And some day, it might take a few years, some smart guy will quote me that Android is like Windows, back in the day, and that Apple is still Apple.
Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
101–110 of 177 posts
Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
#102I 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
I'm a SharePoint architect and developer. I work with SharePoint Online every day, create forms and workflows, as well as use it for document management and lists. I have a MacBook Pro and everything just works. SharePoint now works seamlessly with Macs.
Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
#103I wonder whether this is a premature conclusion due to sampling bias. I suspect that the early Mac adopters at IBM were mostly developers and expert users, people that didn't need a lot of support anyway. This makes it look like IBM's Mac users are cheaper to support, when in reality the true support costs won't be known until the user base is more representative of the company as a whole.
Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
#104It'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.
In Windows 95 days, it was pretty normal i'd format and reinstall my parents pc Every 3-4 months. Thanks Bill.
Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
#105It'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.
In Windows 95 days, it was pretty normal i'd format and reinstall my parents pc Every 3-4 months. Thanks Bill.
Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because new MBPs have their RAM soldered and instead of SSDs weird NVMe sticks which you can't just put into an old Mac Pro/iMac and keep on working (or trivially upgrade). Oh and you can't just simply swap the battery (I needed Thanks but no thanks, I'll stick to my trustworthy Fall 2011 MBP.
>> Thanks but no thanks, I'll stick to my trustworthy Fall 2011 MBP. You're very lucky you don't have an early 2011 MBP. Infamously untrustworthy. If I had waited a few months to get your model or the 2012 model, I'd probably still be a Mac user.
Funny enough, we have about 50 Spring 2011 MBPs in service, no major failures yet except people drenching their MBPs in coffee and letting them fall (disks broken).
Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
#107I'd like to know what percentage of help desk calls are related to hardware vs OS vs software. I can believe that the Mac hardware is more reliable. However, a lot of help desk calls I remember making were because some legacy software wasn't working which wasn't directly related to Windows, e.g. I can't read my lotus notes mail because there's a problem with my remote mailbox configuration. I'd like to know if those…
Until 2015 the vast majority of Macs at IBM were BYOD, largely driven by the EOL of that last generation of "our" Thinkpads (T6X series was the last IBM design) drove a lot of technical IBM'ers to buy their own Mac. All of the Mac support was an internal forum created by advocates and a small IT team. VM's for Windows were common and remain for a few old legacy products that are too complex to port.
Separate from the Mac stuff, the IT folks were working on web/app based solutions (web email access vs notes, etc). So that has softened some of the transition headaches. If some mac notes fix breaks, you've got the web and smartphone reader backups.
All that got formalized into a "real" organization but it was really several years of trench Mac advocacy + webification that makes the numbers look so good now.
Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
#108I'd like to know what percentage of help desk calls are related to hardware vs OS vs software. I can believe that the Mac hardware is more reliable. However, a lot of help desk calls I remember making were because some legacy software wasn't working which wasn't directly related to Windows, e.g. I can't read my lotus notes mail because there's a problem with my remote mailbox configuration. I'd like to know if those…
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.
It's also about how much 3rd party software is installed and how many complex features like Domain integration etc are used. I am fairly certain if you were to keep your usage limited mostly to browsing and email the support differences between Macs and PCs would be non existent.
Trouble is your typical Windows PCs have a whole lot more 3rd party software (AV, Encryption, r likes of tanium , firewalls you name it.) And they do more too - whether or not the employees actually need that stuff. Most support calls are direct result of stuff like that - firewall blocked my program, AD password issues, antivirus causing CPU burn etc.
Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
#109Well, 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 t…
> 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.
I'd argue that most issues people have with Windows PC fall in the category of 'self inflicted', but the point is, is that this is much harder to do on a Mac (apparently). I never heard someone building an image for a mac for example.
Re: Macs are 3 times cheaper to own than Windows PCs, says IBM's IT guy
#110I 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?
You should know that anecdotal evidence is frowned upon on Hacker News when it doesn't support conventional wisdom.