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

In the mixed computing environments common on university campuses, supporting multiple operating systems and myriad hardware configurations can be a nightmare for IT. In the past (and in some cases up through the present), one solution has been to go with a single platform. Great for IT. Not so great for users. But at Bemidji State University in Minnesota, they've come up with another solution: to standardize the machines but to continue to offer choices in operating systems by providing faculty and students with dual- and triple-boot systems based on Apple hardware.

In early 2006, Apple rolled out its first Intel-based Mac systems. Apple had for years been moving away from proprietary or exclusive technologies toward widespread industry standards inside and outside their systems--from connectivity to drive interfaces to GPUs. But the final move to Intel chips last year brought about a possibility that had never existed before: running Windows and other operating systems natively on Apple hardware, rather than through emulation (which had always had both performance and functionality limitations).

Soon after the first wave of Intel-based Macs began rolling out, Bemidji State started experimenting with a concept that would eventually lead to significant savings in both support and cost: replacing mixed hardware in its labs with Apple systems that could run Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

It was a fairly risky proposition to begin with. Not only was the hardware new, but the proposition was, by all accounts, unique on this scale in higher education. Furthermore, the technology used for the effort--Apple's Boot Camp--was, at the time, still in beta.

(Boot Camp, for those of you who are unaware, is Apple's software solution that allows users to create multiple bootable partitions on Apple machines capable of running Windows and Linux natively. Once the partitions are created, normally users just hold down the Option key at startup and select which OS they want to boot into. Boot Camp had been in beta until Apple finally shipped Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in October. It's now full-release software.)

Said Brian Allen, director of technical support for Bemidji State University, "When the Intel Macs came out, we had so many labs on campus with both Windows and Mac, and they were just growing and growing ... out of control, and we all kind of saw this as a cool opportunity." Allen is one of a triumvirate of IT directors at Bemidji State, with dominion over tech support and the help desk.

Lab Tests
Once the idea came up, he and others began doing some testing, getting a machine up and running and trying it out with various pieces of software--including high-end 3D and engineering apps running in the Windows environment--to try to spot any kinks.