[Macinsloan] Fwd: Enabling Mac support for Pcounter

[John Harthorne]

FYI, here is the response I received from STS toward the end of last  
year about supporting Mac printing.

Honestly, I never replied b/c I was just too frustrated. Roger was  
polite (as you can read), but I just don't think he seriously  
considered this. I never asked for full support, only PCounter  
support, which I believe could be enabled, tested and launched with  
less than 10 hours work.

Anyway, I have become too aggressive about this topic to take the  
lead diplomatically. I hope somebody else can pick this up and run  
with it.

- John
________________
John Harthorne
MBA Candidate, Class of 2007
MIT Sloan School of Management
Cell: 617.894.3425
jharthorne at sloan.mit.edu



Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Roger Premo" <rpremo at sloan.mit.edu>
> Date: April 24, 2006 9:57:21 AM EDT
> To: "'John Harthorne'" <jharthorne at sloan.mit.edu>, <doucette at mit.edu>
> Cc: <studentsupport at sloan.mit.edu>, <chammond at sloan.mit.edu>,  
> <adaniel at sloan.mit.edu>, <sascha at sloan.mit.edu>,  
> <anzolah at sloan.mit.edu>, <kurt.campbell at sloan.mit.edu>
> Subject: RE: Enabling Mac support for Pcounter
>
> John,
>
>
>
> I’ve been doing some thinking about this and also conducted my own  
> informal survey. I would recommend that Mac support is a low  
> priority for Sloan. I’m happy to discuss this with you but my  
> reasoning is basically the following:
>
>
>
> 1)       STS has very limited funds. Any decision as drastic as  
> supporting a new platform must be entered into very cautiously.
>
> 2)       Given the limited resources STS should (in my opinion)  
> focus on high impact projects. For instance, they are working now  
> to add a search engine to SloanSpace. That is a project that  
> benefits 100% of Sloan students, faculty and staff rather than the  
> 5-10% of Mac users. Given the limited funding environment, any new  
> project must be viewed as a tradeoff with the other projects it  
> would replace. For now, we have a long list of future projects with  
> broad impact.
>
> 3)       Supporting a platform with the mixed technology  
> environment is far more complex than you might imagine. I’m not  
> certain the effort would be limited to Pcounter. Saying that a  
> particular platform is supported means that all the other possible  
> problems along the way must be considered. Should simulation  
> software used for various classes be usable on Macs also?
>
> 4)       Apple is making moves to make Windows more usable for Mac  
> users with programs such as Boot Camp.
>
> 5)       I, along with other students, choose not to run any of the  
> printing programs on my PC. The pain of emailing a file to yourself  
> or using a memory stick to print from the computing lab is  
> negligible. The pain of no Pcounter is simply not a pressing problem.
>
>
>
> I’d also invite the other members of the IT committee to comment.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Roger
>
>
>
> From: John Harthorne [mailto:jharthorne at sloan.mit.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 05, 2006 2:32 PM
> To: doucette at mit.edu
> Cc: studentsupport at sloan.mit.edu; chammond at sloan.mit.edu;  
> adaniel at sloan.mit.edu; sascha at sloan.mit.edu; anzolah at sloan.mit.edu;  
> kurt.campbell at sloan.mit.edu; rpremo at sloan.mit.edu
> Subject: Re: Enabling Mac support for Pcounter
>
>
>
> Mr. Doucette:
>
>
>
> Thank you.
>
>
>
> Student IT Senate:
>
>
>
> I strongly encourage you to introduce Mac support moving forward.  
> There are a significant number of mac users on campus despite the  
> lack of support, and you can bet this number will only increase  
> moving forward. We have initiated a self-support group via the  
> mailing list "macinsloan". Together, we have solved all IT-related  
> issues, except printing. If you adopt mac support, our mailing list  
> content can feed sloan's documentation on mac support. As for  
> printing, the print servers no longer support IP printing, because  
> of the P-Counter system. P-Counter does, in fact, support macintosh  
> printing, but our servers are not configured to enable this feature.
>
>
>
> Essentially,Sloan is very, very close to being able to offer full  
> mac compatibility. As far as I know, we are the only MIT school  
> that does not support macs.Personally, I find the lack of mac  
> support both functionally frustrating and philosophically absurd --  
> historically, MIT has been one of the world's biggest contributors  
> to Unix, the open source movement, and computing interoperability.  
> Now, when Apple is producing a world-class and elegant operating  
> system based on an open-source kernel and Microsoft is adrift in a  
> sea of seeming-incompetence and anti-trust suits, we are only  
> supporting Windoze?!? Arrggghh.
>
>
>
> Anyway, ranting aside, please consider this a serious request for  
> mac support. It is not difficult, and it is the "right thing to  
> do". I will be more than happy to assist in any way possible.Please  
> see the attached PDF for more information on how to configure the  
> print servers to enable mac support. I would be happy to provide  
> further data on how to mount shared volumes and other setup details  
> as necessary.
>
>
>
> FYI, I will forward this email to the macinsloan mailing list for  
> the benefit of transparency.
>
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>
>
> John Harthorne
>
> ________________
>
> John Harthorne
>
> MBA Candidate, Class of 2007
>
> MIT Sloan School of Management
>
> Cell: 617.894.3425
>
> jharthorne at sloan.mit.edu
>
>
>
>

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