Posted on Mar 9, 2010 7:35 am by Tom Kaneshige, CIO

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from CIO.com. Visit CIO’s Macs in the Enterprise page.

Macs in the enterprise aren’t just cheaper to manage—they’re a lot cheaper, according to a new survey released today by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance.

Keep in mind that Enterprise Desktop Alliance is a group of software developers who’ve bandied together to deploy and manage Macs in the enterprise. The group surveyed 260 IT administrators in large U.S. companies with both Macs and PCs who are involved in some degree with IT cost calculations. Enterprise Desktop Alliance members include Centrify, Absolute Software, Group Logic, Web Help Desk, and most recently IBM.

[ Another Enterprise Desktop Alliance survey shows two out of three companies buying Macs this year, which will bring integration challenges for IT admins, CIO.com reports. ]

The survey found that Macs were cheaper in six of seven computer management categories: troubleshooting, help desk calls, system configuration, user training and supporting infrastructure servers, networks and printer. Nearly half of the respondents cited software licensing fees as roughly the same for both platforms.

A whopping 65 percent of respondents said it costs less to troubleshoot Macs than PCs, 19 percent said they spent the same on both computers, and only 16 percent said they spent less to manage PCs than Macs.

Even more impressive, a majority of the respondents citing the low cost of Macs in nearly all categories said Macs were more than 20 percent cheaper to manage than PCs.

With Macs dominating in almost every cost category, why would 16 percent claim they spent less troubleshooting PCs? “It might be an [issue] of expertise of the IT staff,” says Tom Cromlin, spokesperson for the Enterprise Desktop Alliance. “They’re probably more comfortable troubleshooting PCs.”Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Jon Oltsik has another reason. He says top execs often prefer Macs, and thus supporting those machines take on more importance. “It’s not about managing [Mac] systems, which may be easier than Windows” on a machine-by-machines basis, Oltsik explains. “It’s when the CEO wants IT to install software on his or her Mac, which will need immediate attention and take time away from other tasks.”

The cost of management appears to be a key driver for Macs in the enterprise. Nearly half of respondents said they brought in Macs mainly because of their low total cost of ownership and ease of technical support.

In fact, many small companies with limited IT resources told CIO.com that they moved to Macs after getting fed up with costly PC support issues. “Mac owners tend to do a lot of problem resolution themselves by communicating with other users,” Oltsik says.

One of the flaws of the survey is that it doesn’t factor in the cost of the PC or Mac itself, only the costs associated with managing the computers. Macs, of course, cost more than most PCs. However, many companies told CIO.com that the low cost of managing Macs more than makes up the cost difference between the computers.

Many, but not all. “You can buy a PC for $400, while the cheapest Mac is over a thousand,” Jon Graff, director of IT operations at A&E, told CIO.com last year. “In the real world, you’re spending a lot more on a Mac.”

While managing Macs may be cheaper than managing PCs, Macs pose their own special challenges as companies get up to speed supporting a Mac-PC environment.

According to another recent Enterprise Desktop Alliance survey, chief among those hurdles are: security and file sharing between operating systems, client management, backup and data recovery of Mac files, Active Directory integration, application compatibility, configuration consistency, cross-platform help desk and knowledge base support, and standard management utilities for both Macs and PCs.

Ben Hanes, senior systems administrator at Children’s Hospital of Oakland Research Institute%

via Are Macs really cheaper to manage than PCs? | Mac IT | MacUser | Macworld.

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Microsoft released updates to Office for Mac 2004 and 2008, primarily to plug security holes in the program. The 2008 version should be more stable, as well, following the update.

The Open XML converter needed by 2004 users to read documents created by the latest versions of Office has been updated as well.

Back up your system before updating is always recommended. If you live by Office applications, this is a must. You shouldn’t have any problems with the update, but stuff happens, and it’s always better to be safe… A complete, restorable backup keeps you safe. If you’ve any questions about how to back up, please contact me.

I downloaded the updates with Microsoft Auto-Udpate, but the downloads are available online as well. Links:

Microsoft Office 2004 for Mac 11.5.8 Update

Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac 12.2.4 Update

Open XML File Format Converter for Mac 1.1.4

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Apple announced that the issues that affected some of the new 27″ iMacs are solved by two new firmware updates.

A small number of purchasers of the incredibly popular new iMacs found their displays a bit yellowish, or flickering, and when the new iMacs sold out of some stores and resellers, let to rumors that production had been stopped because of the problem.

Apple released the iMac Graphics Firmware 1.0 to update the graphics processor and then released he iMac Display Firmware Update 1.0 for the rest of the display hardware.

If you’ve had any issues with the display on a 27″ iMac, download the two firmware updates and install them. Your display should behave afterwards.

iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0

iMac Display Firmware Update 1.0

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Microsoft has a sweepstakes going, the winner to receive a custom-color MacBook Pro 2.53GHz and Office 2008 for Mac. The ways to enter are to follow @OfficeforMac or to retweet @OfficeforMac and include the hashtag #officeformac. Only one retweet will be counted per person.

US and Canada (ex Québec) residents 14 and older. The sweepstakes ends 2/25/10.

The sweepstakes page is here. I entered… good luck to you if you enter too!

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by Joe Aimonetti

Recent announcements from popular video hosting Web sites YouTube and Vimeo that they will now be offering HTML5 compatible video streaming have tremendously positive affects for Mac users. YouTube kicked off the announcement on Wednesday with Vimeo following suit shortly thereafter. If video on HTML5 gains traction, we could see the end or at least a lot less of Flash online.

As many longtime Mac users are aware, Flash is one of the most notorious resource hogs available. Many issues have been related to Adobes media software, causing more headaches than many users feel its worth. With YouTube and Vimeo offering the HTML5 version for viewing its videos, users can now browse without having to use Flash videos now play using the H.264 encoding.

Of course, this new technology is still in development and is currently offered as an opt-in beta program on YouTube. The beta does have its limitations for the videos you will see. No advertising which everyone is disappointed in Im sure, no full screen options though expanding the video will play nearly double-sized in your current browser window, no closed captioning, and no annotations.

Users should be aware that the HTML5 standard is only available for compatible browsers–currently Safari and Chrome only. Firefox supports HTML5, but only for the Ogg Theora format not H.264. Also, embedded videos from YouTube on other Web sites will still be Flash-based.

A bigger implication of popular video sharing sites moving away from Flash is its impact it could have on mobile devices, specifically the iPhone and iPod touch and perhaps the Tablet. Without Flash as a “missing feature” the iPhone is sure to gain even more inroads to the smart phone market.

via Why HTML5 matters to Mac users | MacFixIt – CNET Reviews.

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Apple updated and added knowledge base articles to help MobleMe users understand MobileMe billing, and to answer questions about emails from Apple regarding MobileMe.

The first article will help you understand what you need to do if you receive an email from Apple about your Mobile account, and how to get help resolving any issues. The topics are:

• Renewing or canceling your account
• Updating your credit card information
• Mail storage limit notification
• iDisk storage limit notification
• Viewing a friend’s movies or albums in MobileMe Gallery

The second article explains how MobileMe billing works. Topics include:

• Trial Accounts
• What happens if your trial account expires
• Members with automatic renewal
• Members without automatic renewal set
• What happens if your subscription expires

Also, an article on the Unofficial Apple Weblog warns of a phishing scheme targeting MobileMe subscribers. It warns against emails purportedly from Apple telling you that you need to update your credit card info. These emails come from “Apple-bills.com” which is NOT an Apple domain.

The site linked to in the phishing email was down as of the TUAW posting.

Beware of Phishermen

Apple posted a knowledge base article to help identify fraudulent “phishing” email. It explains how to identify the sender of a suspicious email, and how to make sure that a link on an email is actually going to where is says it is.

Additionally, the email greeting can be a giveaway. If it’s addressed to something generic, like “Dear Valued Customer”, or to your email address, Dear jimbob@xxxxx.com, it is not likely to be genuine.

If you use an email address to connect to your bank, for example, and you receive an email sent to a different address from that bank, it is not genuine. Normally you can check with companies and banks to see what email address you used when you registered.

If you get an email from a company, and it is not similar to emails you’ve received in the past, it’s a good idea to double-check. It may be genuine, but it’s a red flag.

Never send personal information via email. If a company needs something like this, they will send you to a secure website. Make sure that you are actually going to that company first, though.

MobileMe offers live chat support on their support site, if you have any questions. I’ve used it a few times, and found it to be very helpful.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

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January 15, 2010 | Charles Lindauer

There are two major complaints/issues for computer users, in my experience. The first is data loss prevention. Hopefully, you’ve never experienced this problem.

Protecting your data

Protecting business data should be a primary concern for all business owners and managers. As dependent as we all are on our computers, Macs or PCs, a hard drive crash or corruption can stop our businesses dead in their tracks.

A redundant backup plan is the answer to this problem. As a Macintosh consultant, I can provide several good solutions. PCs have different solutions, but the principle is similar:

1. Have at least one backup, and preferably multiple backups.
2. Make sure that they are easy to restore reasonably quickly.
3. If possible, have at least one recent backup off-site.

If you have a bootable clone as one of your backups, then drive failure will not stop production for more than a few minutes. This is simple to do on Mac. If you’re a PC user, call your tech or IT person, or contact me for a referral.

Oh no… it’s slow!

The second issue I run across frequently is slow computer performance. With PCs, virus and spyware can be a main culprit for slowing your computer down. On both platforms it can be due to neglected maintenance or an over-full hard drive.

All computers need to have some maintenance — much as your car does. While a lot of the routine maintenance tasks are built into the computer’s system software, some systems (and versions) are better at accomplishing maintenance tasks than others, so some necessary tasks may not be performed by your system. Once a year, or perhaps twice if a computer is in heavy production use, it’s a good idea to rebuild the directory, flush caches, etc. If you don’t know how to do regular maintenance, call your tech or myself for assistance.

Something most users don’t realize is that modern operating systems require a certain amount of contiguous free space on the boot hard drive (“contiguous” means “unbroken” space that is available in the same part of the drive). For Macs I recommend a minimum of 15%, although on larger drives it may be possible to shave that percentage a bit. Virtual memory and swap files are constantly written to the hard drive, and if there is not a good-sized chunk of free space in one place to write to, the system has to hunt for little bits of free space to write, erase, write etc. This can really slow a computer down. A good disk utility can check your drive and will rewrite your data to free up contiguous space. This check should be done as part of your routine maintenance.

If you are chronically low on drive space, consider a larger internal drive or an additional external drive. Computer storage, particularly hard drives, have become incredibly inexpensive. A 1 Terabyte drive can be had for as little as $85 these days, perhaps a little less if you find a sale. On most computers a new drive can be installed and data transferred within an hour. If you have a machine that is difficult to get into, external drives are not much more expensive, and work very well indeed.

If you want to keep productivity up, and down-time minimal, plan on getting annual maintenance on your Mac or PC, and pay a little attention to the amount of free space on your drive… don’t let it get too full.

If you are a Mac user, I can help with your maintenance. If you use a Windows or Linux system, I can provide a great referral.

Thanks for reading this article. I hope it was helpful. Check back soon for more… Articles on this site will be posted on my blog as well.

Charles Lindauer

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Yep. Maintenance. Just like your car, a Mac needs to have “stuff” done to it from time to time, to keep running normally and to prevent slow performance and the dreaded SPOD (spinning pizza-wheel of death).

CAUTION: Unless specifically noted, the links to applications will be for Snow Leopard versions. Contact the developer for earlier versions.

When do I need to do maintenance?

I recommend that at the very least, you repair permissions once a year. If strange symptoms appear, you can repair perms as a troubleshooting procedure, but it should be done at least annually. Not everyone agrees, but Apple recommends it, and they know more about their stuff than the rest of us. It can’t hurt.

In addition, I’d clear caches and rebuild the directory at least annually. In an intensive business situation, I’d do it every 6 months. Video production, music production, graphic arts businesses in particular will benefit from more frequent maintenance.

How do I maintain my Mac?

You can always call me, of course. Or another good consultant. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer, and you aren’t losing money by spending time on your Mac more profitably spent on your business, and you’re willing to spend some money on utilities, you can use Onyx (freeware) or Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner (or the Leopard, Tiger and Panther versions found here) for clearing caches. Disk Warrior is the standard tool for rebuilding directories. That’s all it does, but it does it so well!

WARNING! BACK UP PRIOR TO DOING MAINTENANCE TASKS!

I thought Mac OS did it’s own maintenance!

It does, sort of. There are daily, weekly and monthly tasks built into the OS that do a lot of the maintenance work. When they work. Up until Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) there was a bug in the system that caused a problem. The tasks are scheduled for 3 am, but if the Mac is not on and awake, it is supposed to run the tasks at the next available opportunity. The bug prevented that, so unless your Mac was awake, they didn’t get done in Panther and Tiger.

Fortunately there’s a lovely little freeware utility called Anacron that fixes the problem. It’s available in Panther and Tiger flavors, and once installed is completely invisible.

What’s the Directory, and how do I rebuild it?

Think of the directory as the road map the processor uses to tell the hard drive where to look for the bits and bytes that make up the applications and files we use. That’s a vast over-simplification, but it’ll give you an idea of what it is.

Please, don’t comment with long descriptions of what it really means… very few of us care. This post is for those who just want their Mac to work. If you want more detailed info, contact me directly.

There is, in my opinion, only one tool to rebuild the directory. Disk Warrior is a one-trick pony. It only does one thing, but it does it very well indeed. It needs to be installed on a different drive from the one you are rebuilding, so unless you have a bootable external drive or are willing to purchase one, don’t bother with this one. It’s cheaper to have me do it.

My Mac is REAL SLOOOOOOW

More often than not when I hear this from a client it’s one of two things. Either their hard drive is more than 80% full (usually more like 90%) or their drive is heavily fragmented.

Mac OS X uses virtual memory extensively, unless you have 10+ GB of RAM (and even then!). The reason you can have lots of files and apps open at the same time is that when the all the available memory is used, the system can write to the hard drive, instead of memory modules. This is slower than writing to the memory modules, but works pretty well. When there is very little space left on the drive, or if the free space is in little chunks, none very large and scattered all over the drive, the virtual memory process gets very slow indeed.

Recommendations generally are for at least 15-20% free space on your drive. There is an argument that the larger drives today don’t need so much, that 50 GB is more than enough. My experience tells me to go with the recommendation. Drives are not expensive, but lack of productivity is. If you have less than 10% free space, the answer is to get a bigger drive, or if you have enough free space but it’s fragmented badly, to defrag the drive.

I thought OS X took care of fragmentation

The Mac OS is great at taking care of file fragmentation, or at least making it a small issue. It does nothing for volume fragmentation.

File fragmentation comes when your hard drive is forced to write a big file in more that one piece, due to the lack of adequate free space. This doesn’t cause problems, usually, as the modern Mac operating system is able to keep track easily, and hard drives are fast enough to minimize the problem.

Volume fragmentation comes when the free space (where no active files are written, tho erased files may still reside there) becomes so fragmented that productivity slows down. This can only be

Danger, Will Robinson!

Mucking about with your hard drive is dangerous to your files! Back up BEFORE you do any heavy maintenance, and especially before defragmenting your drive.

Defragging

The only software I am comfortable with to defrag is called iDefrag (Coriolis Systems, $29.95). It works. It’s scary, if you understand what it does, but it works.

The alternative is to clone to an erased external drive with Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper (my personal preference), both free (Super Duper is $27.95, but the demo is free. Limited features, but it works for this purpose).

Is that it?

Pretty much. Anything else falls under the heading of troubleshooting, which is another kettle of gigabytes.

By the way, before you ask, Tech Tool Pro is a wonderful application that I use for a number of things, but for defragging, and especially for rebuilding the directory, I prefer the apps listed above. Your mileage may vary. Hope this helps…

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Apple posted a knowegebase document that most of will need sooner or later. The content is below:

If you’re troubleshooting a broadband Internet connection issue related to your modem or router, you should ask your ISP certain questions (or check their support website).  If you use a modem/router that your ISP did not provide, you should ask the manufacturer of the device instead (or check their support website).

Note: This article applies to third-party broadband modems and routers. If you use an AirPort product, check out the resources available on this page instead.

Products Affected
AirPort, Mac OS X 10.5, Mac OS X 10.6

Before contacting your ISP have the following information ready

• What version of Mac OS X is installed?  Mac OS X v10.____.
• Which computers or devices are unable to access the Internet?

 

• Are the devices connecting wirelessly or via an Ethernet cable, or does it vary by device?
• Which exact make and model of modem and/or router do you use?
• What versions of firmware are installed on your modem and/or router? (If you don’t know how to check the firmware version, refer to the documentation that came with the modem or router.) 
• Can you connect to the Internet if the modem is connected directly to your Mac via an Ethernet cable?

 

Questions to ask your ISP or modem/router manufacturer

• Is there a firmware update available for the modem or router? 

 

• If a firmware update is available, how do you install it from your Mac? 
• Is there any MAC address filtering active on the modem or router? If so, can that be adjusted or disabled?
• If there a battery backup in the modem, how can it be temporarily disabled when resetting the modem?

 

• Can the ISP remotely reset the modem? If not, how can you (accounting for any battery backup). 
• Is there a firewall or proxy server active on the modem/router? 
• Does the modem provide additional services, such as wireless access or VoIP telephone services?




• If so, do you have another way of making or receiving phone calls? 
• Does the modem act as a router, or provide wireless services? 
• How should the Network pane in System Preferences be configured? 
• What IP address range should the modem or router provide? 
• Is it possible to replace the modem with a different or newer model?

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I hope everyone had a good holiday season… safe, full of laughter, friends and family, without drama. Unfortunately, not all of us did. I remember hearing a lot of sirens here in Petaluma (Sonoma County) and thinking that someone was not going to be so happy for the holidays.

If you know of anyone in this situation, I hope that you can help them. 2009 was a rough year for some people, but a lot more difficult if you had a house fire, or an accident on winter roads in late December. A little help makes all the difference to anyone in those circumstances.

I’ll be making a greater effort to post more often, but business does get in the way sometimes. If anyone has any questions, and let’s me know, I’ll make sure to cover it in a blog post ASAP.

Happy New Year, all!

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