IT support in London for PCs and Macs?

Lucidica is one of the few London IT support companies that provide support to both Apple Mac and Windows PCs.  In fact, we also look after Linux and other platforms too.  Being “the IT Department” for small business in London, we have to take on a lot of different technology.  We like to say we are technology agnostic – we don’t mind what technology your business uses.  The main factor we look at whether we support your business or not is the number of staff you have.  We specialise in small businesses with 1-50 staff, the ‘S’ in SME.

“In fact, around 20% of the computers Lucidica provide IT support in London for are Apple Macs.”

We have a lot of clients that are hybrid PC and Apple Mac.  Many are design-orientated firms and while the artistic types work best on a Mac, the bean counters and non-creative types prefer or need Windows PCs to run their favourite software.

Is Apple Mac or PC IT support easier in London?

We get asked this now-and-then, which comes with less support issues.  Generally, Macs have less problems with viruses, because they have such a small market share in the computer market (9.3% according to Gartner as at the first quarter of 2011) those people with so much time on their hands to write viruses ignore them and go straight for the largest footprint – Windows PCs.

So while a Mac may cost more upfront to purchase, from our experience the on-going support costs of Macs are lower than PCs.  The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) is generally lower on a Mac than PC, all things considered these days.  Like with legal advice – where if you ask 7 lawyers a question you get 11 different opinions – each IT support companies has its own position on this.  We do have some Apple Mac-heavy clients where their TCO is higher than their PCs, but overall from the large sample we get to work with (about doubel the market share) we believe at the moment a Mac is cheaper over its life than a PC.

With Macs gaining more market share in the last decade thanks to the innovation of the iPhone, iPad et al we are finding we are providing IT support to more Macs in London each year.  According to a recent Gartner report, Apple shipped around 19% more Macs in the first quarter of 2011 compared with the same quarter in 2010:

Apple shipped 1.25 million Macs in the first quarter of 2010 and 1.49 million in the first quarter of 2011. The company’s market share grew from 7.3 percent in 2010 to 9.3 percent in 2011.