pic: Team 228's Stack 'O Macs

[skimoose]

Originally Posted by Borisdamole

i wouldn't think it would make the CAD team very happy... considering how much more performance per dollar you could get off a PC....

First off I'm not a life-long apple user. In my professional career I've spent far more time using windows machines and networks, and fixing their problems. I can also tell you that back in the day, I spent a heck of a lot less time fixing problems when we ran Novell networks and GIS/CAD clients running OS/2 (how many of you remember that! ).

In business, up front cost is not the only justification for Return On Investment. One must look at operating cost over the life of the equipment. We still have G3s and G4s which are usable, slow but usable. Can't quite say the same for similar vintage Windows machines. We tend to get much more life out of our macs. Not just hardware robustness, but the aging machines will run software and operating systems far longer than windows machines. How many of you have groaned loudly at the bloated minimum operating requirements for each successive version of windows?

Art04 did a great job of justifying the labor savings setting up and putting away our equipment for meetings. Anyone want to start adding up lost time reloading windows and all of your other software after auto update has fragged your machine? How many times have you had to reload windows during the life of a machine? How many times have you hunted down bad or defunct registry entries? This all adds to the overall cost of the equipment. If the machine is not up and running, its costing you money.