CIO: Macs looking better for business

John Halamka, the chief information officer of Harvard Medical School believes that the Mac platform has improved dramatically for business purposes, according to CIO Magazine. Also the head of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Halamka conducted a test of three major operating systems on the market -- including Mac OS X, Red Hat's Fedora Core Linux, and Windows XP -- to evaluate their suitability in an enterprise environment, using each for a month. The CIO provided high praise for his MacBook testbed and its operating system, noting the stability and unintrusiveness. "His MacBook didn't crash or freeze once during the month he used it. And his work was never interrupted by automatic antivirus or antispyware updates -- a frequent annoyance with Windows," writes CIO's Meridith Levinson. Halamka was also quick to compliment the usefulness of Microsoft's Mac e-mail client Entourage and for the platform's easy connections to varying wireless networks.

Reservations about the platform were relatively few, Levinson notes. While the MacBook's unusually high temperatures were alarming and precluded a clear decision in favor of Apple's hardware, Halamka primarily disliked the imperfect integration of Microsoft's programs. He pointed to difficulties with sites that depend solely on Internet Explorer for Windows in addition to complications with Boot Camp and Entourage.

By contrast, however, the Harvard executive noted significant issues with OS rivals Linux and Windows, providing especially scathing criticism for the former's technical challenges. "I never got to the point [with Linux] where if I had to give a speech, I could open the lid of my laptop, launch my presentation and know it was going to work," he said. While Windows escaped most of these obstacles during testing, Halamka emphasized the necessity of securing the OS and its accompanying software against threats -- an act which was not always practical, he added. He says he has chosen to split his computing between Mac OS X and Windows, preferring the former for its software and the latter for its hardware.

Filed under: Apple