Joining to the corporate/work Active Directory Domain

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I wasn't sure if this question would have been better suited for the Switchers forum, but figured there's probably better expertise in this forum for this question. I recently got a new MacBook Air for work. It's going to be about a week before my network admin will be able to get to my office (he's remote) to join my MBA to the corporate Active Directory Domain. He asked me not to really do anything with my MBA until he can get me connected to the domain. He said to not install anything or do any customizations to it. My question is why? He admitted that he really doesn't know a lot about Macs, so I'm wondering if he's just being overly cautious because he just doesn't know any better or if there's really a valid reason why I shouldn't start setting things up in terms of installing Office 2011, OmniPlan, OmniGraffle, Firefox, etc before he can join me to the Active Directory domain?
 

chscag

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He's probably being overly cautious. It's perfectly OK to install those applications. And I personally would be a bit leery about a network admin who knows very little about Macs setting up my new MacBook Air to join the domain. Make sure you have a good backup of everything before you let him mess with your machine.
 
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If it's your personal MBAir I wouldn't join the domain, nor would I let the "network admin" monkey with it. Only to assist with connecting you to the resources the company is providing you via their internal WISP or CISP policies.

If the MBAir is company owned I would let them do what they ask.

One of the reasons to not begin setting things up in advance would be the fact that joining an AD domain will create a new user profile and therefore all of your customization would be lost. If the "network admin" will be responsible for supporting your device I would allow them to do that for you. Being a network admin myself I can appreciate both scenarios.
 

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