just under $3000. You're going to have to go to at least $6000.
 
dirthawk said:
oh, sry for being unclear. no phones and macbooks included in those 3 grand. there will be three of us in the 'core team' ( will have free lancers but they wont work in house for the most part).
Click to expand...

id say that openoffice might be a good place for free suite package.. i dont know how useful it will be for your situation but i personally like it. as for syncing data. i would think something that uses ical would work the best but then again i dont really schedule that much
 
Shake 'n' Bake said:
Forgot about this thread for some reason, but three MacBooks will cost just under $3000. You're going to have to go to at least $6000.
Click to expand...

mr bake! would love to get some tips on what stuff to use in a small business setup, but dont mind the macbooks (and iphones) for now, they're on a separate budget.

the other tips about 37signals services and dropbox was really good.
 
Here's what I've come up with:

Necessities

Base 120 GB Mac mini with 1-year family-pack subscription to Mobile Me: $718. You could get a refurb mini and buy Mobile Me separate, and it may be cheaper, I'm too lazy to look.

Snow Leopard Server: $499. Unlimited clients.

Newer Technology miniStack: $349.99. 2 TB.
___________________________
$1566 before S&H and taxes.

Optional

AirPort Extreme Base Station: $179.

AppleCare for Mac mini: $149.

HP PhotoSmart C6380: $200. IIRC, you can get $100 off this with the printer promotion.

Apple Keyboard+Mouse: $98

Dell E2009WFP: $179.
___________________________
$2371 before S&H and taxes and rebates. (The total to the left is for everything, not just the options.)
 
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