I sometimes get asked if I know anyone who does PC work.  With more Mac users considering using Parallels and loading Windows on, it brings a new level of dual computing on their machines.  I know enough Windows stuff to get along, but there are sometimes more complex issues that come up.  Or the customer might have some other PC’s in the office and don’t already have someone that they like working on them.

I have tried to find some good companies or people in the past that I can recommend but nothing has stood out.  Some recommendations have even brought forth complaints from the customer.  Is there no good PC consultants out there?  Do any PC guys live and breath the hardware and O.S. like us Mac fanatics do?  Or is it just a job for them?

If you are a PC consultant or know someone who is, please contact me.  But to recommend you I require you to have excellent customer service skills.  Knowledge is important also, but it is a close 2nd for me.  They also have to be able to have a good synergistic relationship with me and not bash Macs.  I do not bash PC’s when customers want them for the task they have at hand.  (I just prefer to use a Mac   Also they should not be afraid to troubleshoot windows issues under Parallels VM on the Mac.

As you may have heard by now Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) has now been released.  Snow Leopard brings upon us a very unique release of an operating system.  At first glance, it does not bring any new “whiz bang” features to the table, but upon further investigation this release in our opinion is one of the best operating system updates to have been released.  The best part is Apple has dramtically lowered the price of the operarting system to $29 per machine (or $499 for unlimited client license Server operating system)

Snow Leopard speeds up your computer in most cases and in all cases will free up some disk space.  In our tests it averages about 9 gig’s of extra disk space upon install.  Snow Leopard implements 64-bit processing as much as it can.  This means the ability to use memory more efficiently and process tasks.  Think of it as adding more lanes to the freeway so you will not get as many “bottlenecks”  There are also many behind the scenes and undocumented features that you will notice along the way that makes your day to day tasks better.

Snow Leopard Server also brings many speed enhancements to the table.  Wiki and ical server have been much improved in this release, and the addition of “push” features make it ready for prime time iphone instant up-to-date availability.

Snow Leopard only works on intel machines, so check to make sure you are not running a G5 or older, but all intel machines should eventually be upgraded to Snow Leopard.   We would suggest Server installs to wait a little bit to evaluate some outstanding bugs and fully test it out.  Desktop clients so far seem to be pretty reliable on Snow Leopard, so it’s a good time to start considering it.  As always the biggest thing to consider is evaluate what software is on your machine to make sure it will work with Snow Leopard.  Some software may need to updated to work well or at all with Snow Leopard.   We can help you through this process and install Snow Leopard for you.

Please let us know if you have any other questions about Snow Leopard, and have fun working on your Mac!