A Mac Guy new to Windows Culture--Catching Up

Hi all! I started in my new job on February 4th. I've been going through orientation in DC for the past two weeks, meeting terrific new people and in between doing the new job itself, all of which has left little time to attend to my blog. Now I'm on a direct flight from the West Coast to an East Coast meeting so I've got a few hours to catch you up.

Living within a Windows XP Culture

Unfortunately, my new organization is tightly locked into an exclusively Windows XP environment. My old organization more or less accommodated Macs and Linux machines so this will be a new experience. My new organization has a surprisingly small and superb IT staff. The CIO provides just one of three Dell machines to employees, either a specific desktop or one of two specific portables. Since most employees travel a lot, most of them use the lighter of the two, a four pound Dell Latitude D430 with a smallish 12" screen and a docking station. All run Windows XP SP2 and are configured in a standard way by the IT staff, including being locked up tight. By policy, no software can be installed by employees and no computers other than official computers can be hooked up to the network directly. Of course, Microsoft Exchange Server running Outlook provides email, contacts and calendaring. While away, employees use either a VPN connection or Citrix to get email and access to their shares or Outlook Web Access over the Web for email alone. They also supply a BlackBerry to senior people running the mobile version of Outlook.

No Macs or iPhones are "supported."

What's a Mac guy to do?

Fortunately, there is a Citrix client for Mac that actually works pretty well on Mac OS X Leopard. The only exception is that the resolution of fonts via Citrix is too poor for my eyes without using a large monitor but this is a problem for Windows machines too. And the resolution handled through Citrix may be increased in the near future. Outlook Web Access also works okay for email and does not suffer from the font problem at least on the Mac using any Mac Web browser.

The bigger problem is my iPhone because it has become such an essential tool. Since the CIO of my new organization refuses to implement IMAP mail in Microsoft Exchange Server, I cannot get email directly on my iPhone. The claim is that an IMAP email server produces an unacceptable security risk. I don't know about that because many firms, including the currently security-concious U.S. government, provide email via IMAP. However, a workaround is to enable email forwarding to my .Mac account on my iPhone. The only difficulties with the workaround are the additional header and all emails are from "me" rather than the actual sender. Still, it works. The other alternative is to use Outlook Web Access with Safari when my iPhone is connected by Wi-Fi.

Anyway, I am learning to survive in a Windows XP culture.

New Macs on Their Way

As I wrote previously, I'm going back to a two-Mac arrangement--a Mac Pro at home and a MacBook Air on the road, largely to shed several road pounds. I ordered a standard dual 2.8GHz quad-core Mac Pro with the Nvidia GeForce 8800GT graphics card upgrade to drive my 30" Cinema Display and because I am an incorrigible gamer. The Mac Pro will show up this week while I am on travel.

I ordered the standard 1.6GHz MacBook Air with 80GB hard drive after seeing Macworld's online review. It seems fast enough and I really can't see paying $1000 more for a 64GB flash RAM drive despite desperately wanting one. After reading how slow software installation is over Wi-Fi "n" I ordered the external USB SuperDrive plus the USB/Ethernet adapter--they will also arrive this week. The MacBook Air order said 7-10 business days to ship which is quicker than I expected.

While I was at it, I also ordered an Apple TV "Take 2" and an Apple 500GB Time Capsule so there will be more to write about in the coming weeks. [Bill Fox]