Guest-Star: Andrew Robert Smith

Andrew Robert Smith is today’s PC Weenies Guest-Star. He writes:

Hi Krishna,I love your comic and have several of them hanging up in my cube at work. My bosses get a kick out of them too. I’m kind of a network suport specialist / junior systems administrator for a private highschool. Lately we’ve been getting an influx of people who would like to use Macs on our network, which is a problem because we’re running a Novell backend. I’m all for other Operating systems…

I’m writing this message from firefox on a linux desktop, but MacOSX doesn’t always play nice in a Novell enviroment. And, because it’s not really linux (more of a BSD base as I understand), the Novell linux client won’t work either. I don’t want to bash Macs as I really think OS X is slick but does it really have a place in a business enviroment?

Anyway, I’d love to be in a comic about this little dilemma, it would be a great collectible to keep on my desk. Thanks for your time and for the great work you do!

Thank you, Andrew! Check out Andrew’s appearance on the ever-growing Guest-Star Wall of Fame!

-Krishna

These beautiful and intelligent people wrote

  • hariReply
    February 27, 2008 at 3:44 am

    I’d love to do an online interview with you and publish it on my blog if it will help you get a little more publicity.

    Just let me know when I can chat with you.

  • krishnaReply
    February 27, 2008 at 5:25 am

    hari – sounds good – weekends work best…

  • BenReply
    February 27, 2008 at 9:50 am

    What’s become of the Mac OS X Novell client I worked with in college?

  • dougReply
    February 27, 2008 at 10:15 am

    Andrew, please check out http://macenterprise.org (very active discussion list, formerly MacOSXLabs.org) and http://afp548.com for more support and information deploying Macs in multi-platform environments, including Novell. In particular if you search the list archives on the MacEnterprise.org site, you may find your issues already have been addressed by others.

  • David McElroyReply
    February 27, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    People still USE Novell networks? I had no idea. :-)

  • Andrew SmithReply
    February 28, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    LOL,
    I am a JUNIOR systems admin. I didn’t build this network. I come from an AD background myself, but I will tell you that given the choice of Novell on OES Linux VS Microsux Server 2003 I choose linux. We worked out the math and my network including scheduled take downs is up between 98 and 99.5%. It’s not uncommon for us to go 6-12months (minus long term power outages) without having to restart our core servers. They’re working on the client issue now so eventually it won’t be a problem. It’s not exactly a cake walk to get AD working with a Mac either. Doug, Thanks for the links will check into it.

Tell me what you think!

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