I've heard that Cisco employees are given a choice between macs or pcs. Is this for everyone (contractors and employees)? If so how does it work? Are your choices limited and how often can you upgrade?

[Edited on January 21, 2011 at 8:59 PM. Reason : .]

1/21/2011 8:59:23 PM

I believe you heard incorrectly. They get mac and cheese at lunch everyday.

1/22/2011 12:03:31 AM

Pretty sure all new employees are given thinkpads when they're hired. After 3 years you can opt to upgrade to a PC or a Mac. Not sure what the deal is for contractors.

1/22/2011 12:47:30 AM

The contractors on our team were all given their pcs (thinkpads) when they got there ... New college hires that I know were given a choice, and some have Macs. Your choices are 3 different thinkpad laptops or the standard macbook pro.

You can refresh every ~3 years

Lenovo Thinkpad T410 Lenovo Thinkpad W510 Lenovo ThinkPad X201 Apple MacBook Pro

With the following MBP specs:

Processor 2.53GHz Intel Core i5
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M graphics processor with 256MB of GDDR3 memory
Display 15.4-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen display
Memory 4GB (two 2GB SO-DIMMs) of 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Hard Disk 500B 7200 RPM HDD


[Edited on January 22, 2011 at 8:21 AM. Reason : .]

1/22/2011 8:14:56 AM

wouldnt get one, Entourage is a shitty mail client and you can't do Outlook on cisco's mail servers unless you magically get on some internal exchange 2007 beta program, which wont happen.

stick to stinkpad for now is my advice, if you want to be more productive. sucks, because otherwise the macs are great.

1/22/2011 11:51:54 AM

yeah, same here ... I like being able to use my work PC at home with 2 24-inch monitors ... cant do that with a macbook pro ...

Plus, lots of tools, especially beta ones, are not released for mac until much later ... so productivity options are limited, as jimmy said.

1/22/2011 2:13:40 PM

well it kinda depends on the work you'll be doing. if you're a software developer then most of the time you'll be VNC'd into a linux server anyway and having the native console in mac is a big plus. Outlook is the only PC-specific thing I need for my work but many folks who have refreshed to Macs on our team just use a Windows VM for that anyway.

1/22/2011 3:15:16 PM

Mac vs pc for blue or red badge is managers discretion. I ordered my contractor a Mac at his request.

Entourage is only required if your job function relies heavily on calendaring. When I was an engineer I didn't have meetings so I just rolled thunderbird. Now that I'm a mangler, I'm stuck with entourage b/c I live and die by my outlook calendar.

[Edited on January 22, 2011 at 3:26 PM. Reason : D]

1/22/2011 3:25:11 PM

Thanks for the info guys. Doesn't Office for Mac 2011 have Outlook? I've never used Entourage but have heard negative things about it. Has anyone used the Mail and Calendar app for Exchange? Snow Leopard allows this correct?

Still though, email isn't that big of a deal to me since I'm not a manager so I'd rather have a Mac.

1/22/2011 5:19:22 PM

I know when I was cooping it was mostly a department decision. We rolled macs for a long time in my department but the one perm knew how to fix them (and did it all himself). He got tired so then we went to thinkpads.

I think my new manager there when I start in a bit, said I was getting a mac. Havta see what I get.

1/23/2011 2:02:48 PM

Calendaring works better in Mail+Calendar than in Entourage. Don't know is Mac Outlook is any good

1/23/2011 2:19:14 PM

I has an ipad

1/23/2011 3:45:00 PM

MS Office 2011 for Mac is HUGELY better than 2008. and yep, it has Outlook.

Excel is massively improved.

1/24/2011 10:09:31 PM

again, Outlook for mac is NOT supported at cisco because it has exchange server requirements that we don't meet.

to Bobby's point - being on sales side i forget that not everyone lives by the calendar

if you don't heavily depend on your email+calendaring, maybe Mac would be the better option within cisco.

[Edited on January 25, 2011 at 12:07 PM. Reason : .]

1/25/2011 12:06:00 PM

or just use vmware. you should be able to get your department to cover a license for fusion

[Edited on January 25, 2011 at 2:55 PM. Reason : ]

1/25/2011 2:54:14 PM

if you heavily use outlook, i dont see why anyone would want to do mac + vmware at cisco.

1/26/2011 12:21:04 PM

I just moved to San Jose and start on Monday. I personally use a Mac, and may come back here for advice once I know my choices.

Didn't know this many TWW'ers worked for Cisco, any of you guys located in San Jose?

1/26/2011 12:34:59 PM