RE: [WinMac] Studies on cost of Macs/PCs in offices???

Dan Schwartz(expresso[at]snip.net)
Wed, 16 Sep 1998 18:23:30 -0400

        Actually, administering a mixed MacOS & NT4 site is quite easy...
Especially if the pee-cees' components are on Microsoft's HCL (Hardware
Compatibility List) and *not* "screwdriver jobs."

        The reason for this is that many of the functions are similar between the
two platforms.

        All hell breaks loose when you throw 95/98 into the mix, though...

At 09:37 AM 9/16/98 +0100, John Nurick wrote:
>Joe Dobrowolski wrote
>> I am looking for some studies that show the cost
>> of maintaining Macs versus
>> PCs in offices. I am trying to convince some
>> managers that that a
>> cross-platform office is not more expensive to
>> maintain than a PC-only
>> office.
>
>I recently looked into this a bit. Didn't find any hard
>statistics and no longer expect to find any that are both
>hard and useful, because:
>
>* every office is different
>
>* all statistics are obsolete (e.g comparing Win3.x and MacOS
>7.x, when we'll be using Win 9x/NT and MacOS 8.x).
>
>Logically, installing and supporting MacOS as well as one or
>two flavours of Windows must be more expensive and
>troublesome than just supporting Windows. In practice, it is
>possible that Mac users need so much less support than
>Windows users that the saving in this regard will outweigh
>the extra costs of installing and supporting the Macs in the
>first place.
>
>There are also issues concerning sharing documents, custom
>apps and data between Macs and PCs. These range from small
>(in most of MS Office except data access) to insuperable (in
>some specialist areas), and their relative importance depends
>enormously on what your office needs to do: there is no
>alternative to analysing your needs, investigating how the
>Mac and PC software works together and estimating any costs
>of achieving this against any identified benefits of having
>Macs.
>
>Hope this helps.
>
>
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>
>
>

        Yours truly,
        Dan Schwartz

        Dan's Macintosh Consulting
        Suite 1306
        1840 Frontage Road
        Cherry Hill, NJ 08034-2205

        609-795-8965

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