Buy mac or PC for work

[detroiter :P]

I work as a project manager with some light engineering work for a small business of about 30 people. I am mostly using microsoft office, visio, google earth, evernote, wunderlist, PDFs.

I have always had a PC laptop that I can dock to my dual monitors and like windows 7. I am considering if my next computer if I should go with a macbook pro with parralels and windows MS office or just stick with a PC. Does anyone have any experience of trying to use a mac in almost entirely PC business? Any recommendations?

Pros:
-I am used to a mac at home and like the OS
-better battery life with laptop for meetings, etc.
-have access to best of both worlds for software - use mac programs I like but also use native microsoft office

Cons:
-possible headaches with network integration at work (servers, printers, etc.)
-possible headaches when I will occasionally need to use vendor specific windows apps to connect to devices at work (think CCTVs and stuff)
-higher price, although its a small business I think the owners would consider it
-no docking station, would have to plug in multiple cables.

thanks!!!

 

[inkswamp]

Get a PC. I'm a long-time Mac user but El Capitan convinces me that Apple isn't going to take networking and Windows integration seriously any time soon. Their SMB file browsing implementation (which is critical for browsing Windows shares and Windows file sharing) is a damn joke and is so slow, it's almost unusable.

I'd love to recommend a Mac to you but I really wouldn't do it if you're working in a predominantly Windows environment. Apple's focus nowadays is iOS and the Macs are getting shortchanged. Using one in that situation is going to be a bigger hurdle than it's worth and (as I'm seeing at my own workplace) a major productivity killer.

 

[Nunyabinez]

I'm going to counter inkswamp and say go with the Mac. In fact his opening line, which I'm not criticizing him over, because we all do it, is "get a PC." Macs are PCs. Between Parallels and Boot Camp you have many options to deal with any environment. On my Macs I have both Parallels and Boot Camp. For something like Visio you just fire up the VM and you can cut and paste over to the Mac no problem.

For issues where you have hardware limitations, Boot Camp is more of a hassle since you have to reboot to get access, but I have a few devices that won't work with a VM and some software that refuses to be inside a VM. But, anything you can do with a non-Mac laptop you can do with a MacBook.

I think the build quality is well worth the extra money to get a MBP. As I have often said, the best Windows machine I ever had was a Mac. Inkswamp is correct that this will likely be much more of a hassle than having a dedicated Windows machine, but once you figure out your work flow it can be quite satisfactory to use a Mac in a mostly Windows environment.

 

[inkswamp]

I'm going to counter inkswamp and say go with the Mac. In fact his opening line, which I'm not criticizing him over, because we all do it, is "get a PC." Macs are PCs. Between Parallels and Boot Camp you have many options to deal with any environment. On my Macs I have both Parallels and Boot Camp. For something like Visio you just fire up the VM and you can cut and paste over to the Mac no problem.

For issues where you have hardware limitations, Boot Camp is more of a hassle since you have to reboot to get access, but I have a few devices that won't work with a VM and some software that refuses to be inside a VM. But, anything you can do with a non-Mac laptop you can do with a MacBook.

I think the build quality is well worth the extra money to get a MBP. As I have often said, the best Windows machine I ever had was a Mac. Inkswamp is correct that this will likely be much more of a hassle than having a dedicated Windows machine, but once you figure out your work flow it can be quite satisfactory to use a Mac in a mostly Windows environment.

For the record, I don't disagree with much of what you say but I'm watching our Mac users where I work trying to browse Windows shares in Yosemite and El Capitan and simply listing the contents of a directory is taking upwards of 2-3 minutes of spinning beachball. On a Windows PC (and older pre-10.7 Macs), that takes about 2 seconds flat to get the directory listing. I tested copying a large file (161 MB) from the network to desktop and it takes 12+ minutes on a modern Mac. Windows PC and older Macs, take about 3 minutes.

Ever since Apple abandoned the open source SAMBA software as the interface for Windows file shares, it's been an unmitigated disaster. Apple's own SMB is horrendously bad. If you're in a Windows environment, it's worth being aware of the fact that Apple has not and appears to have zero interest in fixing this. You are going to be interacting with the network shares at a significantly slower speed than your Windows counterparts. I think it's foolish to advise someone to get a Mac for a predominantly Windows-based workplace without them being fully aware of this massive downside.

 

[Nunyabinez]

For the record, I don't disagree with much of what you say but I'm watching our Mac users where I work trying to browse Windows shares in Yosemite and El Capitan and simply listing the contents of a directory is taking upwards of 2-3 minutes of spinning beachball. On a Windows PC (and older pre-10.7 Macs), that takes about 2 seconds flat to get the directory listing. I tested copying a large file (161 MB) from the network to desktop and it takes 12+ minutes on a modern Mac. Windows PC and older Macs, take about 3 minutes.

Ever since Apple abandoned the open source SAMBA software as the interface for Windows file shares, it's been an unmitigated disaster. Apple's own SMB is horrendously bad. If you're in a Windows environment, it's worth being aware of the fact that Apple has not and appears to have zero interest in fixing this. You are going to be interacting with the network shares at a significantly slower speed than your Windows counterparts. I think it's foolish to advise someone to get a Mac for a predominantly Windows-based workplace without them being fully aware of this massive downside.

And for the record, I don't disagree with your points as well. I have a custom built game machine at home and trying to get to shares across platforms does not work well, but i find workarounds and such.

 

[detroiter :P]

For the record, I don't disagree with much of what you say but I'm watching our Mac users where I work trying to browse Windows shares in Yosemite and El Capitan and simply listing the contents of a directory is taking upwards of 2-3 minutes of spinning beachball. On a Windows PC (and older pre-10.7 Macs), that takes about 2 seconds flat to get the directory listing. I tested copying a large file (161 MB) from the network to desktop and it takes 12+ minutes on a modern Mac. Windows PC and older Macs, take about 3 minutes.

Ever since Apple abandoned the open source SAMBA software as the interface for Windows file shares, it's been an unmitigated disaster. Apple's own SMB is horrendously bad. If you're in a Windows environment, it's worth being aware of the fact that Apple has not and appears to have zero interest in fixing this. You are going to be interacting with the network shares at a significantly slower speed than your Windows counterparts. I think it's foolish to advise someone to get a Mac for a predominantly Windows-based workplace without them being fully aware of this massive downside.

this sounds like a dealbreaker, great feedback!