New Job: Only Mac In The Shop

Last month, I started a new job at a new firm. I spent nearly three years at my old firm, and most of what I have written on this blog to date has been related to my experiences there.

If you read my Personal Update last fall, you know that last year I moved back to the town where I grew up - Hagerstown, Maryland. Long story short: The 3.5 hours of driving every day got old and a position at a well respected Hagerstown firm opened up due to one of its (now former) partners being appointed judge.

The new firm runs on a Windows 2003 Exchange Server, and my early-2008 MacBook Pro is the only Mac in the shop. As it turns out, the transition from the Mac-centric firm I helped create to a Windows-entrenched firm was not as difficult as one might expect. I will go into more detail in future posts about specific issues, but, in general, I have been able to access every essential part of the system with my Mac.

File Sharing

The first essential hurdle I faced was being able to access the Firm's files. This was as simple as plugging into the ethernet connection, connecting via SMB to the local IP address of the server and logging in to the Exchange Account the admins set up for me. This allows me to mount any drive on the server. That works well when I'm in the office.

When I'm not in the office, I set up a VPN connection to remotely login to the Exchange server. When connected via VPN, everything behaves the same as if I'm locally plugged into the ethernet connection.

Although this solution technically "works," it is far less elegant than the solution I previously had set up with Dropbox.

Email & Calendar

Even though Snow Leopard now technically supports Exchange, it only supports Exchange 2007 or later. Exchange 2007 uses slightly different protocols than Exchange 2003, and is not backwards compatible in that way. Fortunately, however, since Leopard, OS X has had a faux support for Exchange. Exchange 2003 does support the IMAP protocol for the inbox, and when combined with the Outlook Web Access, Mail.app can mimic the Exchange functionality. It works essentially the same with Mail.app as Gmail or Google Apps Mail.

As far as the calendar is concerned, I have not found a satisfactory way to integrate my calendar with the Outlook/Exchange calendars. I know there are some ways to force it all to work together, but the solutions currently available are worse than the problem they solve. I will go into more detail on this issue in a later post. Presently, I created a new Google calendar and gave my staff access to it. They just log in to a Google calendar account I created for them, and they can view and edit my calendar from there.

Oh, and after that little Palm Pre experiment went awry, and in light of my new job, my wife and I decided to take the plunge and get iPhones. We each go the 3GS, and have been loving life ever since. As you may have guessed, the iPhone plays well with my new firm email. I simply have to connect via VPN - which is easy even if a bit of a pain, but, it gets the job done when it needs to get done. The calendar is through Google with the rest of my calendars, so I have 24/7 access to all my work email and calendars on my laptop or on my iPhone.

Anyway, as I settle in and become integrated into life in a Windows firm, I will continue to share my experiences. I have promised myself not to come in to this firm on a crusade to convert everybody to Macs. That said, that's how I entered the last firm, and we all know that eneded up with a hostile takeover. They are all running Macs now, and would never turn back!