So you’ve decided to switch your business to Macs, and you’re wondering how to move over all of your data from Windows, and get everything else setup?  In this article, I will discuss some of the process, and show you that switching to the Mac isn’t as hard as you think.

Email, Contacts, and Calendars

These days, businesses can’t function without staying in touch with their customers, and keeping all of their employees on schedule, and organized.  Microsoft Outlook has served businesses very well, but there is no version yet available for the Mac.  Outlook holds email, contacts, and calendar data inside of one file, the PST file.  While you can move the PST file to the Mac, the Mac cannot read, or import the file.  Therefore, we must convert the data inside the PST into a form that is readable by the Mac.  There are many methods to make this conversion.  You need some type of conversion software to make your Outlook data compatible with the Mac.  Some of my favorites are Outlook To Mac, and two apps made by Mozilla — Thunderbird, and Sunbird.

Outlook To Mac (O2M) was created by a company called Little Machines.  O2M exports your email into mBox format, which is an open format.  Since the Mac also uses mBox to store email messages, your converted email can easily be imported onto your new Mac.  mBox is also used by many other mail clients such as Thunderbird, and Eudora.  O2M will convert your contacts to vCard, which can then be imported into Address Book on the Mac.  Calendars are exported by O2M into iCalendar, another open format.  The new iCalendar files can then be imported into iCal on the Mac.  If you choose instead to use Microsoft Entourage for email, contacts, and calendars, Entourage can also import your converted data.  Outlook To Mac costs only $10, but if you want a free option, there’s Mozilla Thunderbird.

Like Mail.app on the Mac, Thunderbird uses a variant of mBox to store email.  After you have installed Thunderbird onto your PC, you can then import your email and contacts into Thunderbird.  Once the import is complete, you will be able to export your contacts into LDIF.  Your emails are stored inside of the current user’s local application data in Windows.  Once you’ve moved the converted email to your Mac, all you have to do is import it into your email client of choice.  Address Book, on the Mac is able to import the contacts stored in the LDIF file created by Thunderbird.  Since Thunderbird does not handle calendars, you’ll need to import your Outlook calendars into Sunbird.  Once you’ve completed the calendar import into Sunbird, you can then export the calendar data into iCalendar format.

They key is to free all of your information from Outlook.  This process seems complicated, but it’s really not.

Word, Excel, Powerpoint, PDF, Music, Pictures

All of your files created in Microsoft Office, pictures, music, PDFs will just work.  Microsoft makes a great version of Office for the Mac.  It includes Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Entourage.  If you’ve decided to abandon Microsoft altogether, Apple’s iWork suite of applications can open files created by Microsoft Office.  In addition, there are several office suites such as Neo Office, and Open Office, which will allow you to open, and create Word, and Excel documents.

Mac OS X already includes an application called Preview, which will open, and combine PDF documents, and even allow you to notate them.  Any document that can be printed can be exported to PDF on the Mac.  PDF exporting has been built into Mac OS X since day one.  There’s no need to purchase additional software to export documents to PDF, or to combine PDF files.

Since late 2003, Windows users have enjoyed using iTunes on their PCs.  If you’ve been using iTunes on your PC, moving your music to the Mac is simple.  All of the pictures on your PC can be easily imported into iPhoto on the Mac.  Both iTunes, and iPhoto are included on every Mac at no additional charge.

Setting up your all Mac office

Gone are the days when Windows ruled the business world.  Macs can serve all of your computing needs from basic office tasks to serving up files, websites, and email.  Accounting applications for the Mac have greatly improved over the last few years.  Intuit’s Quickbooks, and Quicken have finally achieved feature parity with the Windows versions.  There are even several point of sale applications available for the Mac.  The medical industry has several EMR (electronic medical records) options for the Mac.  MacPractice works really well for most types of medical practices.  Two months ago, I helped move an orthodontics practice from Windows to the Mac.  Their choice of EMR software was Tops Ortho.  Tops doesn’t require Mac OS X Server, which will save time, and money during setup, and the support team at Tops is awesome.  Law offices have been making the switch to Mac.  Recently, my colleagues from Kinetic Technology Group and I migrated two law firms to Mac.

Mac OS X Server includes a built in email server in addition to calendar server.  For a lot of small offices, Mac OS X Server’s built in messaging technologies work really well.  For businesses who need a messaging solution with more features, I recommend Kerio Connect from Kerio Technologies.  Like Exchange, Kerio Connect includes a robust email server, calendar server, and contacts server.  Kerio Connect is a great cross platform messaging solution.  It works seamlessly with Macs, Windows PCs, iPhone, and several other mobile devices.  Your email, calendars, and contacts stay synched between all of your devices, and computers.  Kerio Connect provides easy administration, and it is compatible with most smartphone platforms such as iPhone, Blackberry, Android, and Windows Mobile.  If your business continues to run Windows servers, Kerio Connect will integrate easily into Active Directory, so that all of your user accounts are available in Kerio.  If you need to migrate Exchange accounts to Kerio Connect, Kerio provides an Exchange migration tool which will transfer all of your user accounts, their email, contacts, and calendars directly into Kerio Connect.  Kerio Connect runs on Mac OS X Server, and Windows Server.  If your business intends to keep its Exchange server, your new Macs will be able to work with Exchange.

If you plan on keeping some Windows PCs, or servers, have no fear.  Macs, and Windows PCs get along quite well on the same network.  Macs can use file, print, email, and web services hosted by Windows servers, and Windows PCs can do the same with Mac servers.

While the transition from Windows to the Mac isn’t as difficult as you might have believed, there are thousands of Apple Consultants around the U.S. who can assist you.  Apple Consultants are independent contractors who are Apple certified.  Their skills range from setting up home, or small office networks to enterprise level deployments.  They’re fanatical about Apple technology, and they will always try to find the best solutions for their customers.  If you have questions about moving to the Mac, feel free to contact me.

Whats New in Kerio Connect 7.0 | Kerio.

Today, Kerio announced the release of Kerio Connect 7.0.  The name change from Kerio Mail Server reflects the evolution of the product away from just being a mail server.  Kerio connect is a great alternative to Microsoft Exchange.  It enables cross platform collaboration, wireless mobile synchronization, very robust and easy to manage email security, email archiving, and automated backup.  Also, new in Kerio Connect is full web access to administration.  Click the link above to learn more.

If you’re in or near Dallas/Fort Worth, Kinetic Technology Group can help you deploy and manage Kerio Connect for your business.  In addition to deploying your new server running Kerio Connect in your office, we also offer colocation at our data center near downtown Dallas, and Kerio hosting through Rocket Fast.

*Kerio Mail Server has been renamed Kerio Connect. Many new features have been added since the time this entry was written.

One of the few drawbacks to using a Mac in a business environment has been the lack of a solid, business class groupware email, calendar, and contacts solution.  With the release of Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), Apple has introduced built in support for Exchange, but for small businesses who are concerned about cost of deployment, and maintaining the solution once it has been deployed, Exchange is not always the best choice.  Why should an all Mac office deploy a Windows server just for email?

Two years ago, when I left Apple to become an Apple Consultant, I was introduced to Kerio Mail Server by the new company that I was working for.  I was impressed that my email, contacts, and calendars could easily be synced between my Mac, and any other computer that I wanted to configure with my Kerio account.  In the Summer of 2008, Kerio added full iPhone support which allowed my contacts, and calendars to stay synced with my Mac.  If I ever found myself without access to my Mac, or my iPhone, Kerio Mail Server’s webmail feature had everything that I needed.  All of my contacts, calendars, and email were there.

Although I have worked with a lot of customers who run all Mac offices, most have been a mix and Mac and Windows PCs.  Mac OS X Server provides a really great email solution, but it doesn’t have a true cross platform groupware features.  That’s where Kerio Mail Server comes in.  For small businesses who need cross platform groupware features, Kerio Mail Server (KMS) is a great solution.  Kerio Mail Server runs on Mac OS X Server, Windows Server, and on Linux.  It has full support for Open Directory, and Active Directory, and it allows businesses to run LDAP services on one kind of server (Mac or Windows), and Kerio Mail Server on another server.  One deployment that I worked on involved setting up Mac OS X Server with KMS, but the user accounts were stored in Active Directory on a Windows Server.  This enabled the customer to easily integrate Mac OS X Server into their network without having to make major changes to their existing server/network configuration.

While working as a Mac Genius at the Apple store at Willow Bend, I dealt with thousands of customers over four and a half years. I took great pride in my job, and I always tried to do what was best for the customer, even if the customer did not always realize right away that I made the right choice. Often, customers came to me expecting a specific resolution, but left with a different one not realizing that if they had treated the Mac Geniuses with more respect, and courtesy, they may very well have received exactly what they wanted, or maybe something better. To help out customers seeking help at the Genius Bar, I have put together a list of 10 tips on how to get the best service.

1. ALWAYS treat your Mac Genius with respect, and courtesy. The Mac Geniuses, out of all of the Apple Store employees, have the most stressful jobs. If you add to that stress, you can expect to get their bare minimum effort. Yelling at them only makes things worse. Do you really want the people who are going to replace your hard drive to be mad at you? I can guarantee that they will not work very hard to retrieve data from your defective hard drive. Screaming and yelling never made me work faster, and it never made me have sympathy for the customer. Remember that the bridge you burn today over your smashed iPhone could be the ass you kiss tomorrow when your MacBook Pro fails just one day after the warranty has expired.

2. Remember that backups are YOUR responsibility. You are the one to blame if all of your data is lost. If you’re running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), or Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), you can use the built in backup software called Time Machine to keep your data backed up.

3. There is no “3 strikes” policy in place for computer replacements. The Mac Genius, along with the Apple store managers, make the determination to replace a computer in lieu of repairing it on a case by case basis. Remember tip number 1 in this situation. Being an ass to the Mac Genius will mean that he or she will follow Apple’s procedures to the letter instead of trying to make an exception.

4. iPods are fragile. When you drop them, they tend to break. This goes for iPhones too. If an iPod or iPhone shows damage consistent with accidents, or abuse, it will not be replaced under warranty no matter how much you scream and yell. Apple designs beautiful devices, but it’s up to you to protect them after you buy them.

The first time I had ever seen a Macintosh computer was in the Summer of 1986.  Having first learned how to use a computer on a TI 99-4A, I was fascinated by the graphical user interface, and being able to place objects on the screen exactly where I wanted them.  In the 1980s, the Mac was a revolution not just because of its use of the graphical user interface, but more so because of the creativity that it unleashed.  Although I have always been obsessed with learning and knowing how things work, my first impulse when I first used a Mac was to create something.

I eagerly signed up for my high school’s journalism class when I found out that the school had purchased 2 Macs to use for the high school newspaper.  The first applications that I used on the Mac were MacWrite, MacPaint, and what was then called Aldus Pagemaker.  By today’s standards, these Macs were slow, but in 1987, they were powerhouses.  It didn’t bother me at all that I had to play an interesting game of swap the disks every time I wanted to save a “large” file.  Macs at that time were very limited on RAM, and therefore, they had to temporarily cache data onto floppy disks in order to save files that were larger than a few kilobytes.  If your Mac used one of the floppy disks to boot from, the only way for the Mac to save large files was so eject the system disk, and then ask for another disk that had more available space.  Later, when I was using a Mac SE with an attached external hard drive, the disk switching routine went away.

Did I mention the first Macs that I ever used had only small, 9 inch monochrome screens?  The Mac II was capable of 256 colors.  I had made some really kick ass graphics on the Mac SE, but they were lacking color.  On the Mac II, I could add color using Pixel Paint.  This was a bit like being blind before, and now, suddenly being able to see.  These Macs ran at a blazingly fast 16MHz, and they started out at only $5500!  Desktop publishing had been born on the Mac.  Adding color to applications like Pagemaker, and Pixel Paint unlocked even more possibilities.

I wasn’t a computer geek back in the 80s and 90s.  I didn’t actually become that until after I left the Navy, and bought the first Mac I had ever bought for myself.  That was a Performa 6360.  I had no idea what all of the different model numbers meant, but I had my choice of a Power Mac 4400, a Performa 6400, or the Performa 6360.  In the end, I just bought the one that was the cheapest.  The Performa 6360 came with a lot of really nice multimedia software.  This was back when Apple was touting the Mac as being a great family computer.

Nightmare before Christmas