The Back Room

Most interactive exhibits in the museum world are programmed on Windows PCs, and there are a few reasons for that. Cost is a big one, since if you want a standalone Mac with dual screen capability, you need to buy a MacPro, which is going to cost you at least $2499. Sure, the $700 PC is going to do less, but you don’t need it to do everything the Mac does. There is no stripped down Mac that can do what we need and a Mac Mini is just not enough power and has very little (basically no) expandability. There are also issues with some touch screens, external devices that need serial ports, and other logistical issues that go along with PCs being the main delivery medium for museums. Another consideration is that wherever you are installing these systems, the local IT folks are going to have to be able to support it on some level. Even if we, as the hardware company, are going to warranty the computers and be available for service calls, the local folks are going to need to be able to configure the machine into their network security policy, understand some basic troubleshooting, and not have to learn a whole new OS to do that. When it comes down to it, most museums, zoos, etc. use PCs, especially if they are associated with the local or federal government.

If we are installing computer systems to run interactive exhibits at a museum, all it takes is one of them to need a capability that only comes on a PC, and that would also dictate that they all are going to be PCs. There is really no option to use an alternative such as Linux either, since most folks out there are not familiar with the OS, there are not touch screen drivers, we use the Flash IDE for much of our stuff and don’t want to rely on Flex since we have some complicated interfaces we don’t want to build entirely with code. These are just a few reasons, but there are many more. When it comes down to it, it’s the most practical, cost effective solution to use Windows PCs in the museum world. I am sure there are the computer professionals out there who will disagree, but I can’t see us moving to Mac development for our interactive programs anytime in the near future.

I use the Mac OS for most of my personal stuff, as well as dealing with work organization, email, etc. My main programming computer is a Dell running Windows Vista, which I do the heavy duty coding, etc. on. I am pretty happy with the setup, and I can’t imagine that I would be able to ever move to one platform exclusively.

I prefer the Mac for dealing with my personal photo stuff, email, video chatting with my family, etc. It’s just easy and I don’t have to jump through hoops. I am thinking about this because the hard drive on my MacBook Pro died yesterday. It happened very fast, with a slight clicking sound that quickly elevated to a loud clicking sound and no response from the computer. I have most of the stuff backed up, although I did lose some recent photos, so it’s not too big a deal. But, I am without my Mac for a few days while they put a new hard drive in, so I have to use my PC for everything here at the office. Of course, I am prepared to do that with a few open source programs. I use Thunderbird for my mail, Pidgin for chatting (so much better than AOL since it has to ads, extra software, etc, and Firefox with XMarks (formerly Foxmarks) to sync my bookmarks. So, on my PC now, I have all my bookmarks, mail, chat lists, etc. ready to go and can work seamlessly from here while waiting for the laptop to come back.

You may be wondering, why don’t you just use all that stuff on your one computer to start with? When I am programming and doing work that takes focus, etc. I don’t want other distractions to deal with. I don’t want new emails popping up, chat screens, or the temptation to check out my RSS feeds (which I keep in the Mac mail client). Also, I do need to be mobile at times, so it makes more sense to keep that stuff on the computer I might have with me. I’ll snap some photos of my workspace when I get the Mac back and I don’t just have a big empty monitor to my left.