[X-HW] guidelines for switching to OSX

[MacTech]

John, Thanks for the reply!

The network guys only know Novell so NT will never be an option. They 
hate Macs and are constantly bashing them. When network was set up, they 
had NO knowledge of Macs whatsoever. They know a little now. I don't 
know what exactly their goal is or what they are telling the Assistant 
Publisher of this weekly paper. I am the Macintosh tech person there a 
couple days a week.

We have a big meeting Nov. 2, and I am trying to gather some information 
for that meeting.

Luckily I have purchased 5 dual boot Mirrored Door G4's for them (1.24 
GHz). 3 of those are in Editorial and used by the Editor, Copy Editor 
and Calendar coordinator. MS Word is on all the computers in Editorial 
and the 2 Editors also have Quark 5.x. Naturally everyone uses Internet 
Explorer and Netscape 7.02 for the Internet. Groupwise 5.2.8 is used for 
e-mail.

Apple has now discontinued production of the dual boot G4's, as of only 
a couple of months ago. We can now no longer buy those machines new and 
the Publisher will not buy refurbs. So I have to figure out how to make 
current equipment work for now.

My feeling is that no machine less than 500 MHz should run OSX, 
ESPECIALLY if the computer is in Production. I am going to try to get 
permission to move the 1.25 GHz computers from Editorial up to 
Production and take the old original G4's from Production and place in 
Editorial. However, a few of those are way too slow. I guess a 
consideration would be processor upgrades but have heard some horror 
stories about that process too. They may consider buying a few new G5's 
but don't know at this point.

One Geek in Production thinks they should buy all new iMacs, but I know 
the LCD screens on iMacs are not good enough for color correction, etc.

Thanks for the numbers on the amount of RAM. I had figured 1 GB but see 
I was under estimating. Some are on Quark 4.11 and some on Quark 5.01. 
They do create pdf files of everything. I think they mostly save the 
page as an ESP and then distill it with Acrobat 5.05.

The info on Acrobat 6 and colorsync profiles is invaluable. Thank you.

When upgrading to OSX (if they stick to that plan) I plan on 
reformatting the drives and installing OSX. I am on 10.2.8 and am very 
happy with it. The geek in production who has an iMac running the latest 
OS 10.3.x and does nothing but games, wants 10.3.x on the computers in 
Production. I want whatever version is going to give the least 
headaches. I may even assign the administrator password at installation 
so the users cannot download and install everything their heart desires. 
They are horrible at doing that and causing constant problems.

Kevin, I am not sure what smoke the network guys are blowing but will 
know more Nov. 2. The publisher thinks that upgrading will do away with 
AppleTalk and IPX (and has been told by the NW guys that those things 
are bad and holding the PC side of the network back). I am not a network 
person, so don't know exactly where they are coming from.

Keep the feedback coming. I don't want to be railroaded in this meeting!

SE