News

Deploying Font Servers

Mac OS X has come with the ability to activate and deactivate Fonts on the fly since 10.5, when Font Book was introduced. Font Book allows a single user to manage their fonts easily. But many will find that managing fonts on a per-computer basis ends up not being enough. Which begs the question: who needs a font server? A very simplistic answer is any organization with more than 5 users working in a collaborative environment. This could be the creative print shops, editorial, motion graphics, advertising agencies and other creative environments. But corporate environments where font licensing and compliance is important are also great candidates.

Lack of font management is a cost center for many organizations. There is a loss of productivity every time a user has to manually add fonts when opening co-workers documents, or the cost of a job going out with the wrong version of a font. Some of the other benefits of fonts servers are separate font sets for different workgroups and isolating corrupt fonts to clean up large font libraries, along with quick searching and identification of fonts.

Font Management and Best Practices

Anyone who uses fonts for daily workflow needs font management. This could be a standalone product such as Suitcase Fusion or Font Agent Pro. But larger environments invariably need to collaborate and share fonts between users, meaning many environments need font servers. Two such products include Extensis Universal Type Server and Font Agent Pro Server. But before adding font management products, users should clean up and any fonts loaded or installed and added prior to moving to a managed font environment. Places to look for fonts when cleaning them up include the following:

~/Library/Fonts
/Library/Fonts
/System/Library Fonts

Leaving any necessary system, Microsoft Web Core, and required Adobe fonts. The best resource for this process can be found at Extensis Font Best Practices in OX v.7, which can be found at: http://www.extensis.com/en/downloads/document_download.jsp?docId=5600039

Case Study

Intrigue goes State-of-the-Art with new XServe

It was a long time coming, but we reached the point of inevitability. Our old trio of server boxes with a multitude of attached storage drives had reached their limits. It was time to consolidate and increase our file capacity – both for the present and for the future.

Should I get an Apple Certification?

To succeed in today's competitive job market, whether looking for new opportunities or advancing in your current position, you need to build and demonstrate your technology expertise and skills.

When evaluating new candidates or considering the competencies of existing staff, employers recognize the value of Apple Certification. These certifications provide the recognition you need to excel in your career and provides employers with validation of your skills. Certifications are available for most Apple technologies and skill levels from business workers to IT professionals, developers, technology trainers, and system architects. Pursuing a certification, provides you with up-to-date, relevant skills that can not only lead to a more fulfilling career.

By earning an Apple Certification, you can prove your expertise. Certification can help you differentiate yourself in today's competitive job market, broaden your employment opportunities by displaying your advanced skills, and result in higher earning potential. Certification can also lead to increased job satisfaction. Research indicates that certified individuals have increased competence, productivity, and credibility with their employers, co-workers, and clients.

Relevance

Apple Certifications are continually evaluated and updated to ensure their relevance in the marketplace. As a result, earning a certification not only helps you stay up-to-speed on the latest developments in Apple technologies and platforms, but enables you to demonstrate to employers your on-the-job skills.

Journey

Whether you are new to technology, changing jobs, or a seasoned IT professional, when you earn a certification, you are showing employers your commitment to advancing your skills and taking on greater IT challenges. See where certification fits into your career path:

Mac vs. Windows in the Enterprise

CIO magazine has an article about a polling by the Enterprise Desktop Alliance. In the article they mention that the majority responded that Macs are 20% cheaper to manage.

Rescuecom did an evaluation of Mac vs PC support and found that Macs are the #1 in reliability both on hardware and software issues.

American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) charts customer satisfaction across all industries. Apple products have been in the top 5 for customer satisfaction since ACSI started charting back in 1996. For the last 13 years Apple has been in the top 5. In the last 10 years Apple has been in the top 3. Over the last 6 years Apple has ranked #1 in customer satisfaction.

All three of these translate into Savings and Productivity.

Fact: Many management entities mistake an application to be a process. An example of which is Outlook being "a must" for email, calendaring and contact management. All three of these can be done without any Microsoft products at all.

Fact: Macs, properly configured, are excellent AD participants.

Fact: Macs managed by an OD Master in a golden triangle configuration can have policy applied with the ability to secure a Mac far greater than Windows. For example a group can be set to only allow users to run applications specifically in the /Applications folder. Even more secure, the policy can be further set to specific apps (not folders) eliminating apps ran off USB drives, which PCs still suffer from.

Fact: There are no "In the Wild" viruses due to OS X's Unix underbelly. We've been chasing conficker across our Windows boxes for several weeks now and we're a secure network.... Maybe!

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