Help me persuade my office to ditch PCs

[musiclawyer]

We are a small seven person in house legal group within a much larger organization. Virtually, the entire organization is STILL using Windows XP. (Our cisco phones are tied into the computers and the organizational network) My understanding is that XP wont be supported within a year or two. Hence big discussions are happening with the tech services unit of the organization.

As far as interfacing with out clients, our little legal group receives and send out pdfs and word doc. And talk on the phone. That's it. We use word perfect to create legal briefs but they are printed or pdf to the court. So no worry. Real simple.

I want our little group to go all mac within the next few years---macbook pros and a couple of good printers. I think there will be resistance from tech services. They will say, " oh we can't have macs. We can't provide support. They can't be tied into the phone network. Our servers are not compatible etc." My response is that 4 of our 7 very old pcs are already starting to give out. That's one pitch. My other pitch is that we are already our own island--even physically, so we can just get regular phones and not even be on the network. And the mac cloud can back everything up. Sooooo......

What other talking points should I have ready to try to convince them, that macs are the way to go (at least for out little group) ?

[Stinky The Clown]

1. Macs can do networks and be supported centrally and every other damned thing a PC can do

Their network security is far better than a PC. As lawyers, your work needs to be very secure against attack; Macs are better on that score.

The life cycle of a Mac is far longer than that of a PC.

That's just off the top of my head.

[musiclawyer]

2. Two questions

Would we need our own new server or could we store everything in the cloud ?

And when you say "networked, " what hardware do we need besides the MacBooks ? Perhaps this blends into one answer

[Stinky The Clown]

3. If you're only seven people, all you need is an Airport Extreme. That said, the Macs can . . . .

. . . . be networked with PC hardware just fine.

We have 5 Macs, three iPads, and two PCs here. We have our Verizon FIOS modem/router and all can connect to that. We then have an Airport Extreme (AE) and all can also connect to that. We also have two 1TB drives connected to the AE. The printer is connected to the FIOS modem/router but could just as easily be connected to the AE.

We store stuff on the two network drives connected to the AE. We also store stuff on the cloud, but continue to be wary of security so we limit the type of data we store there.

You won't need a server at all. Servers "serve" apps and data to networked computers. Let each MacBook stand alone, so to speak, loaded with its own apps and storing its own data. Use one of many backup solutions to move the data you wish to have in a safe place, and data you wish to store over to the network drives. Drives are so cheap that it ought not be an issue at all. Free standing network type drives are about a hundred bucks per TB. Buy one for each computer, if you like, and put them all on the network.

[onehandle]

4. Here's a blog I came across a while back that you might leverage...

http://www.themaclawyer.com

[whistler162]

5. Do you want to lose your job?

Honestly Apple's don't play well in a corporate/school networking environment.

How much would you allocate for training, yes you need training. For the users AND for the support staff. From experience trying to figure out how to support/use Apples with no training is a bad option.

Does Corel make a Wordperfect for OSX? From what I can find the answer is no so you would have to buy and install some type of Windows emulator to run Wordperfect.

From what I have experienced, working in a Apple-centric school district, this is a bad idea.

[NYC_SKP]

6. No training is needed for learning OSX. Also, Bootcamp. Problem solved.

If they insist on keeping PC apps, then run Bootcamp and partition the drive and run Windows 7 on one.

But I would urge them not to and to give up the WordPerfect and just use Word.

And no serious training is needed to learn OSX. It's that good. It's that intuitive.

[whistler162]

7. Thanks for the laughs....

Yes serious training is needed. You don't want to work with a group of users who haven't been trained on using OSX, I am there and doing it is not fun. I am one of two support technicians who took over for a Network Admin who was convinced by his boss to move the school district to Apple. Bothing was allocated for training and it is not a good thing.

As for Bootcamp, gee then you would have a more expensive Windows 7 PC! The few benefits you might recieve from running OSX are gone.

In a Legal depatment doing legal documents in either WordPerfect, probably the primary office suite, or Office the time in Windows 7 is likely to be greater than in OSX.

[NYC_SKP]

8. I agree, it's a sin to put Windows anything on a Mac.

But I maintain that the user interface is so intuitive with OSX that little, certainly much less, training is needed.

OTOH, YMMV, older users and technophobes can put a mental barrier up against any technology such that training is a challenge.

In my world I don't see problems but in others' world, well, it could be different!

[ChairmanAgnostic]

10. Exactly.

My old firm did the reverse. I got them to choose mac, which everyone used w/o a problem. A year after they left, their new tech guy, who only knew PCs, moved them to that platform. The secretaries got a week of training, the lawyers got none. Even now, they bitch and moan.