sheepguy42
AFOL
I don't know if this is the place I should be posting this, but I need to post it somewhere and I think I might get some worthwhile responses here.
First off, I am a full-time college student, 3rd semester, Penn State University Abington Campus. I work in the computer labs at my campus (yay work-study). My problem is this: every other person who works in these labs is anti-Mac. My boss's boss is in charge of ordering new machines, and he has this plan in place which will probably work, where he is going to phase out the Macs in a couple years. The current state of Macs here is: many of the secretarial types use Macs, the continuing ed people budget themselves for Macs, the Bio dept. has & runs its own Mac lab, same w/ the music dept. However, in the student labs, we have 7 or 8 PC labs (Win2k, mixed between gateway & Dell models) and only one Mac lab. That lab has approx. 30 desktop beige G3's (266, I think) w/ 96 MB RAM, and they are all still running Mac OS 8.1! The people in charge won't purchase any newer OS for them, they won't update any software for the Macs, and they complain bitterly about having to support Appletalk, but they won't get DAVE. Whenever I ask any one of them for a reason they don't like Macs, they won't give me any clear answer. Then, to top it off, the plan to get rid of the Macs is this: nobody uses them, so we can get rid of them, yet the reason nobody uses them is that they have not been up to date in years, and they won't provide any good help with them, which is part of the plan I'm sure, though they won't admit it. I am never scheduled to work in there (I wonder why - I am the biggest Mac advocate in a 2-mile radius, it seems sometimes the only one too.)and the one guy with any influence on the labs who is pro-Mac has some chip on his shoulder about MacOS X, and has convinced my boss that it has major problems which make it unsuitable for our machines. I hate this! I don't have the $ to attempt to go to another school, there is no Mac support at this campus, and yet at University Park/Main Campus there are lots of iMacs everywhere with CD burners and iTunes loaded, and people like them and use them. grrrrr I don't know what to do. sorry if reading this has annoyed or offended you, I just am at a loss on how to keep Macs here and get them supported better around here. I keep hitting these walls, and I don't see any doors around. I am hoping that if this certification thing we were surveyed for pans out soon, so if I get it maybe they'll actually listen to me rather than thinking I'm too below them for my thoughts to be valid. please, any ideas would be appreciated.
First off, I am a full-time college student, 3rd semester, Penn State University Abington Campus. I work in the computer labs at my campus (yay work-study). My problem is this: every other person who works in these labs is anti-Mac. My boss's boss is in charge of ordering new machines, and he has this plan in place which will probably work, where he is going to phase out the Macs in a couple years. The current state of Macs here is: many of the secretarial types use Macs, the continuing ed people budget themselves for Macs, the Bio dept. has & runs its own Mac lab, same w/ the music dept. However, in the student labs, we have 7 or 8 PC labs (Win2k, mixed between gateway & Dell models) and only one Mac lab. That lab has approx. 30 desktop beige G3's (266, I think) w/ 96 MB RAM, and they are all still running Mac OS 8.1! The people in charge won't purchase any newer OS for them, they won't update any software for the Macs, and they complain bitterly about having to support Appletalk, but they won't get DAVE. Whenever I ask any one of them for a reason they don't like Macs, they won't give me any clear answer. Then, to top it off, the plan to get rid of the Macs is this: nobody uses them, so we can get rid of them, yet the reason nobody uses them is that they have not been up to date in years, and they won't provide any good help with them, which is part of the plan I'm sure, though they won't admit it. I am never scheduled to work in there (I wonder why - I am the biggest Mac advocate in a 2-mile radius, it seems sometimes the only one too.)and the one guy with any influence on the labs who is pro-Mac has some chip on his shoulder about MacOS X, and has convinced my boss that it has major problems which make it unsuitable for our machines. I hate this! I don't have the $ to attempt to go to another school, there is no Mac support at this campus, and yet at University Park/Main Campus there are lots of iMacs everywhere with CD burners and iTunes loaded, and people like them and use them. grrrrr I don't know what to do. sorry if reading this has annoyed or offended you, I just am at a loss on how to keep Macs here and get them supported better around here. I keep hitting these walls, and I don't see any doors around. I am hoping that if this certification thing we were surveyed for pans out soon, so if I get it maybe they'll actually listen to me rather than thinking I'm too below them for my thoughts to be valid. please, any ideas would be appreciated.