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Recommend Apple, Lose Your Job?
rocketjam writes "While examining whether outsourcing tech work to India is really cost-effective, Robert X. Cringely takes a look at the old conspiracy theory that IT doesn't recommend Apple solutions because they need less support, thus endangering IT professionals' job security." Cringely argues: "Ideally, the IT department ought to recommend the best computer for the job, but more often than not, they recommend the best computer for the IT department's job."
No one evar got fired for buying Micro$oft!1
There is no god
Sure, if you don't do anything with them.
I don't know about the rest of you, but the variety of Apple computers kept where I work cause proportionally far more trouble than other platforms.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
"I've offered on several occasions of virus outbreaks in the company to switch everyone to mozilla mail so"
Or...here's a crazy idea...you could put some virus protection on the systems. We maintain quite a few systems at the Uni and we rarely go on virus calls. Blaster was taken care of in a day or so. Why? Because we install McAfee on the systems and put them on autoupdate. And for the most part, the faculty all keep their systems up to date.
It boggles the mind how many "techs" on Slashdot can't even manage to intelligently protect a system.
Mozilla doesn't prevent Blaster. It doesn't prevent people from opening attachments. It just warns them or maybe you're so lazy and paranoid you plan on forbidding attachments which is just idiotic.
"I swear if i ever own my own company"
Let's hope you learn how to be an actual tech before then.
Helpful hint number one: use virus protection software. This is a no brainer.
Helpful hint number two: never put a PC directly on the wire regardless of OS unless you absolutly must. A router is all of $50. If your users absolutly must have their own unique IP then figure $50 as part of the cost of the PC otherwise throw them behind a NAT will no ports open.
Keeping a PC from being hacked isn't rocket science.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
As stated in the subject, I am a linux admin. So take my comments with a grain of salt. I disagree with the IT Myth that it takes more people to manage a large number of Linux boxes than it does to manage a similar number of Windows boxes. That has never been my experience. I would guess that it is the opposite, but I don't have hard data to support that. If you manage your entire windows network with 2 IT people, you should be able to manage a similar Linux deployment with the same nubmer of staff. True, you may need to hire new people, since in my experience, Microsoft certified employees are often too inflexible to learn new technologies.
There is also the idea (and this could be true) that Linux admins cost more than Windows admins. Again, this hasn't been my experience. I certainly don't make six figs, or even close to that amount. Do I feel that I am underpaid? No. Judging by all the salary surveys that come out in my area, I am well within the average for my job description.
Finally, my aversion to the Mac has nothing to do with my desires for job security. Partly it has to do with a number of really bad experiences with them when I was doing support at the junior college I attended. Admittedly, I lack experience with os 10, My experiences were with os 8, but trying to troubleshoot network problems with the Mac interface was difficult at that time, due to the fact that some of the network settings were buried in one location, others were buried in an entirely separate location. I have also never gotten used to the corporate mantra "more is better." Even when spending someone else's money, I could never justify to myself the extra $600 - $1000 that purchasing a Mac would cost over a similarly powered PC. Robert X. Cringely might consider that an insignificant amount, but coming from my small town background, I never could.
Finally, I have never considered the mac interface to be beautiful or intuitive. Come on, dragging your floppy to the trash to eject it from the drive? I have always hated that context sensitive menu bar accross the top of the screen, the happy smiling icons staring back at me from the monitor, and the file system where if you wanted to get to something quickly, you had to put it on your desktop.
Anyway, I have ranted enough.
IANAL... But I play one on
To sum up 80% of these posts:
I'm a computer expert and just like I tell everyone at work,
although Wintel has problems, Macs are overpriced and
out of touch with what users want to run. Besides, there's
no software available and who wants a fruit colored PC?
I know I'm right because 6 years ago I had to admin a bunch
of Macs at my community college and it was an awful mess.
So don't tell me that Macs don't have problem, I've lived it!
I haven't touched a Mac (why?) since then but I imagine that
OS X isn't any better. I've read things on the net about all kinds
of problems. Besides, my Athlon XL3600 that I just built will
blow the doors off of any Apple stuff, at a quarter the price!
We just installed Windows Server 2003 at work and I can do
everything on it I want, just like at home.