Large Scale Mac Switch ;)

I've heard of people getting their friends to switch to Mac, even of whole households and families switching.......but apparently my State Legislature has leapt on the Apple bandwagon en masse

Senators' Laptops the Apple of their Ayes

 

Wow. Could have gone with ThinkPads or something... I wonder how many of those people will notice the screen line problem. =/

 

haha. they could have done better. good story though.

 

Love the Air switch, on top of a massive IT nightmare. Good luck I agree with Enter, Thinkpads would have been a better idea for many reasons, longevity comes to my mind first.

 

I see our goverments are putting our(the peoples) hard earned $$$ to good use... lol like that will ever happen.

Apple makes a good product, but the price doesn't justify; especially for organizations that have large numbers of machines whose primary purpose is to type and check emails.

Edit: they want to get 5 years out of these? lol good luck with that. 1/2 of them will be bent in half by then or at least look so hideous from all the dents that no one will want to use them --->>> another pile of $$$ down the drain.

 

Wow, getting everyone MBAs were quite costly...but a Mac switch in general I think isn't a bad idea, especially in the education arena (where Macs are coming back). In fact, the US Army is starting to use Macs.

Which reminds me of what just happened to the Vancouver School District this past week; the entire system was infected by a virus so no one can even turn on a computer in every school in the city, since they're all networked to the School Board. Every computer except Macs, they even noted .

 

Macs look nice and, for some purposes, they are a good choice. But the price tag is.. well... silly. For many, this confirms their belief that macs are style over substance.

I personally quite like macs (my brother has them), but I can't see myself switching anytime soon.

 

Apple probably made the deal even sweeter, like maybe include applecare for the price. I wonder though if they'll be running Windows or will they rely solely on OSX. Good for Apple for securing this order though.

 

Then why are you one a Mac forum may I ask??Hmm??

At any rate, why should it matter to anyone here if they bought the right computer? What about when people here on this very forum buy Macs, does that mean they spent too much, stupid and bought the wrong machine? Like Sam said, it may be all about security and they may want to lower the cost of keeping IT people employed which makes sense. Also the AIR makes a great business computer. So please drop your prejudices against Macs and stop deciding if people are stupid for their purchases?

 

to be honest, tablet is a better office tool than air/pro/xxx combined, you can argue all you want but unless someone can draw a graph faster than i could with a pen i will never be convinced.

air is indeed form over function when 1.8" HDD is in equation

 

Well, that's not for you to decide whether they needed a tablet PC or not. Yes, the MBA is form over function and so is every other ultra portable, anything wrong with that? Business users don't generally look for machines that are capable of playing Crysis or run Photoshop or Final Cut Pro, they are looking for small, light and probably in this case a secure system to run business apps and presentations so I am sorry that there's no Windows machine that fits this complete bill. Does it bother you that the legislation bought Macs?
I don't know where you're from but I would rather see our government spend money on things that will save us money in the long run, in this case I don't think the Air is a bad choice but a standard Macbook that cost less would've worked as well.

Spending less on Windows machines and paying IT people loads of cash to support them is not only bad business but it cuts into the U.S economy but I'm sure you don't care.

 

To be honest, they could of went with the baseline MacBook. I don't see why they need the MacBook Air.

 

Apple does a great job working with Government's and business's, as far as IT nightmare, you guys know nothing about IT, there are very little issues in most systems going platform to platform, if your IT people say there is, they should be fired immediately.

Glad to see so many positive and useful comments!. . .o_0

 

1. this is not about who's deciding what
2. i am not talking about ultra portable being useless
3. unless i am wrong, tablets are also ultra portable, especially with 10-12inchers (the HP tablet just reviewed recently and x200t are decent example)
4. tablets aren't meant to play crysis, they meant to be portable, versatile and handy to be executed, a little more durable too in a sense that they have at least a reinforced plastic/glass on top of a screen.
5. mac is "safe" to the extend that there isn't enough "profit" from hacking, not because they are "safe"; in fact, i doubt government will spend less on IT support for the less computer literates and the level of securities it requires. macs aren't more difficult to hack with but "less targeted"; and putting government with mac changes that stance.
6. as far as built quality is a concern, lenovo and toughbook are both at least on par/better than mac, and if security is in question for windows, they are easily installed as linux/unix

personally i don't care how much US government is spending on junkies like MBA(and the above poster made a valid point of MB being enough anyways, newer, faster, for less); if the discussion is that if something is not my business i will leave it silence, would this post even exist?

ps. are you sure you are responding to me? i am not seeing a respond but instead a shift of focus onto other issues. and sure, every document is without graphs and no one want the staff to draw their superiors in cartoons

more USB port too!

 

Lol Senator Kent Rogert's reason is hilarious.

 

I know....lol The guy must wear a trench coat to the capital yr round

 

Don't you love how one of the Senators says that he trusts the IT people to make the right choice, but their IT department made the decision upon seeing the Air? The MacAir is an excellent computer when it comes to form factor, nothing that is on sale right now can match it, but one third of that purchase money could have been used for something that would suit the Senators better.

It's quite sad when IT departments are filled with incompetence at times. There are amazing amounts of supremely capable people in the world when it comes to IT. Perhaps those that chose the Air are experts in software, but not hardware? A little research would have found them something superior for their needs.

Governments must save money and become more efficient when it comes to spending. There are worse cases, true, but this is rather senseless.

 

Talk about an apple fanboi. Last time I checked, you needn't be a Jobs worshipper to be on this forum. So anyone can voice their approval or disapproval on this or any other forum as they please. There already are moderators on this forum, so stop your policing, it will do jack.

 

i just wonder why they didnt go with the unibody macbook?

more normal laptop, still light, and cheaper. $500 cheaper per unit.

500 * 70 = $35,000

and it has a disc drive and more user replaceable parts...

4.5 pounds instead of 3 pounds... i dont know... $35,000? really?

 

it might well be the reason why many firms need bailout, they are piling up with MBAs

 

My question is, do you have an experience supporting a multi-platform OS at an enterprise level?

Personally, viewing comments like that makes me believe you dont. Apple has been known to not give a rats about enterprise level support, as we have experienced for the last 2 years trying to incorporate Macs into our environment. There have been numerous bugs and issues with AD intergration and Kerberos authentication which most of which has finally been address in with the recent 10.5.6 patch. However this is after numerous attempts to try to engage engineers at Apple to address this.