Can it be done?

[wrockisland]

We have an Dell Precision 220 workstation that is used in the accounting side of our publishing business. It's networked with two Dell lap tops, and all 7 of the Power Macs on the design side of the business. It runs QuickBooks, excel, word, firefox on Win 2000; good steady 12 year old old machine; two cpu's and maxed out ram, fast video card, etc.

I bought a Dell Precision T-3400 to replace the old one that ran Win 7 64 bit on a quad core, fast video card, big memory chassis. Faster than all get out, but between mother board issues and Win 7 weirdness I returned it to the seller.

I know enough about Power Macs to get us by, but he new Mac Pro's and OS are a mystery to me. Is there a Mac Pro workstation that could run our existing PC software on XP, and network with the rest of the OS Tiger machines, printers, etc.?

Thanks,
wRock

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Well, yes. Any of them, from the Mini on up, would happily run an XP VM, Quickbooks, Office, and plug way on your network doing file sharing and printing.

What are your Power Macs specced out like? OS X, or 9? Do your printers use a dedicated print server, or onboard NICs?

Thing is, if you've got a Windows machine in that spot now, and it works, and most of your projected use is going to be Windows apps, you might as well swap similar for similar and not pay the Apple tax. I'm not sure what your budget is like, don't know your IT skillset, and I don't know what you think qualifies as "issues" and "weirdness" so I can't really make a recommendation. However, if you choose your hardware very carefully, you could conceivably get a MUCH newer/faster machine and still run Win2k if you really wanted to.

Your networking problems might have been Win7 not playing nice, but I doubt it. My home network is a Win7, a WinXP, a Linux-based NAS, two OS Xs, and a pair of networked printers, and everything plays nicely. It's certainly possible that some older software like Quickbooks wasn't compatible, though.

 

[airdata]

Thing is, if you've got a Windows machine in that spot now, and it works, and most of your projected use is going to be Windows apps, you might as well swap similar for similar and not pay the Apple tax.

Was the T3400 new? What kind of motherboard issues did you have?

Also... if you're replacing a precision 220, you could easily go with a wide range of Dell Optiplex systems that will be cheaper than the t3400 and much better than the old 220.

 

[wrockisland]

1.Our Power Macs run the latest version of Tiger OS 10.4.11
2.The computers are T100 wired through a high speed switch; printers too.
3.Loading Win 7 on the T-3400 prompted permission, and IP address issues throughout the network.
4. The T-3400 was purchased used. It wouldn't retain bios settings. Changed out battery and tried a weeks worth of suggestions.
5. We replace Dell workstation every 12 years or so. Seems like if we buy the latest and greatest we get a longer life. Hence the T-3400 fiasco.
6. All our Apples are second hand roses, so the Apple tax was minimal. I like the way the G5's are put together and how all the upgrades I've thrown at them integrate with out a lot of teeth gnashing.
Thanks for all the input!