German publisher drops 12,000 PCs for Mac; more - Page 2

Even then you still have temp files, vm and other stuff that may hold data that you don't want to be out in the open.

What version of Office are you running!? '04? v.X?

I'm using '08 SP1 on my MacBook, and I sure as hell don't see it as particularly slow!

Unless the system failed to power up at all, there are many ways retrieve data and then secure erase a HDD prior to sending out for repair without removing the HDD, but even taking the back off an iMac isn't that hard. Sure, it's more involved than a PC tower, but not to the point of nixing AIOs int eh workplace; especially if the need to do so is rare.

Both the for and against arguments on this thread are making excellent points. I suppose it ultimately comes down to individually weighing the pro and cons for each company or department.


PS: While I think Macs can work in the workplace I would like to see Apple create an Enterprise line of computers and and a new department to manage the lease/upgrade rate. What I imagine physically is a "pizzabox-style" system, like the old NeXTstation that is simple in design. These could come without FW or USB ports if so desired as they are often a security risk to government and private corporations alike. From our POV, this would be a completely separate enterprise from the Macs and Apple Store as we know it. I don't think it will happen, but I wonder if it could.

I work for a large software company, and everyone gets a laptop, and its refreshed every 2 years.
With ubiquitous wireless, everyone has their laptops at meetings taking notes or sharing out their screens to those who are dialed in.
Another benefit (from the company's point of view) is that the employee with a laptop is able to perform 24/7.
Add laptops to cell phones as the new digital ankle chain.

For what reason would you need to send a hard drive out for repair with company info on it that was so confidential that you wouldn't want somebody else to access it.?

If the information is more than a day old, it should have been backed up in the first place. Most company computers don't hold the data on the internal drive but are stored on servers, which are continually in backup mode. Of course with Time Machine, it would be down to the last hour or less. Otherwise, too bad, so sad.

Any company that doesn't have a real time backup strategy in place is just stupid.

Ask anybody that carries their livelihood on an unbacked up laptop and looses it for some reason. First thing out of their mouths, "That is the most stupid thing I have ever done." If he doesn't say it, then his boss, his colleagues, his clients, and even his spouse will.

I don't have a problem with using iMacs or Minis when I worked in IT at my university for most tasks, but the problem is that there is no great office suite on OSX.

Office 2004 - works pretty well, but what about 2007 files?
Office 2008 - Excel causes me pain and suffering, it still amazes me how much faster Excel 2007 and the rest of Office 2007 is compared to 2008.
iWork '08 - if Numbers could at least import external data, I could work with it, but until then it's not worth my time.
OOo 3.0 beta - not bad, but formatting issues abound, and it can't read Excel 2007 files correctly.

So, it's basically Microsoft's fault, but they couldn't even get their bread and butter right.

Apple needs to develop their own pro office suite, iWork is what it is, but a true MS Office competitor it isn't.

with apple you need USB for the keyboard and mouse.

Temp and open working files may have confidential info in them and by shipping out for repair with out that the hard disk may void the warranty. Dell, Hp, and other let remove the hard disk before sending it in with the mini and imac you as risking breaking the case by doing that.

Yes, but if a company required no USB, it wouldn't be difficult to have an input only port setup for the keyboard and mouse.

What!?

It runs deathly slow on my MacBook Core 2 Duo 10.5.4 with 1 gig of RAM. Well, it did before SP1. It's still PATHETIC. I mean it's the same as 2004 which is freakin' emulate code. Before SP1, 2004 was actually faster, and more stable! Office 2008 is just awful.

I recommend maxing your RAM to 4GB to speed up all of your applications. It's fairly inexpensive. If you do it, you'll definitely notice a big difference.

Office 2008 performance is very sucky in my experience. Running it on a MBP 2.2GHz, 4GM RAM. Acceptable performance. Anything less...UGH! Between Office 2008 and Vista, Microsoft is out to make mediocrity look good.

A company with these many PC should have switched to Sun Ray.
Either the CTO is not doing his homework or there were some kickbacks going on.

If you are stating that any company with 12,000 or more computers should use thin-clients, then I have to ask what your reasoning is. There are certainly some pros to thin clients, but there are also plenty of cons too. Especially for a company like Springer.

What's wrong with Springer using mostly thin clients?
Unless all 12,000 (or less since I guess some people have more than 1 PCs) people are doing video work, there is really no need for everybody to have a PC right next to or built in to the monitor.

Some of the main issues are having multiple server and workstation technologies and platformsas not every machine can be Sun Rayadds overhead to the IT department. It also requires you to have a staff that is versed in multiple platforms. Thin-clients will reduce the number of tier 1 IT support but may increase the need for more experienced, thus higher paid, tier 3 staff as the server and network requirements become considerably greater. The cost of these additional servers can be excessive.

It also means your network has to be faster and more redundant as lag and downtime will prevent people any computer work, not just intra-/internet work, to be completed. Beefing up a network can come at considerable expense.

There is also the cost of a thin-client. While they are cheaper than the average PC, you can get a Dell or HP desktop that will perform faster and be around the same price. The thin-clients themselves have the possibility to be considerably cheaper but they are still a niche market and so the price is still high.

Also, the beefing up of the network and the additional servers to support thin-clients require a large up front cost that companies may not want to deal with. Many rather spread their fees out over multiple quarters even if the end cost is somewhat higher.

Like I said, there are pros and cons here, but I don't think a blanket statement of 'should have' is a valid assessment.

Yeah, it's not working for me, either.

Ran uninstaller. Ran 10 installer. Went to Youtube, thumbnails show and player loads, but all video is blocky with green trails. Looks like a codec problem. Audio plays correctly though...

CNN also gives me the same error message as above.

Trashed those two files, reinstalled 10 and then fixed permissions. Problems persist.

I would think that Springer uses Fat and Thin Clients, but primarily standalones.

Basically using mostly thin clients would be significantly more expensive. Why? Servicing, maintaining, monitoring and backingup would require a very large IT organization.

Why? Because it is not just about 12,000 active computers located in one central location.

Springer, With over 170 newspapers and magazines, more than 50 online offerings for various different interest groups and information needs, as well as its holdings in television and radio stations, Axel Springer is active in a total of 33 countries. Around 10,000 employees generated total revenues of € 2,578 million and an EBITA* of € 422 million in the fiscal year 2007.

There are other important locations in Germany: in Hamburg and Munich as well as the printing facilities in Berlin-Spandau, Hamburg-Ahrensburg and Essen-Kettwig. International activities in Eastern Europe are centered on Poland, Hungary, Russia and the Czech Republic; in Western Europe on Switzerland, France and Spain.

No matter what political leanings the head of Axel Springer AG may or may not have, this corporation is lead, directed and managed by a very capable individuals. Obvious this is evidenced by the enormity of the organization, the diversity of its portfolio and more important its continued successes. As such, it would behoove me that this decision to invest over $20 million in switching over to Macs for hardware, software, training, servicing, organizing, etc., would not have been well researched, tabled (including points raised by Solipsism, for example) and accounted for.

As such, and considering that some of their locations are manned by hundreds, and a few with thousands of employees, most, in tens, others, in handfuls and even some you could count on one hand, one could only come to one conclusion. Macs, contrary to some of the opinions and suggestions posted here are certainly more than ideal for businesses of any size.

As usual, the same members want to turn every thread into an xMac thread.

I'm thinking something needs to be done about this. I doubt the majority of posters find it useful.

Flash 10 seems nice and "snappier"

Try some very simple benchmarks at:
http://www.noventaynueve.com/lab/starfield/AS3.html
http://blog.greensock.com/tweening-speed-test/

To see your FPS.

Try BEFORE and AFTER you install Flash 10.

Knife/screwdriver = tool ???

too bad you need a tool to fix a computer with WHEN IT BREAKS DOWN.

Ask me how many how many phillips screwdriver tips I went through in order to find one that fit well enough to let me upgrade the ram in my new iMac?

If ya don't have any tools, they you're just a "girly man" anyway!

But that computer is the only only one I've heard of that requires a knife to open, and the only one I've known that has to be pried open. A flat head screwdriver is too thick to do the job. It feels pretty silly have to use a spackle blade to open up a computer.


You're not the first to complain about the dubious quality of those two screws. They are supposed to be the common #2 Philips drive but it doesn't work that way. It's as if the machine or the dies used to make the screw's drive socket is faulty.

Actually, the typical computer that a business would use has a case held on with thumbscrews and tool-less hard drive caddys. For that matter, the Mac Pro doesn't even have the thumbscrews, just a latch.

The easier something is, the better.

I would agree.

The IT department would have authorized, certified service people and the right tools.

Most of my clients lock/seal all their computers. In light of the current economic concerns and with all the down sizing going on, nobody is walking out the door with a laptop full of company info that is not backed up and/or restricted to certain files.

I don't think it a screw quality issue, as much as mis-identifying the head. Obviously, we should ignore our #2 Phillips head screwdrivers, and search out Phirrips #2 instead.

I think it'd be great if iMac and Mac mini had easy access to internals, like any quality PC case does. Its omission is especially stupid considering both home users, and small businesses, who do not have their own "internal service department" and are realistically not going to be able to remove the HD before sending the machine to be fixed.

That said, there is an easy fix that at least ensures your data cannot be read directly: enable Filevault. To be diligent, you still can't use the disk when it comes back, as the full disk is not encrypted and the OS could be infected. But, do a full erase, restore data from backup and all's well.

But the real question is, what will Springer use as a layout engine - Quark or InDesign?

Subtract the number of Macs that are not being used for Mac OS, and that will give you a more accurate number of "switchers".

Not if they are using Macs to run Windows.

That may apply to the original iMac G5, which was easy to service. But all later iMacs are a complete nightmare to take apart, even for professional technicians.

Apple will never make video iPods. Nobody wants to watch video on an iPod.

Apple will never enter the cell phone market.

Apple will not release an iPhone SDK. Nobody needs third party iPhone applications.

Apple will never switch to Intel processors.

You can't take "the back" off a current iMac. You get at the internals by removing the front, including the LCD.

Aside from the outward good looks, it's one of the dumbest designs Apple's ever used.

Lundy didn't say anything in that post for that to be an appropriate response. Lundy's point in that post is that someone bringing up xMac in every other Mac thread is getting very old.

First of all, sorry for the late reply.
The IT staff saving from using thin clients is 100 to 1, if not more.
After things are set up, a 3-person IT department can maintain and support thousands of users.
How many IT staff do you need to support thousands of individual boxes?
Can their salary pay for 3 persons?
This is proven and applies to any industries, including this German publisher.



Network bandwidth is not really an issue.
Unless everybody tries to watch YouTube at the same time, the bandwidth usage for normal office use is very minimal because the screen data is compressed and only the difference is sent.
In my previous company, everybody used a Sun Ray with Solaris (even the receptionists), and the Sun Ray only supported 100Mbp Ethernet. Nobody felt any slowness or lagging.
Other companies that I have been at mostly used VNC to connect to the server. Same thing. No network issue. Only plain 100Mbps Ethernet and switches. Using VNC is like using a Sun Ray; the only difference is people are used to the desktop so they don't care if their desktops are just acting as dummy terminal clients.



Man, you definitely can't argue about the cost.
I agree, some cheap PCs may be cheaper than thin clients. But you need to factor in the power usage of a PC vs a thin client.
How much power does one typical PC under normal load consume? 100W? 150W?
A Sun Ray only consumes 4W.
That's at least 25 times saving in power bills.



That's why I said their CTO do not do their homework.
We should convince themselves that thin clients are the correct way to go.
Especially this German publishers. When they have the budget to replace all PC with Mac at once, they don't have that rather-spread-cost-over-quarters excuse you mentioned.
Buying 12,000 Sun Ray + some nice PC servers could not be more expensive than buying 12,000 Macs + new Mac servers.

Besides the above benefits, there are plenty of other benefits from using a Sun Ray. Portability is one key benefit. Once I worked for the company that used Sun Ray, I really think there is no better technology that is as cool. I can go to any conference room or other people's office, plug in my badge, type my password, and I can see the exact same desktop session. It works even across multiple campuses and even countries.

My school has a PC labs, and every time I switch to any PC, they have a stupid script that takes a few minutes to copy files over so that I can see the same "My Documents" and other personal stuff. This only makes personal files portable; not the desktop session, i.e. I can't leave my Word open and switch desktop. Session portability is one thing a PC can't have (of course, using VNC on a PC doesn't count).

Another thing is security. There is just nothing to steal and nothing to break. Nobody can steal any data from the thin client, and there is no hard drive, RAM, motherboard, fans, etc so you rarely need IT staff to come over to fix things when they break.

The Sun Ray software supports all major OSes including Windows and OS X, so if that German publisher really wants Mac, they can still choose Sun Ray over 12,000 Macs. Again, unless they need to do video stuff, I really don't see any reasons why they should choose Mac over thin client.

I may seem like a Sun advertiser but honestly I am very impressed by their Sun Ray thin client. I still miss the days when I can just run into my co-worker's office, plug in my card, show my screen and prove that he has made some mistakes. It's a really good technology. Every time I go to a library and see those Dell PCs sitting there for people to search catalog, I always think of Sun Ray. Why do we need a power-hungry Pentium 4 with HT, a CDRW drive, and the bulk chassis for a catalog search / Internet access machine? There is no better places to spend our tax dollars? These are also the examples that the IT staff do not do their homework. Too bad, either Sun's marketing is not doing a good job or people just don't want to change their habits. Just like here we all know Macs are better, but when we need computers, the IT guys will just automatically log on to Dell web site and order PCs.