Why Mac over Windows?

The issue with Windows is support. We are an IT unit with only eight IT professionals. Three people are assigned to administer and support county systems and networks for around 1000 extension personnel in 80 or so locations across the state. Every person in our group has past experience supporting Windows PCs. We know for a fact it's a high touch endeavor. Because we can't physically go to your offices to provide support at the time that it's needed, anything we do has to be supportable from a distance. With a support ratio of 3:1000, it also has to be very scalable.

So far we really like Macs and Apple OS X. We have enough confidence that we can support 1000 or so Macs to continue testing. Our comfort with supporting Apple OS X is partly because of our experience with Unix and Linux and partly because we know of other organizations who are successfully doing so with support ratios similar to ours. Still we have more testing to do before we make any decisions.

Other factors make Apple appealing. The operating system is easy to learn about and use. Apple offers a great array of multimedia tools built right in, as well as imaging and remote support tools. In Windows the latter are an afterthought.

EIT is fortunate to have computer support people with an exceptional ability to find workable solutions within any number of constraints. We hope we can make this work, because it would offer more flexibility and functionality to your offices. That's our bottom line.

For more information on the EIT Macintosh Project, visit the Macintosh Project Wiki.