I've been given the go-ahead to get a new laptop, partially because the house is under contract and hopefully will belong to someone else by the end of the month (yay!) and partially because my new job will likely keep me away from home a lot.
I've always said that if I get a job with a lot of deploying then I needed to get a new laptop with all the built-in goodness my 7-year-old model does not possess. After over a year of e's iMac, I was set on a MacBook Pro and nearly bought one when we saw it on the shelf in Germany. Just when I was working up the nerve to spend that much $, I realized that if it were to be my travel computer I'd need to be able to do work on it and that means I'd need to use my CAC to check email and PureEdge viewer to fill out the various gov't forms we use.
I was bummed for a while. I know there are solutions to run Windows on Mac, but the whole point is that I didn't want to run Windows. Still, I was resigned to getting a Windows laptop--got pretty close to laying out the cash for a Sony VAIO VGN-FZ180E/B--when I decided to do some more searching.
It turns out I'm not the only federal employee who'd like to use another operating system. It didn't take too much looking around to find "CAC on a Mac," a technical paper written for the Naval Postgraduate School which describes how to get the Common Access Card certificate working on a Mac. I'd previously used the article to flash the gov't card reader, allowing it to work under Mac and Linux.
I still needed an IMT solution, and the fact that e really wanted Windows for her two favorite traveling programs, AutoCAD and PhotoShop, wasn't making life easier. Then last night when I was ready to give in I found out that the gov't saved the day again. It seems there are a lot of government researchers who use other operating systems. When the grant application program went to the same PureEdge system used by the AF there was a mutiny because the researchers didn't want to buy new computers just to be able to fill out some forms. The government used its no doubt considerable leverage over IBM and convinced them to do what PureEdge had always refused to consider: develop an IMT viewer for the Mac. You can download it, appropriately enough, from grant.gov here. I'm hoping it's only a matter of time before someone ports the viewer to Linux. I'd really love a completely open-source laptop but I think that's not in the cards for me this time. Now, off to the Apple Store! Too bad they don't ship to APO addresses :-( Guess I'll have to wait until I'm up in Germany again or until we get back to the US.
