Just curious. As the tools come about and mature, Mac is going to be the way to go. Follow his lead and use both and be continually looking for more tasks to migrate to the Powerbook. Few things are perfect, but most things can be improved.

Well, he shopped cheap end, he got cheap end. HP's document feeders for their scanners work perfectly well with OS X.

Also, notice he didn't mention what those 'critical apps' were, he merely said that their outsourced helpdesk was unable to simply blast their default Windows app set onto his system.

Largely, however, he's whinging about the fact that they put all their eggs in the MS basket. Visio, for example, is entirely replaceable by ConceptDraw, which is cross-platform. (and cheaper, btw)

I suspect there's absolutely nothing in their business that couldn't be done on a Mac, it would just require a different application.

I am a lifelong Mac/PowerBook user who is forced to work on his IBM ThinkPad today for similar reasons. I wish I didn't have to use it at all, but sometimes...

On the bright side, having a PowerBook and a ThinkPad is about as good as it gets. There's nothing you can't do with this duo of portables. You sure can't use a PowerBook to beat a high-end ThinkPad's battery life with the extended battery. The only downside to using a ThinkPad is it runs Windows.

Quote

Guest wrote:
I suspect there's absolutely nothing in their business that couldn't be done on a Mac, it would just require a different application.

I wish that were true. My small business has just spent many thousands of dollars on a custom database solution that unfortunately is built on Access. It certainly could have been done with FileMaker or 4D, but it wasn't.

So now, even though the entire office is fed up with dealing with the Windows sludge on a daily basis, we're locked in because of the non-cross-platform business-crucial app.

I *can* use it via Virtual PC, but sadly, it takes far less time for me to leave my office, sit at someone else's desk, do 30 second task and go back to my office than it takes to try to do the same thing in emulation.

For corporate tasks best done with a WinTel PC, install VNC server (free) on the PC and use Chicken of the VNC (free) on the Mac. I have kept an otherwise ready-to-be-scrapped PC with Outlook 2003 email, Visio and other corporate-standard WinTel-only apps which I remote view & remote control via these VNC apps with great results. Inside a LAN, even over wireless on both sides of the connection, the screen refresh and responsiveness works great.

Another poster said:
"The only downside to using a ThinkPad is it runs Windows."

Thinkpads make great Linux laptops too!

I too enjoy having two good laptops, a 1ghz 15" Al-book, and a
1.2 GHz Compaq Evo N600c (which just replaced a 650 Mhz Compaq Armada M700) running Redhat Fedora Core 2 (Linux).

The Evo is a great laptop. It has a great display with 1400x1050 resolution, which is a tight 125dpi. Text is small, but I just use larger fonts, which gives me very smooth text. If my PowerBook display had resolution this good, it would be 1680x1050, the same as my 20" Cinema Display!

The PowerBook is my main portable, but I do x86 Linux for my job and need a Linux portable (yes I know the Powerbook can run Yellowdog). The Evo also serves as my Windows test bed (I never get on the Net with it), as my customers connect to my custom Linux equipment with Windows.

Hey Doc take a look at these...

http://filemakeradvisor.com/doc/14267

"Previous versions of FileMaker have only provided a graphical interface for creating new database files. FileMaker 7 introduces the ability to create FileMaker database tables via SQL commands sent to the database through an ODBC connection. The addition of this new functionality makes it possible to automate FileMaker 7 table creation tasks to migrate databases such as Microsoft Access to FileMaker 7. This functionality also makes it possible to automate the creation of database templates from Perl scripts."

FmPro Migrator

"Migrate Access databases to FileMaker 7 - [FmPro Migrator for Windows Feature] - Using FmPro Migrator for Windows, Access databases can be migrated to FileMaker 7 in order to take advantage of FileMaker's legendary ease of use and increased data management capacity. Migrated Access databases can now grow to the maximum 8TB file size offered by FileMaker 7 and can be run on MacOS X and Windows."

[Edit: Turned long URL into short link for page width reasons - Bryan]

Remote Desktop Connection Client

[Edit: Turned long URL into short link for page width reasons - Bryan]

Great, but the value in most corporate databases is tied up in the interface not the tables... The links above refer only to "database structure and data" and specifically exclude the VB work which defines the database.

In my case, we have already moved the tables to SQL Server, but cannot afford to rewrite the interface which so far has 27 man years of development in it (yes I know it would have been less in FMPro, but that's not where we are.)

This is THE major reason why Macs are simply not an option in my company even though as the CIO I would dearly love to put them in place.

Despite all the benefits, I too have to run a Dell laptop alongside my Powerbook for those hard to get at Apps.

(By the way, when I'm on a plane, I take the Dell, as playing a DVD I get 4 hours battery life, whereas the Powerbook only gets 2 hours. I have NEVER seen the battery show me more than 2.5 hours, even with Bluetooth and Airport switched off... Battery life is awful!)

--
Dick

Ah yes, Access. The most vile database in existence in my opinion.

I had a former project that at one point wanted to use Access as a central database. The problem was that doing so would pretty much have required Windows end-to-end, and I wasn't about to let that happen. Originally I was trying to code for UNIX on one end, entering data into an Access database via glue code, but that fell apart when (surprise!) we couldn't get the glue working. So while we worked on that, I whipped up a quick prototype database in PostgreSQL just so I could get things done. The research head decided to move to Postgres both because I already had it hooked into the embedded client, and because I was doing record queries on a Pentium 90 laptop over wireless and it was still responsive.

The GUI-heavy front end stayed in Access though - it has a few statistical features that are very good (Pivot Tables!) for data-mining work.

If your data is already stored in MS SQL Server, you're halfway there, because data and schemas are pretty easy to migrate. VB though is the devil's own child. Use something uglier and portable, like TCL.

The less vendor lock-in, the better, I'd say.

Jason