Macbook.gov Post #2- Adventures/mis-adventures with my gov-issued Mac

Macbook.gov Post#1

“OIT (Police) Line Do Not Cross”

Since the Mac is scheduled to land on my desk in less than 24 hours, I got a visit from a tech from the IT department this morning. I was told by a co-worker that they would be visiting soon (as they visited her a week ago) to give me the rundown on what to expect from the Mac and their IT support. While so far only about 5 percent of staff are using the Mac, the techs agreed that I was in good company. All in all, the visit went well, but the tech had a very cautionary tone. The conversation went something like this…

**Enter IT tech, stage left (my office door)
Tech – We hear you’ve signed up for the Mac pilot
Me – Yes
Tech – Have you used a Mac before?
Me – Yes
Tech – Why are you interested in the pilot
Me – From what I understand, the Mac is more powerful and intuitive compared to our PCs and the Mac provides good ways to collaborate, ichat, ect
Tech – Do you understand that tech support will be minimal? There are 3 techs available for support, only thru ichat
Me – 3 techs?
Tech – Only 3
Me – Oh, OK
Tech – Are there certain apps that you currently use to perform your work?
Me – Yes (listing of apps)
Tech – These apps won’t run on Mac OS
Me – I know, I’ve heard. But there is VMware Fusion-like software to allow me to run windows-based apps if necessary??
Tech – Yes, but…
Me- Well that should work, but hopefully I wont have to resort to that. I want to be all-Mac as much as possible
Tech- OK, well, sounds like you’ve already heard most of what we had to say. Anyone else on your team participating in the pilot?
Me – One other. But it would be really nice if the remaining team members took part…we would be able to collaborate using the Mac tools
Tech –-True. It would be cool if we could get the entire team on-board.
Me – I’ll work on that 🙂

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