Moving to a mix of MacbookPro, Imac, and XP PCs, what to do?

Currently we have a simple SOHO lan with ATI Home on each PC. As sysop I just use PCanywhere to monitor that backups are made to each machine that has a locally attached usb drive. Works great. But two machines are to be replaced, with an Imac and a macbookpro, so now I am wondering what to do to insure a failsafe backup policy. Does anyone have recommendations? Will ATIHome work on a macintel machine? What are the implications of having mac disks in the mix? If you have an NTFS partition and a mac partition on the same drive, what the heck do you do then? Well, as always, thanks,
BS

 

You have my sympathies. Supporting two operating systems in one office is going to hell by choice.

I have no problem with Macs. I feel they are a good machine and an excellent operating system. However, mixing Macs and PCs makes life many times more difficult. Frankly, it's just stupid unless it is required for survival of the business. If someone decided to do this just because they feel like it would be nice to have a Mac, they should pay for all the expenses out of their pocket. If it's the owner, let them know that they just raised their operating costs by more than doubling the support costs for their computers. Macs cost as much as PCs to support, but when you mix PCs and Macs, the total cost rises to two or three times what it would be for one or the other.

All Macs is good. All PCs is good. Mixed Macs and PCs are good only for your computer consultant's income.

If you are going to support both systems, tell the owner of the business that you are demanding a 50% salary increase for the extra work and increased value that you will have as a dual PC/Mac support person. If you don't get it, quit. The job isn't worth it working twice as hard for your current salary.

 

John, that's encouraging. Tell me it isn't so. This small studio has to have mac for the music recording end of the business, PCs have been a complete failure in this regard. The hardware is too unrealiable and subseptable to virus no matter how hard we try. Plus, folks here just don't think you are serious unless you are using a mac. But you can get two or three pcs for the price of a mac, so it's hard to replace all of them. But I have to figure out how to back them all up, so here I am. Any help in that regard?
BS

 

Hello herojig,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Please be aware that officially none of the current version of Acronis True Image supports iMac (as well as other Macintosh computers) and, therefore, we cannot guarantee that Acronis Software will work correctly on them. Most likely future versions will support it. We regret to inform you that we cannot tell the exact time-frame when that will be implemented.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov

 

OK, if you are in that situation, you do have to have Macs, and going 100% Mac immediately is too costly.

I've sent a message to a couple of Mac consultants I know asking how they'd handle the backups. I'll let you know what I find out.

 

Thanks John, but I am amazed there is not a solution for this readily evident! There must be a lot of mac-intels out there, and a way to back them up. Looks like I might have to leave the ATI family for now...sad, it works so well on PCs...

 

Here's a lead from one consultant:
I prefer SuperDuper!, which is inexpensive shareware:

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13803

Here's a good comparison of nearly every decent solution:


http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/03/05/the-state-of-backup-and-cloning-tools-under-mac-os-x/

Good luck

 

If the PCs are prone to hardware failure and viruses, then you are not taking the proper precautions. PC hardware is as reliable as Mac hardware, from what I've seen in my own household - we use both.

 

Well, Macs all come from Apple, and they make/select pretty good hardware.

PCs can come from all sorts of places, and some of them are not well made. That could be the hardware problem.

I agree that viruses aren't a problem if you have decent AV software and don't go looking for viruses by installing "free" music download software and visiting web sites of dubious character.