On Tuesday during the Mac IT opening session “Why Companies Are Switching From PCs to Macs” CIO Dale Frantz from AWC gave a progress update on moving from a Total Windows shop to (when its all over) a 85% Mac to 15% PC conversion. One of the biggest changes was switching over from Active Directory to Apple’s Open Directory but it went unnoticed by AWC’s users, The only impact was everyone had to change their password when starting on Monday after the weekend swop. Justification was centered around Microsoft licensing structure and outdated hardware that could not run Vista.

 

Frantz estimated that they are about 45% there and expects to save $600,000 this year and after 3 years 2 Million dollars. The main software application that only runs in XP would have had to be re-writen for Vista but is now being ported over to Java. Frantz said one of the side benefits was that XP running with Parallels on intel iMac’s seem to be more stable than the original PC’s.

 

The biggest news came from Bruce Wolf with Royal Caribbean cruise line announced the company was building 6 new ships and all of the digital TVs are going to be hooked to either a Mac mini or Apple TV with Xserves in both the broadcast station and data center. The ship will be offering about 30 channels and each channel will have a dedicated Xserve also movies on demand. The technology needed to last for 15 years without any major changes to the ships infrastructure. Apple and Nanonation provided the solution and slides of the interface screens and test lab where shown.