CHOOSING THE RIGHT COMPUTER ENVIRONMENT
One of the most common questions asked by friends, family or clients is: What’s a good computer environment? As a company who lives and works between a variety of platforms every day, our answer at solūt is often: “It depends.” While that typically gets a lot of eyerolls in return, it is usually a good start to the conversation. Identifying if your environment is Windows, Mac or a combination of both or others is an important step in helping determine your needs.
Given that answer then, how do you choose? Actually there is a good choice for you, and it comes back as a recommendation to assess your true needs and wants. By truthfully answering some basic questions, you should be able to come up with a legitimate starting point.
As our industry grows and changes, there are more and more answers for computer environments out there. At base, there are standard Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS, but there are also some very legitimate alternatives from the Linux community, Android or iOS.
So what type of questions should you be asking?
Here are a few to get started:
- Will this computer be used for business, pleasure or both?
- Are most of the applications or services I use only available for a specific environment?
- Would I be comfortable using an alternate application if the primary one isn’t available for my environment?
- Do I spend most of my computer time simply using a web browser?
- What type of look and feel do I feel comfortable using?
- Am I comfortable exploring and learning a new environment?
Based on how you answer these questions, you should be able to feel confident about going down a path to select what should be good for you. In our experience, it has been exciting to learn what the similarities are between things like Windows 10, MacOS or Ubuntu. solūt uses Windows, MacOS and various Linux flavours on a daily basis for both some overlapping tasks or for completely different scenarios. For example, while most of our commonly used applications are found in both Windows and MacOS (Office, Adobe, games); some of the security tools we use are primarily available in Linux.
Even this article was composed using Microsoft Office 365 OneNote Online in a browser on a laptop running LinuxMint 19.1. Because of the workflow and environment at solūt, we could easily pick up editing on our phone, tablet or different computer. To us, the ability to work cross-platform in different places at different times is very important.
Gone are the days of being locked down to one platform. Computer environments are really a “choose your own adventure” novel in the making. solūt loves having this conversation with people as the new modern desktop environment can be simply uncomplicated.
If you need help selecting a new computer environment for your business, contact us. We’re happy to help.