OSX Office Environment

I've had the fortunate experience (kidding) to become a part time IT guy for my new company. The plan is Mac's all around to limit the IT noise and then virtual machines for those that have some need of Linux/Windows. The basic setup is OSX + MS Office for the Mac + VMWare. Note that despite recent benchmarks of Parallels vs VMWare Fusion I went with VMWare, I did this because like MS Office, they're the leading VM environment and I can download more pre-configured machines etc for that environment than any other. 

The developers need Linux to do their thing and I expected that. What I didn't expect was that some basic applications like the ones to run the Keyscan card key access to the office doors and the Nortel phone system are windows only apps. For those I spent the whopping $300 on Vista Business, installed it in a Windows VM and then installed the apps in there. Generally these infrastructure apps don't need to be running all the time so that makes it even easier. Still, not having web based management or cross-platform apps in this age just shows you how far Apple has to go.

Over the next few posts i'll be talking about my experience in setting up an OSX based office environment and in the process you'll see how little I know about basic IT concepts :)