Accessing corporate systems wasn't too hard. To access Exchange via Outlook, of course I did have to connect to our VPN within the Windows XP virtual machine I'm running, since I'm running the network in bridge mode with the Macbook. I had to use bridge mode because too many Windows problems using NAT mode. Outlook worked fine, as did the other Office apps. Although, I soon found out that a 512 Mb XP machine was too small. I raised it to 768 Mb and now it runs less sluggish. Making that change with VMWare Fusion was a breeze.
VMWare Tools was nice enough to install a shortcut to my Macbook files. I added that to my favorites bar in the default Windows Explorer file open/save dialog boxes.
Mapping to network file shares with the SMB protocol was simple from within Finder's "Go" menu, once I configured a VPN connection from within Mac OS X. While there's no easy way to make that permanent, as it is with a single click in Windows, it does remember the UNC in Finder, so manually reconnecting is easy. I know there's a way to make it permanent through a start-up script, but manual connection is fine for me.
Since I use most enterprise applications through our Citrix virtual desktop anyway, I was now fully functional within my company. One note: Since I am a remote worker across an international border, I maintain my own equipment anyway, so my machines are never part of any managed infrastructure. While I will not be directly testing Macbooks and IT service management with this machine, we will be doing more research on this within our company to satisfy client demand. After all, we are an IT industry analyst research and advisory firm.
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