The majority of Business today is conducted on Windows PC's with either an Intel or AMD proccesor. What you don't know or maybe had little knowledge of is that the Apple Macintosh computers have been in the corporate world before we all were clicking "Start". Apple was the first to market with a Graphical User Interface and anyone between the age of 18-35 has used one in school.

The facts are promissing when you look at them and realize what would be better for your company. We discuss them here as well as throw in the math to help you decide wether or not switching to an All Mac IT enviroment is viable. Of course Software Selections would also have to be taken into consideration but you'll find the software for Mac's is far superior than software for Windows, we'll discuss that at the end.

Just the Facts:
In the USA alone the IT costs of maintaining and upgrading hardware alone average at nearly $40k per small comany (2-100 employee's). Hershey Foods alone spends nearly $2mil per year just to keep there current Windows based infrastructure alive and kicking. Miller and Assoc. conducted a survey in 2002 ending in 2004 of IT costs on both the hardware/software as well as the personell level. And the information they came up with us staggering. Keep in mind for every hour your system is down it will cost you 2hrs of labor becuase your paying your employee's for the hour to sit and the hour to catch up.

What they found was the average Windows Based Network system in companies around the world averaged an 83% uptime. This means for every 100hrs your system is up, 17hrs are wasted in downtime by either software misfunction, hardware misfunction, printer issues, or network failure. These numbers did not include power outages that plauged Ca. during those years, they were deducted. Apple based netoworks faired much better at a 98% uptime. With the majority of the downtime due to network devices failing. The average life of a Windows PC was shown to be 3.4 years where as the Macs were staying in continuos operation (most of which were never shutdown only placed into sleep mode) for 6.7 years without replacement.

Another intersting fact was shown in early 2005 when Microsoft released a tech note that was removed from thier site a couple weeks later stating that the Windows 2000/XP operating system should be reloaded every other year to maintain file integrity. Since Apple OS 4 you have never had to reload the OS, in fact the majority of Apples in existance today still have the same OS that was installed by the factory. Think of the time it takes to install the OS, the time it takes to backup your data and restore everything. Even with our 17 years expeince dealing with Wintel machines it still takes us nearly 6hrs to perform this operation per PC and that includes installing all the patches and updates. Setting up the PC and network may add an additional 1-2hrs.

Some other facts to consider are the results of the 1999 survey that showed Mac users in a corporate enviroment were 24% more productive than windows users. Interesting and staggering! So for every 4 employee's a Mac office has it takes 5 in a windows enviroment to do the same amount of work.

Because Apple makes the hardware and the operating system everything works flawlessly. How many times have you heard from your IT staff or IT company that it's software and the software company says it's hardware? What this really means is your spending money on a blame game and not getting results. Imagine if your customers called in and were tossed from extension to extension just to place an order because one employee's job was to take the address, another to take the credit card info, and another to place the order then get sent back to the original person to correct a mistake they made in the first place. Exactly the same situation and your paying for this!

COST:
Adding up the costs becomes tedious to say the least but in the end you may find that switching to an all Apple Office will not only save you time but most importantly money and effort. With an average replacement cost of $2400 per PC every 3 years (hardware/labor/software total average sale here) compared to a new Mac install which averages $1850 (hardware/labor/software) and MAC's tend to stay in use for over 5 years you begin to see the savings. Here at Simplistik Software we still have and run iMac G3's that were released in 1999/2000 and continue to use them however with upgraded hard drives and OS's and will continue to use them until the software we use and develop no longer runs on them. Our oldest windows machine is 2002 and it's really begining to show it's age. Our 7 year old Macs run faster than our windows machines with the same OS. In fact our windows machines are only turned on when we need to check on a windows specific operation.

Not to mention the amount of money you need to spend for virus protection, service aggreements, outsourced hardware support, and don't forget each call to Microsoft will cost you $195 each! Apple charges a yearly fee ($70 per Mac) with Unlimited support and there AppleCare programs cover the hardware 100%.

Software:
It's been know to us as well as most IT specialists that Microsoft makes great bloat ware. The type of software that the more it's used the larger the files become and the slower the machine gets. In fact update after update the software runs slower and slower. On a Mac this is 100% the opposite. OS 9 runs slower than OS X on the SAME HARDWARE! Apple has more time to optimize the code and are more concerend with keeping there older PC's in working and usable condition than Microsoft. Gateway/Dell/HP/ etc... don't make any money if you continue to use the same hardware for years on end, so it's in there best interest to make PC's that fail. On the other side of the arm is Apple. There commitment to hardware and the enviroment is top notch. By creating operating systems that keep older PC's alive and working they keep the landfills cleaner, customers happy, and overall make a better experience for all of us.

Software apps such as Accounting, scheduling, CRM, order proccesing, etc... are all available for a MAC. You can find over 24000 titles by going to apples website and selecting Mad4Mac which makes finding the right software much easier. Look in one place and get exactly what you need all organized by software types with sub categories and even a search. You'll find the majority of the applications you'll need right here!

Overall:
In the end you'll find your staff more productive, your customers happy and your costs are down just by making the switch to an all Apple IT enviroment. Will this work for you? We'll that's up to you to research but keep in mind your research time may end up saving you more hassle and money in the long run. And the added uptime and employee productivity will grow your business faster and faster.

Still need to run Windows apps?
Today's Intel macs can run Windows XP/Vista/2k/even 98 through virtualization. And can run natively XP/Vista.

But there's an even easier way to do this. Windows Server 2003 has a great little built in program call Terminal Server AND a great little flaw. The flaw is this, when the TS License discovery is set to client the server doesn't count. So the OS comes with 5 users, but with the TS License set to client you can tap into as many users as you want. Install the Windows software in install change mode, add the user, run Remote Desktop for Mac and your done.

      -Simplistik Software, Co.