Here's the situation:
In the school where I work, we have a mix of osx and windows machines, and I think even a few os9 leftovers somewhere. I'd estimate it's about 95% windows, and 5% mac. The macs are, for the most part, imac g4's 800mhz with 256 mb ram, with some running jaguar and some running panther. Our school network is primarily for email, office applications, and internet access.
Today, one of our tech guys was installing an extra mac that was sitting around, so that a coworker could have his own machine to work on, instead of sharing a windows box with another teacher. He was having all sorts of trouble getting it set up to print on a shared printer (according to him, apparently macs cannot print to hp laserjet 1000's, only to the hp laserjet 1200, which we don't have very many of). Anyway, he commented that he hoped all the macs would be replaced with windows machines somewhere in the not too distant future. I of course suggested that we move to the other extreme, and replace all the pc's with macs.
He came back with the statement that, while macs were fine in an isolated lab, unconnected to the rest of the school network, they had lots of problems when part of a large network. He said that they lose print setups (or something like that) very easily, and the labs need to be reimaged too often. Obviously this sounds wrong, but I didn't know enough technical jargon to argue with him. I got the impression that he just didn't like macs because they were "different", and therefore one extra thing for him to keep track of. We left it with a very frosty "agree to disagree".
What arguments can I use to show that he is wrong in two ways: regarding the macs on the large network, and with his plan to get rid of the macs altogether? So far I've thought of the fact that they would probably have way fewer problems with the macs if they upgraded once in a while, and didn't cheap out on ram. Also, I figured that upgrading to intel machines (obviously a financial issue) with bootcamp would allow them to set up their precious windows only network, while individual users could still use osx for their personal work if they wanted.
Does anybody have any other ideas or suggestions?
In the school where I work, we have a mix of osx and windows machines, and I think even a few os9 leftovers somewhere. I'd estimate it's about 95% windows, and 5% mac. The macs are, for the most part, imac g4's 800mhz with 256 mb ram, with some running jaguar and some running panther. Our school network is primarily for email, office applications, and internet access.
Today, one of our tech guys was installing an extra mac that was sitting around, so that a coworker could have his own machine to work on, instead of sharing a windows box with another teacher. He was having all sorts of trouble getting it set up to print on a shared printer (according to him, apparently macs cannot print to hp laserjet 1000's, only to the hp laserjet 1200, which we don't have very many of). Anyway, he commented that he hoped all the macs would be replaced with windows machines somewhere in the not too distant future. I of course suggested that we move to the other extreme, and replace all the pc's with macs.
He came back with the statement that, while macs were fine in an isolated lab, unconnected to the rest of the school network, they had lots of problems when part of a large network. He said that they lose print setups (or something like that) very easily, and the labs need to be reimaged too often. Obviously this sounds wrong, but I didn't know enough technical jargon to argue with him. I got the impression that he just didn't like macs because they were "different", and therefore one extra thing for him to keep track of. We left it with a very frosty "agree to disagree".
What arguments can I use to show that he is wrong in two ways: regarding the macs on the large network, and with his plan to get rid of the macs altogether? So far I've thought of the fact that they would probably have way fewer problems with the macs if they upgraded once in a while, and didn't cheap out on ram. Also, I figured that upgrading to intel machines (obviously a financial issue) with bootcamp would allow them to set up their precious windows only network, while individual users could still use osx for their personal work if they wanted.
Does anybody have any other ideas or suggestions?
