BSU Standardizes on Apple Hardware for Dual-Boot Initiative

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The Mac Beat

BSU Standardizes on Apple Hardware for Dual-Boot Initiative

12/11/2007

By David Nagel

It passed the test, and, by the start of the following fall semester, he had the university's "SuperLab" up and running with the dual-boot systems. The SuperLab is a carry-over lab used when the department computer labs shut down. It's a sort of catch-all setting in which students and faculty can work on any software application taught on the campus. Now that Leopard is out, he's also upgraded those systems to the latest Mac OS.

Students in BSU's SuperLab work in the Windows operating environment on Apple iMacs. Photo by John Swartz, Bemidji State University.

The initiative has also been expanded to include four other labs on the campus, which are now running dual-boot systems with Mac OS X and Windows or triple-boot systems with Mac OS X, Windows, and SUSE Linux, depending on the lab. These include one computer science lab and three labs in the university's Technological Studies building, which includes video editing bays (Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro), digital audio workstations (Avid/Digidesign Pro Tools and Apple Logic Pro), and animation stations (primarily Autodesk 3ds Max).

"It's a phenomenal return on investment for time and money as well from that," Allen said.

Migration of other labs to a unified hardware configuration is "on the horizon," he said.

Support and Cost Savings
There are several advantages to this approach, according to Allen. The first, of course, is in the area of support. Not only is there only one hardware platform to maintain (as all the labs are using 20-inch dual-core iMacs), but there are fewer problems being reported.

Second is the availability of workstations to students and faculty. The machines in the lab are used for a variety of purposes. Where previously the labs were divided in terms of Mac and WIndows systems, now all machines are equipped with both, so there's no longer the problem Allen used to face of turning away people who needed to use one system or the other when all of those particular machines were taken. (Some users, for example, need Final Cut Pro, a Mac-only application; some need Premiere Pro, which was until fairly recently Windows-only; and some need lab access to Windows-only applications like 3ds Max or Autodesk's AutoCAD.)

Third, and not the least significant, is the cost savings. With systems running multiple OSes, fewer machines are needed. And with software licensing structures the way they are, the university is also saving in that area, requiring a single license for a single machine, rather than two licenses for two machines. (That's not the case with virtualization solutions that allow multiple OSes to be run simultaneously.)

To quantify the cost savings, Brian Allen said he projects a savings in hardware of about $2 million over the first three years. Savings in the next hardware refresh cycle alone will amount to about $800,000. The savings on software licenses will also be significant--maybe as much as $400 per install for dual-platform software packages.