Re: [Fed-Talk] Re: First no iMacs at DOD labs next no powerbooks?
Re: [Fed-Talk] Re: First no iMacs at DOD labs next no powerbooks?
- Subject: Re: [Fed-Talk] Re: First no iMacs at DOD labs next no powerbooks?
- From: Michael Kluskens <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 9 Nov 2005 09:26:06 -0500
On Nov 8, 2005, at 11:08 PM, Timothy J Miller wrote:
I hope Apple realizes that the security exclusions also apply to
Dept. of Energy National Laboratories for technology such as
wireless (keyboards, mice, bluetooth, airport, etc.) and writeable
removable media (CD, DVD, whatever comes next). If they don't
offer models without these technologies, we can't buy Apples for
secure areas!
Of course I have to ask: how many Macs are in your secure areas
*right now*? And how many PCs?
The ultimate question is, does it make financial sense for Apple to
make a model sans wireless/camera to appeal to the federal market?
It's the halo or ripple effect. We have doubled the number of Mac
users in our group, everyone of those was a PC user before, every one
of these new users purchased a Powerbook. Half of them purchased at
least two Macs for home and influenced at least one relative to buy a
Mac for the first time. Each of these new Mac users is at least the
manager of a section of ten people. Each manager affects other
managers and their own group over time. Every new PC virus out break
boosts the interest in Macs if and only if they exist in the groups
getting hammered by PC problems.
Because of the Unix/BSD base of OS X the PowerMacs replace both PCs
and conventional workstations, in our case SGI workstations. For a
rough comparison that means a $2K Mac is replacing a $2K PC and a
$20K SGI, plus the SGI maintenance charges of $5K per year (and $2K/
year of support for the PC as I work out below). You could get a
cheaper PC and you can get a cheaper Mac, these are the machines we
purchase (a Mac mini would meet the needs of anyone except us
computational guys in the section I'm in). Linux on a PC is an
option but the support cost is a lot higher then OS X and the
compatibility with Word, Excel, and PowerPoint is just not there yet,
even the latest versions of OpenOffice messes up some of our
presentations. Also, unless all your Linux machines use the same
version, i.e. SuSE, Red Hat, Fedora, or Debian, your support costs
are higher--time required to learn the differences.
Regarding the comment about secure areas -- it's not only Macs versus
PCs, it's Macs versus other workstations, it's also not the existing
installations, it's the near future. Try maintaining Win XP up-to-
date with the latest security patches (that is required even in
secure areas), the first Tuesday of every month, even if you can
download all the patches installing them is tricky, especially
compared to maintaining OS X (keep downloads and list by date and it
certainly is not 10 every month). For the same reasons given above
the Macs can push out PC and Workstations in secure areas, we got
limited space, one Mac replaces a PC and a SGI workstation.
Side note a reinstallation of Win Xp requires 120 patches, a
reinstall of OS X 10.3.9 requires about 10.
Also given the choice between a Linux workstation and a OS X Mac in a
secure area, consider the difficulty in upgrading the OS (we're
likely to start replacing our SGI workstations with OS X Macs soon
and the existing PCs will fade away over time). What are the
maintenance costs for a commercial Linux so that you get everything
on a couple CD-ROMs every couple months? If you go free than you
have the difficulty that Linux is difficult to upgrade if it is not
connected to the Internet via high-speed. We have a 13 node dual
Opteron cluster, came with SuSE but after two years and being
hopelessly out of date and given it was the only SuSE machine I put
Debian Sarge on it but upgrading to Testing or Unstable packages will
be complicated because it is not connected to the outside network,
and I need packages from those versions (g95 & MPICH2 for example,
but that requires dozens of other interlinked packages--Debain Stable/
Sarge does not even come with gcc 4.0, OS X has had since Tiger was
released, I have found installing open soruce packages on OS X easier
then on Linux because of the separation between the OS and these
packages under OS X). And that does not even get into the question
of reliability of hardware, I have lost 2 power supplies and 2
motherboards on this 13 node cluster in the last two months,
meanwhile I have an Apple Xserve with Xserve RAID that has been
running full time for two or three years with no problems, and it is
in a hostile environment sandwiched between the upper and lower racks
of an SGI Origin 2400. I have seen no hardware failures in the Macs
at work even through we run them longer then the PCs.
Certain PC-only applications and the well known/documented imbedded
forces for Windows PCs restrict this growth at most other labs;
however, most divisions here with PCs have had to contract out PC
support or hire an additional person, figure a division of about 100
people and about $200K per year for PC support, you can see why one
of our new Mac user managers stated that it would be cheaper to throw
all the PC's out and buy Macs, we're spending over $2K per year per
PC, for rough comparison at $100 per hour with overhead charges that
is equivalent to needing 20 hours of support time per machine per year.
How many Mac users require 20 hours of hand holding per year?
If you restrict the Mac users from being admins of their machines you
get a real good idea of how much time is needed to install the
updates and applications since they can't do it.
I have seen weeks of engineer's time wasted on trying to get a PC
working, things that are simple on a Mac, for example, a disk was
failing and the user wanted to migrate to a new disk without
reinstalling the OS and all the applications, every attempt at
cloning the hard disk failed until the user (our support person
didn't find the answer) found the answer about some special commands
that had to be run before the cloning took place. More recently an
upgrade from Win2000 to Win XP, the purchased CD can't boot the
machine, something about the hardware the machine came with--that
took both the engineer and support person several weeks to solve. I
know the Navy has a different expensive system of support at most
labs, something breaks and they take away the PC for weeks, the end
result is the same or worse--the stock price of the company with that
contract dropped when it was announced they had won the contract even
with the high per year fines they charge and the restrictions the
contact places on the use of the machines.
Michael
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