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Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

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Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#81

Post by j2bax »

roryisok wrote: post #62

my first reaction is to not accept this and share anecdotes of my experiences, but maybe he's right. I don't run an IT dept. I've not done any cost benefit analysis. I just know my second hand thinkpad was cheap, works well and I won't trade it for a mac any time soon. Maybe if I was loaded I'd buy my folks and siblings macbooks, but I'm not, and I'm happy enough to fix the odd issue on their cheap windows laptops. o…

My own little anecdotal experience... I'm a producer at a small agency of ~30 employees. In addition to my more than busy schedule producing interactive content I also manage the Mac hardware/software for our team. I wouldn't consider myself much more than a Mac hobbiest at best, but I rarely have an issue I can't figure out. I was a PC/Windows guy that switched to Mac in college when I was doing a multimedia degree. So by no means a Mac expert and probably about as much experience with Windows at this point. That said, one thing I'm certain about is that there is no way I would take on managing a Windows network for ~30 people in addition to my fairly non-related position at the company. It's honestly very rare that I have to mess with anything with our network, computers, server etc. after having set everything up initially. This has been over the past 6-8 years.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#82

Post by bdcravens »

FollowSteph3 wrote: post #25

It's because most PCs people use are bottom of the barrel cheap. If you compare similarly priced PCs to Macs with similar business class builds (keyboards for laptops, etc) I highly suspect everything will balance out, at the very least be minimal.

I believe this comparison isn't public at large, but large IT use case.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#83

Post by greedo »

stirner wrote: post #77
greedo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're speaking out of ignorance. There are applications like TeamViewer that are cross platform, if you don't want to use Apple's own Remote Desktop...

Windows' Remote Desktop feature is different from regular screen sharing. It's able to transmit data at a lower level than the actual pixels on screen, making it a lot faster.

And there's a Mac version distributed for OSX/macOS by Microsoft that's arguably superior to the Windows client. But I understand the RDP protocol. In a decent corp environment with a gigE LAN, the data compression benefits of RDP compared to TeamViewer or Apple's Remote Desktop aren't that necessary.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#84

Post by nickff »

WayneBro wrote: post #65
jgforbes wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There could be other biases too. For instance, if the Mac users at IBM were in largely technical roles (e.g. working on their MacOS integration service) vs large non-technical departments working on Windows machines (e.g. HR and accounting). It wouldn't be very surprising that technical departments had less help-desk complaints than non technical departments.

There are definitely other biases. Macs simply can't do as much as Windows can in a business setting. That's why companies like Disney and Google have to build their own systems management tools. I could not imagine running a financial services house, an insurance company or a warehouse without Windows. Even simple software like remote desktop does not exist on the Mac. Yes the Mac has screen sharing but it is nowher…

Apple hardware has been designed on Windows PCs (at least until the last time I read about it a few years ago). This is because the (best) software for electronic design has only been available for Windows, and the developers refused Apple's terms and conditions (despite being directly approached by Apple for a port). This was the cause for some embarrassment for Apple by people in the electronics industry.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#85

Post by narutouzumaki »

roryisok wrote: post #62

my first reaction is to not accept this and share anecdotes of my experiences, but maybe he's right. I don't run an IT dept. I've not done any cost benefit analysis. I just know my second hand thinkpad was cheap, works well and I won't trade it for a mac any time soon. Maybe if I was loaded I'd buy my folks and siblings macbooks, but I'm not, and I'm happy enough to fix the odd issue on their cheap windows laptops. o…

... that's because of the cheap second hand thinkpad, which is a marvelous piece of engineering, and probably the best the Windows/Non-Mac world has to offer in competition to Macbooks.

Even though there have been some questionable redesign approaches and a slight (perceived) slump in QC in recent years, Thinkpads IMO are still THE best machinery out there to just get stuff DONE.

They are reliable, full Linux compatibility, easy to service and have the best non mechanical / Notebook keyboard out there.

Tbh the only thing I envy the Macs for are their brilliant screens. But we have red nipples on our keyboards, so yeah...

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#86

Post by talmand »

greedo wrote: post #69

I use a Mac at work, and we've started giving managers the discretion to choose a Mac for their employees. I've been using Macs since OSX, so fairly familiar with their flaws in a corporate environment. I have to laugh at anyone who thinks Windows would be comparable or cheaper in cost to a Mac. Everyday, I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc a…

>> I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc ad infinitum

Sounds like human error to me. My two young children seem to handle Windows just fine without me having to constantly monitor their machines.

Edit: what? my anecdotal evidence isn't as good as everybody else?

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#87

Post by knz »

rvanmil wrote: post #35

It's only anecdotal, ofcourse, but I used to own Windows machines and as a result so did all my relatives with me being the "tech guy" in the family. Not a week would pass without me fixing a relative's PC. Now, about 7 years later, everyone in my family including myself has switched to Macs and I can't even remember the last time I was called to fix a machine.

Chromebooks have a similar experience is you want an even cheaper alternative. Applications beyond the browser are more limited (photo management is awful on Chromebooks) but it's hard to beat the price and functionality for most users.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#88

Post by walshemj »

greedo wrote: post #69

I use a Mac at work, and we've started giving managers the discretion to choose a Mac for their employees. I've been using Macs since OSX, so fairly familiar with their flaws in a corporate environment. I have to laugh at anyone who thinks Windows would be comparable or cheaper in cost to a Mac. Everyday, I hear a continual litany of woe and despair from our helpdesk about drivers, and anti-virus, and AD issues etc a…

Managed to get macs working with share point yet

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#89

Post by KirinDave »

I wish I could talk more about this but I'm not sure I can go into detail today. But I can say:

- Part of the reasons macs are cheaper is that they're massively less instrumented than PCs. - Most orgs have not migrated to Win10 because they're totally convinced they need that instrumentation on windows. - But they don't need that instrumentation on OSX, so it calls the entire premise into question.

It's also the case that people negotiate cheap block sales of SKUs from "trusted" partners to help pre-bundle all that instrumentation. But as this data shows, it turns out that buying less customized devices with better overall specs is actually a cost savings and per-unit cost.

Finally, I'd argue that employee satisfaction is almost directly a result of not having a heavy-handed and almost entirely arbitrary series of mandates forced onto their computer.

I won't talk about my employers efforts, but I know OTHER people (friends in IT) who are experimenting with mass deploys of Win10 and Surface books with a "let's throw EVERYTHING out and pretend these are a new platform" approach, and they tell me that they see benefits. As the conversations are casual, I cannot go further.

It's sort of amazing what happens to overall cost if you accept the premise that the vast majority of IT tooling and monitoring is in fact bad, wrongheaded, and not fulfilling real security and auditing requirements.

Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy

#90

Post by StillBored »

Well, if IBM's PC image is anything like it was in the early 2000's probably > 50% of their PC issues are self inflicted by the IT people who built the image.

From buggy unsigned drivers, to crapware for security/etc, I stabilized my machine by uninstalling a bunch of things that should never have been in the standard image. If you compare the PC vs MAC images at the last couple companies I worked at, you will find that the PC's are far more heavily modified with crapware/bloatware than the macs were. Usually because having checkpoint/norton/whatever was an absolute requirement from a security perspective on the PC's but apparently the MAC's didn't even need disk encryption enabled much less virus scanners...

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