Soon To Be Switchers

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I run the computer systems for a small to medium size business, and our owners are planning to soon switch to Macs.

They want to set up desktops at the office, and use notebooks from home to log in remotely to the office desktops, which I assume we'll just leave running 24/7. During business hours at the very least.

My question is this: is this easily accomplished on a Mac? I know that with some good security software and even something like Remote Desktop on a PC we can get this up and running, but I haven't used a Mac since high school. I'm talking monochrome... Apple IIs?

Is there a software solution that anyone can point me to so I can research this a bit?

Thanks!
 
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It should be quite simple. Macs can be controlled remotely using a VNC application; these instructions seem to explain it pretty well.
 
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VNC is the best (only?) solution for remote desktop. This is under the assumption you won't have a dedicated Mac OS X Server. Hopefully someone who has better knowledge of this might shine some light on this.
 
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I run the computer systems for a small to medium size business, and our owners are planning to soon switch to Macs.

They want to set up desktops at the office, and use notebooks from home to log in remotely to the office desktops, which I assume we'll just leave running 24/7. During business hours at the very least.

Is there a software solution that anyone can point me to so I can research this a bit?

Thanks!

Check this out - Take Control of Back to My Mac
 
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Remote Desktops would probably skyrocket your bandwidth consumption. What about using VPN's to remotely access the files? Do you run a Server in the office?
 
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From what I read in your initial post, you are diving straigth into the technology without having the operational model pinned down.

The only way to make this a success is for you to show that you can reduce the cost of ownership, or keep it at the same level whilst providing more services ( or higher quality services )

If people believe that only technology is going to solve the problems, then people don't understand the technology and they don't understand the problems.

All I am saying is ..... think carefully and develop a blueprint of your operational model, before you implement any technology ( not only Mac )
Maybe you have thought this thru already, but that was not clear from your initial post.

Cheers ... McBie
 

bobtomay

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Have to agree with McBie.

I'm all for switching if that is what someone wants to do. Sounds to me like you've got some business owners that haven't thought through what it is they need to accomplish.

For a business transition, if they want to change over, they really need to invest in a single setup. Trying to figure out a new piece of software and/or hardware while you're trying to get work done can be extremely frustrating. I'd recommend investing in possibly a single setup for testing to make sure everything is up, running, and as hassle free as possible. You need to know what all the ramifications will be prior to setting the equipment up on a single desk in a work environment.

We just did a software upgrade yesterday to a single app with only three users. Normally they'll put an upgrade only on my machine to let me work out the kinks and then have a mini training for the others. This time the boss decided to just upgrade all three machines. Cost me only about a half hour to get back to productivity. Cost one of the other, not so computer savvy users 3 hours. 3 hours which we did not have, as all of our work is extremely time sensitive. During that 3 hours, cost me another hour of downtime going back and forth to show them where to go to do what they needed. And the learning curve for that user is far from over.
 
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I (like bobtomay) agree with McBie,

They really need to get a plan together before making this switch. A simple example is that it might be advantageous to invest in setting up a server (and you can get a Mac mini w/ OSX server unlimited users for $999 last I checked, add a external firewire drive for mass storage and for a lot less then $1500 you have a server) - you really need to look at what needs to be done and why.

ie: let's say all they want access to at home is their files - well, let's say you have 10 workstations - all being left on 24/7 will add up on the electric bill, if there was a server that also hosted their home directories, or at least offered centralized storage, then a single system could be left on after hours that people could access their data from - this would be a lot cheaper then leaving them all on, and I know businesses are all for saving money when they can. Plus, assuming this is like most work places, you usually want to have some sort of control over the systems to prevent users from doing certain things or changing certain things, using a server that they authenticate against offers a central place to control these things instead of having to go to each workstation and setup permissions on every single one.

Then there's backing up - most businesses require backups to be made - have you considered how you're going to back up all of these macs? you gonna get an external HD for each one to act as a time machine backup device, or are you going to setup something on a network?

What about additional software that they currently use on windows? Are any of them windows only for which it will be hard to migrate to a Mac?

I have to agree, it seems that the owners may have made a decision without fully considering all of the ramifications of such a major change in hardware/software.
 
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Sorry for the lateness of my reply. I got swamped with another project.

I understand the concerns of switching just a few of our machines to any other system, but once the bosses have made up their mind there is little I can do about it! ^^

We have a small accounting server I've built, but it really does nothing but host our accounting package for a few of the internal desktop machines to access. The two bosses' units that would switch to Mac are honestly just email machines.

If I could convince them that a hosted Exchange server was worth the investment, I'd say that VNC would be an easy solution, as email would be synced with the server from any computer. Since we use good old POP3 still, they need access to their Outlook, which as far as I know would require a Remote Desktop situation, right?

I doubt there is any way I could get them to give up using Outlook, either. ><
 
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You don't need Exchange to do synchronized email. Good ol' IMAP will do that as well. (Probably better....)
 

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