Failure is not an option...

[AZRedhawk44]

Maned Wolf, do you just dislike Linux?  That's fine.

I'm sitting here typing away on a Windows XP Professional computer right now, supporting a pure MS/Citrix environment.  No linux anywhere.

We're looking at our first linux server right now as an outbound fax replacement for 3rd party "just install it and it works...supposedly" software.  It will take some customization of the existing open source software, but the lack of flexibility of the 3rd party closed source software is absolutely killing us.  It's gotta work right, and can't constantly be babysat like the current software in place.

Linux is a poor gaming platform, I agree.  But it can be done by a competent power user.  Not even a hacker... jsut a competent power user.  But windows is a poor development platform to take one existing product and modify it to perform a similar, but different task.

And MacOS just sux.

[Manedwolf]

A large portion of what I pass around is in formats other than those supported natively by Office.  When was the last time you used Word to view a syslog file 500meg in size?  Or run a query against a RADIUS accounting logfile?  Dumped many LDAPs to Excel lately?  Maybe you use Powerpoint to configure that VPN. 

Chris

You're talking back office. I'm talking front office.

Back office, yes, out of sight, Linux is fine. Most of the stuff in the icy, howling-fans room'o'servers down in the building core I expect to be highly customized solutions anyway.

Front office, the corner offices, marketing, accounting, payable, recievable, CEO, CFO, etc, etc...no. I don't see Linux working there, only something that can run Office, namely either Windows or OSX at this time. Period.

And Azredhawk, it's not been called "MacOS" for about seven years now. Are you thinking of ancient OS9 history? Because I can assure you, that has nothing to do with the OSX Tiger I'm using on an Intel Core Duo at the moment.

[Stetson]

You're talking back office. I'm talking front office.

Back office, yes, out of sight, Linux is fine. Most of the stuff in the icy, howling-fans room'o'servers down in the building core I expect to be highly customized solutions anyway.

Front office, the corner offices, marketing, accounting, payable, recievable, CEO, CFO, etc, etc...no. I don't see Linux working there, only something that can run Office, namely either Windows or OSX at this time. Period.

And Azredhawk, it's not been called "MacOS" for about seven years now. Are you thinking of ancient OS9 history? Because I can assure you, that has nothing to do with the OSX Tiger I'm using on an Intel Core Duo at the moment.

OSX Tiger is great as long as you are on a Mac Enterprise Directory Network.  Try to interface with any Windows product and it is hopeless.  The LARGE company I work for has many artists that need the graphics functionality of macs but they lost a lot of other benefits when integrating.  Of course, they yell at me because as a peon I get to make all the IT decisions. 

Entourage will not let you do the same things Outlook(which most people are familiar with) can do, like Out Of Office messages.  It can be done but its a pain.

For everyday office functionality M$ Windows gives the user an interface they are used to, apps they know about and a comfort factor that Macs just cannot provide.  Right or wrong, that it the corporate mindset.

[Manedwolf]

You're talking back office. I'm talking front office.

Back office, yes, out of sight, Linux is fine. Most of the stuff in the icy, howling-fans room'o'servers down in the building core I expect to be highly customized solutions anyway.

Front office, the corner offices, marketing, accounting, payable, recievable, CEO, CFO, etc, etc...no. I don't see Linux working there, only something that can run Office, namely either Windows or OSX at this time. Period.

And Azredhawk, it's not been called "MacOS" for about seven years now. Are you thinking of ancient OS9 history? Because I can assure you, that has nothing to do with the OSX Tiger I'm using on an Intel Core Duo at the moment.

OSX Tiger is great as long as you are on a Mac Enterprise Directory Network.  Try to interface with any Windows product and it is hopeless.  The LARGE company I work for has many artists that need the graphics functionality of macs but they lost a lot of other benefits when integrating.  Of course, they yell at me because as a peon I get to make all the IT decisions. 

Entourage will not let you do the same things Outlook(which most people are familiar with) can do, like Out Of Office messages.  It can be done but its a pain.

For everyday office functionality M$ Windows gives the user an interface they are used to, apps they know about and a comfort factor that Macs just cannot provide.  Right or wrong, that it the corporate mindset.

Huh?

I transfer files to and from Windows machines and print to Windows printers every single day. What on earth are you talking about?

[AZRedhawk44]

Are you thinking of ancient OS9 history? Because I can assure you, that has nothing to do with the OSX Tiger I'm using on an Intel Core Duo at the moment.

I'm thinking of the whole shebang... Macs are typically 1-2 memory standards below the latest stable release for a PC.  When DDR400 was released, Macs didn't get it for about 6 months... they were still running either PC-133 or DDR266 memory.  Mac OS7,8 and 9 couldn't even multitask if you sent a print job... you couldn't bring up another application to work on while a print job ran.  OS X (panther, tiger, cheetah, take your pick) is another example of apple lagging behind the times.  Just like their current decision to drop the IBM PowerPC platform and finally move to x86/x64 computing ala Intel and AMD.

Pointing to ease of use on an Apple is an exercise in futility when talking to complete computer novices in this modern computing world.  A Windows PC integrates into homogenous or heterogenous networks more seamlessly than an equivalent generation Mac computer.  Make a Mac authenticate against a Novell eDirectory.  Administer an Exchange server from your mac.  Run terminal services applications from your mac (hint: you can't without TS licensing).  Administer a Lotus Domino server from your mac.

The addition of a unix engine and command shell makes macs semi-palatable nowadays, but the simple fact is that IBM couldn't keep up with Intel/AMD in technology leaps, and MacOS couldn't keep up with the developments made in user productivity so they went first to: 1) and open source Unix (BSD), then finally to admitting that their software will never keep up with either the back office or the front office and finally went to x86/x64 in order to more effectively run a Windows OS.

Eventually, a "Macintosh" will the the trendy, cute metro-sexual gay tendencied computer for effete men and hairy feminists the world over, running the latest version of the Microsoft operating system but sporting that old apple logo on the front in an oh-so-tasteful manner.  It's just a matter of time.

[Sindawe]

Eventually, a "Macintosh" will the the trendy, cute metro-sexual gay tendencied computer for effete men and hairy feminists the world over, running the latest version of the Microsoft operating system but sporting that old apple logo on the front in an oh-so-tasteful manner.  It's just a matter of time.

Translation: RESISTANCE IS FUTILE.  YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.

[zahc]

Geekware. Not ready for the mainstream. And ugly as sin, last I looked at it.

It works for me. It's all I use on my windows machine now. Along with firefox and a bunch of other opensource software.

[jnojr]

http://www.openoffice.org/

Geekware. Not ready for the mainstream. And ugly as sin, last I looked at it.

When was the last time you looked?  It's come a long way.

I use OO.org on my home (Windows) machine, because I refuse to pay for Office.  It works like a champ.  Sure, when Office Vista or whatever they want to call it gets launched, OO.org won't work right any more... not because it sucks, but because MS purposely breaks backwards compatibility to force people to buy the newest version of Office.

ETA: Never mind.  You're a closed-minded Windows zealot.  You don't know anything about UNIX/Linux, so therefore Windows must always be the right solution.  This isn't worth the effort... you already know you're right and are impervious to any attempt to show you other possibilities.  So enjoy your Windows.  I'm going to go back to being orders of magnitude more productive with Linux than three of me could be plodding through Windows hell 

[Sindawe]

OO.org won't work right any more... not because it sucks, but because MS purposely breaks backwards compatibility to force people to buy the newest version of Office.

Reminds me of the statement attributed to Microsoft in the late 80s & early 90s.

"DOS ain't done 'till Lotus won't run."

And IIRC, MS pushed Win95 out the door as soon as they could when IBM released OS/2 2.1, which ran Win3.1 code in its own environment on the PM desktop.

*SIGH*  Those were the days, back before I turned to The Darkside of computing.

[bedlamite]

So which is better? 9mm or 45acp?

10mm.

[m1911owner]

So which is better? 9mm or 45acp?

45 ACP

[Gewehr98]

*SIGH*  Those were the days, back before I turned to The Darkside of computing.

Tell me about it.  I was running Geos and CP/M on a Commodore 128, and finally gave in to a Windows 3.1 machine.  I even toyed with an Amiga 2000 for a bit, complete with Video Toaster. 

I have an IBM Intellistation w/2 PII-450s sitting in the corner of my office right now, chugging away happily on Mandrake.  It's my FTP fileserver and I'm thinking about moving my blog to it.  I'm impressed with how fast it runs on that efficient code - it makes the dual Xeon 2.4 XP Pro machine I'm typing on now look like a slug.  One can only imagine how less efficient Vista Ultimate is, if it recommends 1 Gig of memory... 

[RevDisk]

Failure is not an option.  It comes bundled with Windows Vista whether you like it or not.

Company I work for has circa 400 PC's.  We're sticking with XP for as long as we can hold out.  Thankfully, Office 2007 licenses are reverse compadible.  ie, you can buy 2007 licenses and install 2003.  We're still checking XP licensing.  Sigh

Microsoft released a compadibility pack for Office 2003/XP.  Reads and writes Office 2007 formats.  We're deploying it to our current environment so that we can read and edit documents from suppliers.  So you don't need to upgrade just to keep up.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displaylang=en

Vista is a nightmare.  Ignoring the new architexture, it can't be ghosted.  No ghost images mean we have to build slipstreamed install discs or manually install all of our apps.  Either way, that's hours per new machine instead of minutes.  Running a mixed OS environment is a patching nightmare, even if it is just two OS's. 

Seriously, best common sense I can give.  Do not be an early adapter for any new technology unless you have a damn good reason.  Let someone else take the beating and learn from their mistakes.  Stick with XP Pro as long as you can.

Maned Wolf, do you just dislike Linux?  That's fine.

I'm sitting here typing away on a Windows XP Professional computer right now, supporting a pure MS/Citrix environment.  No linux anywhere.

I swear to the Gods, I never thought I'd have a nice thing to say about Microsoft until I installed RDP 6.0.   Or as we call it around the office, "Citrix killer".  The only drawback is lack of in-built load balancing.  Aside from that, faster, easier and apparently more reliable than our ICA clients.  Citrix is a fine concept, especially in an enterprise environment.  In reality, their handling of printers and drivers is a nightmare.  If you have a team of Citrix admins, it'll work.  In small and medium sized businesses, RDP is gonna make a wide adoption.  We're testing it, and hoping to implement it company wide. 

Re linux/MS.  I like linux and run a couple of linux boxes at home.  At work, we're an all MS shop.  Ease of management and skill sets of our employees.  Folks know how to use Windows and Office.  They don't know command prompts or KDE.  For corporate use, I don't see it catching on until the desktop environments are more user friendly.  Open Office is making huge strides.  I think it's about ready for consumer/corporation wide spread usage.

[Stetson]

OSX Tiger is great as long as you are on a Mac Enterprise Directory Network.  Try to interface with any Windows product and it is hopeless.  The LARGE company I work for has many artists that need the graphics functionality of macs but they lost a lot of other benefits when integrating.  Of course, they yell at me because as a peon I get to make all the IT decisions. 

Entourage will not let you do the same things Outlook(which most people are familiar with) can do, like Out Of Office messages.  It can be done but its a pain.

For everyday office functionality M$ Windows gives the user an interface they are used to, apps they know about and a comfort factor that Macs just cannot provide.  Right or wrong, that it the corporate mindset.

Huh?

I transfer files to and from Windows machines and print to Windows printers every single day. What on earth are you talking about?

[/quote]

I am talking about the ease of support for Mac products in an Enterprise Directory environment.  MOST users cannot use a Mac as well as they can a PC running XPPro, most Macs do not interface well in an MS ED.  The ED size I am talking about is @ 250K+ computers, worldwide. 

We do run about 15k Macs but on an average day, we get more calls for Mac problems(by ratio) than PC.  "Bla blah wont interface with Citrix ICA client", "My Entourage wont connect to the servers", "I use an application for graphics that ONLY runs on MAc, will not interface with a WinServer and I want it fixed now!!!11one".  If you arent running the latest Timbuktu remote app and IF it will connect over the MS ED seamlessly(not likely), then you can support it.  If not, you are dead in the water.

I know the Mac is easy to work with alone, but in the business world, there just arent the same support options.  If that isnt a factor in your thinking about business use of the Mac, it should be.