Switching Company to Mac

[Eraserhead]

Any further advice, especially hints to SSH GUI's, is gratefully received!

I don't really understand what you want to do with SSH TBH, but using [guide]Applescript[/guide] (included with every mac) you can create a script to run command line stuff, this can be executed automatically using the 'do shell script' command.

EDIT Or as the previous poster said.

 

[miniConvert]

Re: SSH. We have passwords that I don't necessarily want my employees to know. Plus, we have a LOT of passwords, and they're all very long and complex. SecureCRT stores passwords encrypted, keeping them from the eyes of employees and also making everything quick and easy. Running SecureCRT in Parallels for those users who need it wouldn't be out of the question. I'd rather find a Mac OS X client that can save passwords though.

A big thanks to Makosuke for his detailed post WRT Yonah.

Re: Spares/fixes, buying online in the UK and having AppleCare gets (or has so far gotten me) free collect and return service. Should one of the machine's go I'd most likely let the affected employee use mine while I go eat/drink/be merry for a few days. If mine goes, I'll go eat/drink/be merry for a few days, or get angry and fire people, whatever feels right at the time

You're all raising excellent points. Thank you.

 

[Makosuke]

Well, as suggested, I'd experiment with Applescript a little--I'm farily certain it shouldn't be a big deal to build a double-clickable "app" with an embedded password that will use the built-in SSH client to connect to the server, sans any user interaction or knowledge of the password. Not completely sure that the password couldn't be extracted from the app if you knew how and really wanted to, but it's at least a basic level of ease and security.

Alternately, you could put in a little bit of work based on any of a number of tutorials that Google will give you and generate a saved pair of ssh keys to allow password-less login for that particular user on that particular machine. Your security comes from the user needing to be logged into the local machine (no different from the GUI app mentioned), and they don't have any access to the password itself, just the key on their end.

Combining this with a double-clickable command to launch terminal and login to the given server with the given username would allow secure, password-inaccessable access to as many servers as you wanted to set up. Perhaps a folder full of double-clickable "launchers" isn't quite as elegant as a GUI app, but it'll work just fine and I'd consider it an improvement over running an SSH app from within a Windows virtual machine.

I suppose the reason there aren't many (any?) GUI SSH apps on the Mac is simply because very nearly everyone who wants that functionality just uses the command line, so there's no market for it.

 

[Makosuke]

Ok, I said I'd do some power consumption tests, so here they are if anybody cares.

My two test units were a 17" iMac 1.83GHz Core Duo and a recent-model P4-based Lenovo (IBM) ThinkCentre tower--not a top of the line box, just the sort of decent-but-inexpensive thing you're going to see in an office environment (were my workplace to replace it, for example, it would be with an iMac). The ThinkCentre is a decent machine, and has variable-speed fans like the iMac--they're very quiet unless the computer is under load, but get a pretty good grind going when necessary. Performance-wise, the iMac is drastically faster than the ThinkCentre thanks to the Core Duo, but that's not the question.

The ThinkCentre runs about 70W at idle, 130W under heavy load. A similar monitor to the one built into the iMac adds about 25-30W to that, depending on the specific one (this is based on an estimate from several different ViewSonic LCDs we have). So you're looking at, roughly speaking, 100W idle and 150W at load.

The iMac, in contrast, draws 47W when idle, and 63W with both cores maxed.

So for roughly equivalent machines in this particular case (actually, not--the iMac is DRASTICALLY faster--but equivalent in terms of "lower-end office fodder"), you're looking at a savings of about 50W at idle, and 90W under heavy load. Go for the midpoint of those two numbers, and you're looking at the 75W savings I estimated.

It's not going to do wonders for your electric bill (if you pay what I do, you're looking at about $15 per box per year), but double the heat in a small office is very significant--remember that a human worker puts out about 50W of heat, so it's like having an extra person or two standing in the room all the time. Multiply by 8 and you've got to dump between 400W and 800W of continuous heat. Depending on the size of the office, air flow, and your air conditioning unit, that could be nothing or a major comfort hit.

Now, this doesn't scale exactly to the 20" iMacs--the monitor should be about equivalent for a size increase, but the 2.0GHz Core Duo might not be as power-thrifty. But it gives you a general idea, anyway.

 

[theheadguy]

Did you call Apple directly yet? I think you may want to do that (and get the name and number of who you talked to since they want to continue that relationship). Good luck.