New IMac running Windows Vista on a Virtualization Window at the Birch Ridge Inn

New IMac running Windows Vista on a Virtualization Window at the Birch Ridge Inn

Between seasons, Mary and I do a number of projects around the inn. They range from simple maintenance, to major investments. This posting discusses one of the improvement projects recently completed at the inn. Warning...contains geek speak.

Running a modern inn these days takes a surprising amount of technology. Some of it is very visible to guests and is designed to enhance their experience while visiting with us. My blog a couple of weeks ago on the inn's WiFi system is an example. A lot of technology, and computer horsepower, is dedicated to support back office functions. From the "glam" side of the software industry including web development and photo/video editing production suites, to databases with customer information, the pbx to provide inn guest telephone service and calling records, to accounting programs to track business performance, to payroll processing, to tax reporting to Uncle Sam (don't forget your uncle... he wants his due!)...all of it requires computer platforms which need to be kept up to date with equipment and software from a myriad of technology companies.

Early on at the inn, we had settled upon an Apple environment. For years before the inn while at Motorola, I had used Apple Mac's. I lugged Apple laptops hundreds of thousand of miles in my travels around the world. Even in 1997, when Apple was a shell of it's once and future self, Mac's just worked. And, at the time, all of the software packages we needed ran perfectly on the Mac....

Our compute environment has been fairly stable since we began. We have been cycling new computers into the mix at fairly regular intervals as one would expect. I have a PowerMAC G5DP at my desk for web, graphics and video work. We have an IMac in the lobby for inn guests and staff. And then there is the machine on Mary's desk for the finance side of the business. When we started in 1997, this machine was also a Mac. And now it is again...but we did have a little diversion in the intervening years.

In simple terms, one very important software vendor, Intuit, maker of Quickbooks, decided in 1999 that they did not need to provide full support for Apple products. Quickbooks, if you don't know, is is pretty much the universal accounting software package used by small businesses. Their are other programs on the market, but Quickbooks is the dominant program. Intuit still sells Quickbooks for the Mac, but in 1999 they stripped out payroll processing from it, farming out that function to third party programs. Quickbooks on Windows still had, and continues to have, integrated payroll processing. And for a small business like ours, that is important.

I know I am rambling, but a little historical perspective is important. For the second time in 8 years, our small business has wound up purchasing new computer equipment in order to meet Intuit's changing requirements. In 1999, we migrated Quickbooks from a Mac environment to a Windows 98 - then Windows 2000 environment on a Dell desktop. In 2007, we were notified that Intuit would no longer support Windows 2000 and only support Windows XP or Visit. Since the 7 year old Dell on Mary's desk would not run either, a new computer purchase was in the cards for 2008.

I can bore you with payback analysis of purchasing new computer systems versus outsourcing to outside accounting services. But I won't. Suffice to say, it's cheaper for our small business to keep it in house. Which brings us to the adventure of the last couple of weeks.

Just prior to our vacation, I looked at a variety of computer systems. It would have been very easy to purchase a new Dell, or and HP platform, and stick with a full Windows genre for the new computer. But 18 months ago, Apple made the transition to Intel hardware as the underpinnings of their new platforms. This opened up some new and interesting opportunities as well.

The system we eventually got was a new Apple IMac with a Core 2 Duo processor, a 20 inch screen, 250 M hard drive, and 3.5G of memory running Apple's Leopard (OSX 10.5) operating system. Like our other Apple machines....It just works! To handle Windows programs we need to run the inn, I have loaded virtualization software (VMWare Fusion) on to the IMac. Inside the virtual environment, we run Windowss Vista and Intuit's Quickbooks. Again....It just works! Of course, doing all of this is not for the faint of heart. I have a strong technology background so I can set all of this stuff up without spending extra money hiring outside contractors to maintain our systems. And I like to do it too!

My experiences in migrating platforms and transitioning programs between operating systems, has reinforced my belief that our choice of an Apple environment 11 years ago is still valid. In migrating Windows programs from a Dell PC running Windows 2000 to a IMac with a virtual environment running Windows Vista, I can understand some of the trash talking that has gone on in the market about Vista. Some of the decisions made by Microsoft which resulted in gratuitous changes in the user interface for Vista without marked operating improvements over Windows 2000 or XP were somewhat daunting to get through for a couple of days. But now that the system is set up, it is actually quite stable. Of course, it's all quite comical when you think about it... Windows Vista being basically reduced to another program operating on a Mac under OSX. But then again... Mac's just work.

As we get ready to enter the summer, where ever you may be remember, keep it in the fairway, and don't forget your sunscreen.