On IT departments, and Mac’s ease of use and maintenance…

From The Pulpit, Robert Cringely’s column for PBS (which can be seen on his website), he writes that the reason macs have not and are not being readily accepted into corporate IT departments has more to do with keeping IT departments staffed than whether the machines and software could meet their users’ needs. He believes that the move toward Linux could be more easily be met by moves to Macs, but that doing so would eventually mean that IT departments could and would downsize since the Macs would require less maintenance. Frankly, I think he has hit the nail on the head. Or someone did. Cringely credits the insight to a reader.

Certainly, my own experience with Macs since I began switching to them a year or so ago has been that they cost me less time...a lot less time...to maintain than any Windows system I own or have ever. I wrestle with my Windows machine almost every time I boot it to get it to log onto my wireless network even though it is using a Belkin wireless card hooking to a Belkin wireless router. My Macs, both our iMacs and iBooks, boot into the wireless network using Airport cards and log on automatically without nary a care. I don’t even think about them but I HATE sitting down at the Windows machine. I KNOW I’m going to have to reconfigure something on it…

I was shocked a while back to discover that configuring my OS X Macs to hook into the Windows NT network at my workplace was easier and faster than configuring my Windows machine to do the same thing, no matter whether I used Windows 98 or XP. It’s true that I haven’t figured out how to get the Macs to my personal folders but getting to them even using XP hasn’t been a cake walk, either. In fact, I often can’t. And you can bet at that moment I want to be on a Mac. Outlook 2001 is a lot more colorful…

Bet me that a switch to Macs would cause corporate IT departments to shrink or destroy that lucrative outsourcing contract. Actually, that's a bet I won't take, because you'd be betting on a sure thing.