Yes, I work for a large corporation whose business mandate is to supply a Government agency with a viable Windows business environment, complete with audio, video and phone meetings, instant messaging, electronic document transferring and collaboration. Everything we do all day involves Windows in an intimate and chaotic way. The frustration level here is very high, and people have to work doubly hard to be productive.
You have to read the earlier article to understand just how chaotic and horrible this process is, all because of the inherent prohibitive paradigm of Microsoft, and because of the very weak, unstable and unsecured Windows environment. I will not rant about these things here, but you might enjoy your place of work much more after you read these tales of woe in my previous articles.
Our work environment is unique because every one of us works on laptops. I thought at first this would be a big problem, but now I prefer this method of doing business because it gives everyone the freedom to work wherever the want, at any time they want.
There is a center of business, but that is going away as more and more people choose to work from home or elsewhere, thereby avoiding the dread Commute. The only thing that would really make this whole thing a wonderful experience is if all of our computers were Macintoshes running OS 9 or OS X. I would not even mind as much using the required but integrated Microsoft Office 2000. (Gasp! Don’t tell anyone I said that!)
One of the first things I noticed in working in a strictly Windows environment is that Windows 2000 is much more stable than any earlier version. However, this is true only if the company uses Microsoft applications. We use these Dell Latitude Laptops, (think GM here, instead of Mercedes).
The only application that is loaded on these machines is the full suite of Office2000. Given that configuration, these laptops become almost productive. Windows only needs to be booted three or four times a day, and there are even hours that go by where you don’t even think about the computer, but can concentrate on your work. However, there are still daily multiple backups, network virus interruptions, daily postings of virus alerts for worms, Trojan horses, problems with printers, finding lost connections to each other on the Windows driven Ethernet, etc.
The other issue is the very intrusive nature of the Microsoft application software, especially Word2000. The frustration level remains high because you have to continually fight the application to get it to do what you want. I like the function that corrects spelling errors on the fly. I do not like the function that tries to capitalize the words I do not want capitalized, such as the next line in a paragraph, or where I try to do some on the fly formatting. Sometimes the app tries to apply bullets or numbers as I type, so I must interrupt my train of thought and fight with it to get it to do things my way. There is also no way (apparently) that these functions can be turned off.
This is all very consistent with the unstated Microsoft paradigm of screwing the User at every opportunity. “Get in Lockstep. Do not think for yourself. Comply with our way of doing things.”ÃYou who work with any of Microsoft’s apps already know the drill, and you also know how completely opposed all of this is the open, free and forgiving Macintosh environment.
I do wish I could use another word processing app. I also wish I could do all my work on the Mac. The Macintosh has any number of great word processing applications that are both simple and elegant to use. However, this raises another issue. The Business Mac, or the lack thereof. Yes, both the iBook and the TiBook are wonderful and even awesome computers, and the are eminently suitable for business use.
If my company had these laptop computers instead of the Dells running Windows, I believe our productivity would increase fourfold immediately. Yet the Macintosh is not even on their radar screens. If you listened to them talk, there is no other computer on earth but the PC, and Microsoft is the only company that provides operating systems and software applications.
The greater portion of the business community, with the exception of the Television, Motion Picture, Graphics and Publishing fields, do not view the Macintosh as a real business machine. This is in spite of the fact that Microsoft Office 2000 is available for the Mac, and is completely compatible with the Windows version. Documents in any application under Office 2000 are completely transferable between these two platforms in either direction.
As much as you know that I am not a Microsoft fan in any shape or fashion, Microsoft Office2000 is the only real ticket that Macintosh has into the business community. We need to tell the people we work for that there is a very stable and user friendly alternative to Windows. They need to know that there is a real and productive alternative in the Macintosh OS X operating system.
This should be welcome news to most of them, in spite of the fact that they are all in lockstep with Microsoft. The fact is, many of them are searching for alternates to Windows for the very same reasons: Windows is not a productive work environment. It is not user friendly. It is support intensive. And it is not secure or free from hackers.
For my part, I intend to get a TiBook soon, using Office 2000. I will begin using it in my mostly email environment, creating and exchanging compatible documents with the others I work with on a daily basis. Hopefully, slowly, people will begin to understand that the Mac is a real business computer.
Perhaps the business world as a whole does not know the Mac, and that platform is never even considered in their purchasing processes for their business tools. But we all have to start somewhere. This is where I am starting.
How about you? Tell me your story about working on the dark side. I can have it published here.
Thanks for your time!
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