[WinMac] Which is less trouble: Mac+Win or Win+Mac?

John Nurick(j.nurick[at]dial.pipex.com)
Sun, 26 Jul 1998 05:29:36 +0100

The firm I work for (a small management consultancy) is getting its IT into
order, and we have the opportunity to start pretty much from a clean sheet.
There'll be 15 to 20 computers on the network. For a variety of reasons we
can't go all-Mac or all NT+95: whichever we choose for the server and most
of the workstations, we'll need at least a couple of workstations running
the other system for special-purpose software.

We also need to exchange Word, Excel, PowerPoint and MS Project documents,
with clients and subcontractors, 80 or 90 per cent of whom use Windows
workstations. The Word and Excel documents are often large and complex and
contain graphics. We plan to adopt PDF format for electronic distribution of
finished reports to minimise cross-platform formatting problems.

Whatever we choose, I'll be responsible for administration and support and
have to do most of it myself. I know a great deal about Word, Excel, and
VBA, quite a lot about Win95, and very little about NT, MacOS, and networks
in general.

So far, it looks as if a Mac network with a couple of Windows workstations
will have lower support costs than a Wintel network with a couple of Macs,
and will let people spend more time doing billable work and less time on
housekeeping and troubleshooting. But this doesn't allow for any problems
and complications in exchanging documents and data with other people.

So my question to those who have been there is this:

Which would you rather have: a small Mac network whose users often have to
exchange documents with Wintel systems, or a small NT/95 network whose users
occasionally have to exchange documents with Mac systems?

Please reply direct to me or to the list as appropriate. I'll post a summary
of any direct responses in due course. TIA

John Nurick
L&R Consulting
Haywards Heath
United Kingdom

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Sat Jul 25 1998 - 21:33:29 PDT