In recent months, I've found myself using my personal phone for communication with my work. While I didn't mind this too much, part of the hassle was that we only had one family cell phone, which wasn't always in my possession when I was needed. So if work would call me about a server outage or other tech issue, there was no guarantee that I could be easily reached.
This situation led me to request to get a dedicated "work phone" so that I could be available to the staff 24/7. As crazy as it sounds, I wanted to be at reach for these issues. Part of my job is to fix problems, and it is helpful to be able to know about them as soon as possible. The phone would also allow me to help staff with their computer support issues as well. A good investment in school money, in my opinion: tech support at their fingertips with a quick call or text.
When deciding on getting a phone, I noticed that we were on the AT&T plan. I went to the business manager of our school and she told me that I could get any phone that I wanted that is supported by AT&T. I made a joke about the iPhone, which she replied, "Al, if that's what you need to do your job, then I don't see why you shouldn't. We get a good rate through our educational/government program, so get one if you want it." At first, I was hesistant. I didn't want to take advantage of the schools finances, especially in challenging financial times, however, a smart phone with a data plan would prove uber-useful to me in keeping connections to the school at all times. It would also allow me to test wireless access without lugging around my laptop, and eventually, once figured out, I could remote into the school's servers and do basic support and mainentance of our network. So to curb my desire, I began looking at other phone offerings. No luck. I had no idea what I should get. So I called some friends who either had an iPhone or had extensive knowledge of smart phones, and they all said the same thing: "Get an iPhone".
Last Friday, the shiny phone came to the school. My iPhone. I'm already finding myself more productive and reachable to the staff. Having my e-mail, calendar, todo lists, and other features right at my fingertips. Now comes the real challenge: losing the obssessive desire to play with it every minute. :-)
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
The Switch to the Mac...one year later.
It has been a little over one year since we ordered our Mac Mini and made "the switch" to Apple. In that one year we've learned a lot about how our Mac works and a lot of how we work. We've also discovered that Macs don't "just work" and that they can be prone to freeze ups and application crashes just like any other computer. So let's break down the year in review. First the Pros:
1. No more worrying about spyware and malware (although recent articles in the news may be changing that)
2. No more being locked into Microsoft Products...uh, nevermind we ended up purchasing Office for the Mac anyways.
3. Simplified computer management.
4. Many things do actually "just work" given the right hardware and circumstances.
5. Nifty little niceties built into the operating system that I'm still trying to figure out why Microsoft hasn't gotten the idea of yet.
6. Installing software is rediculously simple. I wish it were this easy on Windows.
And now the Cons:
1. Our laserjet printer, which we have loved for years does not play well with the Mac. I had to find a workaround to get it to work. From what my friends say, this is very "un-mac" like, but it still happened.
2. I had to purchase a new wireless router, as my former netgear router slowed our internet down to a crawl when we used OSX. In bootcamp, running windows xp, the internet worked as normal, so I attributed this to the OS. Once I bought a new linksys router, everything worked fine on the mac...yet another situation where things did not "just work".
3. Despite what people say, there is a lack of free software for the Mac that is easily available for the PC. I am not going to go into specifics, but there had been more than one time when I needed to perform a certain task and there was a free way of doing the task on windows, but I had to purchase something to do the same task on the Mac.
4. One of my main reasons for thinking a Mac would be useful was the iLife suite. I had hoped that I could make use of iPhoto and iMovie and Garage Band, etc. So far, I've found that I hate iPhoto (the organization is too weird and plus I use Adobe Lightroom), I can't make music in garage band because I don't have a usb mic (not a issue on any pc I've ever owned), and I have yet to find a huge reason to use iMovie or iDVD so far, since I'm not a huge video buff.
Even though my list might have more pros than cons, I'd have to say that, for me and my family, there is really no advantage at all to owning the Mac (thus far). In some ways, its been more of a royal pain, in that we've had to learn a new operating system and change some of the ways in which we worked with our computer. Even so, I'm in the midst of an upgrade to our Mini, adding in a much larger hard drive and a new dvd burner, which should allow us to do more with video and dvd authoring. Even with those features, I'm still finding anything to really make a big deal out of. Macs are just another kind of computer...that's pretty much it.
1. No more worrying about spyware and malware (although recent articles in the news may be changing that)
2. No more being locked into Microsoft Products...uh, nevermind we ended up purchasing Office for the Mac anyways.
3. Simplified computer management.
4. Many things do actually "just work" given the right hardware and circumstances.
5. Nifty little niceties built into the operating system that I'm still trying to figure out why Microsoft hasn't gotten the idea of yet.
6. Installing software is rediculously simple. I wish it were this easy on Windows.
And now the Cons:
1. Our laserjet printer, which we have loved for years does not play well with the Mac. I had to find a workaround to get it to work. From what my friends say, this is very "un-mac" like, but it still happened.
2. I had to purchase a new wireless router, as my former netgear router slowed our internet down to a crawl when we used OSX. In bootcamp, running windows xp, the internet worked as normal, so I attributed this to the OS. Once I bought a new linksys router, everything worked fine on the mac...yet another situation where things did not "just work".
3. Despite what people say, there is a lack of free software for the Mac that is easily available for the PC. I am not going to go into specifics, but there had been more than one time when I needed to perform a certain task and there was a free way of doing the task on windows, but I had to purchase something to do the same task on the Mac.
4. One of my main reasons for thinking a Mac would be useful was the iLife suite. I had hoped that I could make use of iPhoto and iMovie and Garage Band, etc. So far, I've found that I hate iPhoto (the organization is too weird and plus I use Adobe Lightroom), I can't make music in garage band because I don't have a usb mic (not a issue on any pc I've ever owned), and I have yet to find a huge reason to use iMovie or iDVD so far, since I'm not a huge video buff.
Even though my list might have more pros than cons, I'd have to say that, for me and my family, there is really no advantage at all to owning the Mac (thus far). In some ways, its been more of a royal pain, in that we've had to learn a new operating system and change some of the ways in which we worked with our computer. Even so, I'm in the midst of an upgrade to our Mini, adding in a much larger hard drive and a new dvd burner, which should allow us to do more with video and dvd authoring. Even with those features, I'm still finding anything to really make a big deal out of. Macs are just another kind of computer...that's pretty much it.
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