a Mac in a PC workplace?

[delapa]

I've worked on Macs for the past 10 years in advertising. Now I've changed industries and work with my family. The office has about 6 computers, all PCs. I've just purchased a MacBook and everyone in concerned that I won't be able to play nice with the PCs. They think that I won't be able to run any of the programs. I don't really like the PC OS and I want do do some design for the company as well.

I will mostly be using Microsoft Office for Mac 2008. (CS3 Suite on the side) They do not think Macs can get the job done and that when you open PC excel files on a mac, the formulas will get messed up. I have had some format issues in the past, but have read the Office for Mac 2008 is much better. Should this be a concern for me? I figure if it is, I can always use Bootcamp or get Fusion and run Vista.

I will need to use a Peachtree someday and some property management software that is PC based, but once again, Bootcamp or Fusion.

Any thoughts on this? I don't think it is a problem, but I just want to make sure. Thanks

 

[kornyboy]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

My thoughts are that it shouldn't be a problem especially with Boot Camp or Fusion. You may have formatting problems with MS Office but like you said theses items are suppose to be much better in Office 2008. I think you should be fine but that is only my opinion. Hope this helps.

 

[Consultant]

Apple's FAQ
http://www.apple.com/getamac/faq/

 

[Olvenskol]

In a small environment like that, I would be surprised if you hit any significant issues.

I use my MBA in a PC-oriented setting with hundreds of machines, dozens of servers and multiple domains spread over the globe. While it hasn't been *always* smooth, it mostly has been. I have had some issues setting up vis-a-vis the multiple domains (still having one annoying problem with one Sharepoint server), but mostly it's been fairly smooth.

For small-office/home-network setting, I really have a hard time seeing any big problems showing up.

 

[kkat69]

We have 1 MBP in an office of like 30 pc's not including the servers. There's NO PROBLEM what so ever.

A few PC guys thought there might be an issue but our mac guy works flawlessly with everyone. He does use parallels to use some of the NT stuff and works in coherence mode and still no issues at all.

 

[donmei]

If you have any issues with Office 08, just buy Fusion for about $70 and instal standard Windows Office on the virtualized pc running on your apple

 

[tacoman667]

I just switched over o MBP 17" Penryn from a Dell E1505. I take my laptop to work every day as a software developer and use Remote Desktop Connection for MAC that is on Mactopia.com. Sure it is beta 3 right now but I do all the "office" work through that to a Windows machine and then do all my own stuff plus my side-work through my MBP. I have had 0 issues to date and I got this sweet machine about a month ago.

 

[tersono]

I've worked on Macs for the past 10 years in advertising. Now I've changed industries and work with my family. The office has about 6 computers, all PCs. I've just purchased a MacBook and everyone in concerned that I won't be able to play nice with the PCs. They think that I won't be able to run any of the programs. I don't really like the PC OS and I want do do some design for the company as well.

I will mostly be using Microsoft Office for Mac 2008. (CS3 Suite on the side) They do not think Macs can get the job done and that when you open PC excel files on a mac, the formulas will get messed up. I have had some format issues in the past, but have read the Office for Mac 2008 is much better. Should this be a concern for me? I figure if it is, I can always use Bootcamp or get Fusion and run Vista.

I will need to use a Peachtree someday and some property management software that is PC based, but once again, Bootcamp or Fusion.

Any thoughts on this? I don't think it is a problem, but I just want to make sure. Thanks

I'm systems administrator for a UK-based charity - we run a largely Windows-based network (it's an Active Directory domain). My only computer here is a Mac (this is by choice).

On the rare occasion I need to run a Windows application (we use a Windows-only CRM system), I run it on XP via VMWare fusion. 99% of the time, however, I handle MS Office files in OpenOffice Aqua, and generally don't have a problem - including Excel spreadsheets. OpenOffice can, however, occasionally choke on really complex spreadsheets, so if you're going to use it a lot, Office 2008 is probably the way to go.

Office:Mac is very compatible with windows office - with the exception of VBA. If you need VBA support, you'll have to resort to Excel for Windows under VMWare or Boot Camp. Provided you have at least 4gb RAM, you can happily run VMWare in the background in its own space and switch between the two OSs with a hotkey combo.

Our idiot I.T. support company (who had previously managed our network) originally said that my plan to be Mac-based here wouldn't work. I considered it desirable as I also do a fair bit of design work here (being a charity, we all wear several 'hats') as well as managing our I.T. systems.

We now have several other Macs in the building, 3 members of staff - including our General Manager - have bought them for use at home due to being impressed at how well the Macs integrate with everything else here and how much nicer they are to use. Oh, and I fired the idiot support company.

 

[donmei]

Tacoman
thats a great idea if he has a win pc he can connect to.

I'm also using MS RDC for mac2.0 Beta3 and it is rock solid. I've not found any typical buggieness to it. I use it to connect to an XP Pro machine.

Don
p.s. the other night I was connected to my xp machine. I had vmware workstation running on the xp machine with ubuntu running in the virtualized machine on the XP physical machine, rdp'd from the MAC

Wife walked by, figured out what I was doing and walked away shaking her head muttering something about me being a geek.