Yesterday, I posted a forum topic asking about experiences with government-issued Macs. The responses were great, and very helpful.
The post was prompted by a development at work – I happily volunteered to participate in a 2-week trial period with a MacBook Pro…My desktop PC will be taken from me and replaced with the Apple. I am told that certain apps wont be easily accessible, but if it all goes well, its mine! AND in the interest of supporting the government in helping ME and my work to be more portable, I’m all for it!
So, I’ve created this blog for two reasons.
1. To give me a forum to angrily vent or joyfully share my experiences during the trail period. These will include, but are not limited to, network issues, systems issues, my own Mac-ignorance, etc.
2. To keep up-to-date any of you who might be interested in how it goes, and allow you to help me out if you can!
So, stay tuned to Macbook.gov! I also will be posting tid-bits here and there at www.twitter.com/malenaxgov
Love it…will be interesting to hear how it actually works out in the gov environment.
Great to hear! If you have any questions just post them here. Many people, including myself, have Macs on the network as well and can probably share helpful tips for getting access to anything that you had access to before. I will say that I’ve so far been able to pretty much do anything I need to do on the Mac that I could on the PC. However for those things that don’t run on the Mac, I would recommend purchased Parallels 4.0 for the Mac. It’ll let you run a full version of Windows within your Mac and have it appear seamless to your Mac interface. Run all your Windows only apps right from your Mac desktop. Very helpful.
I have used an iMac at my agency since March 2008. Huge improvement over the PCs. I rarely need to resort to using a PC. When I need to access a legacy app that does not work with Safari or Firefox (this is relatively rarely the case), then I access it through my agency Citrix platform – this has been better than using Parallels. Main problem has been and remains poor telework access – because my agency does not yet support Leopard for that I have to keep an old iBook running Tiger to access my desktop from home.
Good luck, Malena! I admire your pioneering spirit!
Well stay tuned…The Mac arrives next Tuesday!!
Great idea – I planned to sum it all up at the end of the trail. Also, from what I understand, the Mac will have a “VMware Fusion-like” program that I can use when i need my Windows-based apps…
Overall, its been great. I’ve had it for a little over two weeks now and Im really glad I made the switch. Two additional co-workers have also decided to participate in the pilot as a result of my good experience. There are a few minor issues that I am noticing that I plan to post on the Mac Lovers group site…