Laurie Joan Aron, “IT Chick,” says in an online column that a growing number of small firms are ditching their PCs for Macs.
One example is that of Max Killen, the chief technical officer of market research firm Killen & Associates in Palo Alto, CA, who replaced his company’s aging Wintel systems with Macs. He did so because Macs are easier to use, cheaper to maintain and “way less vulnerable to viruses than PCs.”
“We can’t afford a staff of technicians to support PC users,” he told Aron.
The columnist reports that Jonathan Hirshon, principal of Horizon Communications, “found out the hard way about the high costs of PCs.” After his database management software supplier stopped supporting the Mac version, Hirshon abandoned his company’s network of eight Macs.
“Our total MIS cost used to be about $500 a year with the Macs,” Hirshon told Aron.” Now, with Windows 98 on PCs, it’s over $15,000 per year.”
The “IT Chick” says that Macs give small business owners an added bonus: higher resale values than PCs. That means that Macs are better long-term investments.
“A PC needs to be depreciated over three years, where a Mac could be depreciated over five years,” Bruce Fuller, technical support coordinator for Consul Risk Management, headquartered in Delft, the Netherlands, told Aron.
J.W. Arnold, a principal with PRDC, a public relations agency in Washington, D.C., is quoted as saying that, despite popular perception, Mac users don’t have to make sacrifices to work in a PC world.
“As for naysayers who argue that Macs are not compatible with the PC platform, this is far from the truth,” he told Aron. The columnist notes that, actually, Macs can open most PC files. And Mac users can make it easier for PC users to open Mac files, if they tag on a “.doc” at the end their file names. Mac users can even make it look as though they’re using PCs with Insignia Solutions’ SoftWindows or Connectix’s Virtual PC.
Small business owners can also take heart that the popular iMac and the G3 and G4 series sparked a resurgence in software for Macs, the “IT Chick” column notes.
“Mac software has started to get better and more varied,” Gordon Sell, a publicist in Flemington, N.J., told Aron. “… Office 2001 for the Mac is said to be a jump ahead of the PC version.”
(Thanks to MacCentral reader, Jim Polaski, for alerting us to this column.)
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.