I'll take a stab at it since we are working on a lease for new equipment for
both MACs and Wintel machines.

I expect to continue to support both platforms. The education department and
the exhibits department rely heavily on Macs, and given the nature of the work
the two departments do, combined with the need to get materials out to vendors
in Mac format, we will continue to use and support Macs. My personal preference
if for Macintosh, they are much easier to setup, network, and maintain than
PCs. I can get a Mac setup on our Network in a few hours and it is stable.
OpenTransport is nice on 7.5.5 or higher, and we have system running system 8
right now, and that is much faster and much more reliable than ever before.

With all that said, we still have applications to run that are specific do DOS
and Windows, especially on the business side. I have to admit, Windows95 is a
major improvement over Windows 3.x, but I personally don't care for the look or
the feel of the system.

We are moving towards using Microsoft Office for both Macs and PCs. File
sharing between the platforms is a easier, and much fewer hoops to jump through
and virtually no "gotchas". Many graphics houses we deal with still want Mac
files and when we do video for our Web site we get a Quicktime movie that comes
off an Avid system (Macintosh platform).

Bottom line is productivity. If your users are happy and productive on Macs,
and you can maintain two platforms, go for it. Granted, the distinction is
breaking down with the growth of the Web.

I don't know if the helps or muddies the issue for you.

john chadwick
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