Those of you who, like most of us, are rotting your lives away slaving for The Man in some corporate cubicle farm probably harbor no illusions about the glory and dignity of a hard day's work done well. In fact, rather than clinging to some outdated and fanciful work ethic, you probably know full well that working is for chumps. Until we win the lottery, though, or some kind and extremely rich soul out there offers to pay us a tidy salary to keep cranking this show out day after day, your friendly neighborhood AtAT staff is pretty much chained to this work-a-day world. Luckily, some of us still get to use Macs in the corporate realm, but those of you who are fortunate enough to share that enviable situation (while most others are force-fed a steady diet of Windows until their brains go limp and soggy) should fear no phrase more viscerally than this one: "single-platform."

Yes, "single-platform": that workplace harbinger of doom. Nary a day goes by without some IT department somewhere out there deciding to protect its support staff salary budget by persuading a management type with plenty of power and no clue that the best way to save money is to make the company single-platform and thus "reduce support costs." Unfortunately, when those guys start talking about "single-platform," what they're really saying is "Windows-only" (it's called job security-- more Windows equals more support), which bodes ill for that trusty Mac you've managed to cling to so far. Once the mandate to eliminate all Macs gets handed down, your days are pretty much numbered.

So when the IT trolls come and pry your beloved Mac from your white-knuckled fingers, you're left with only one viable move: go back to school. Why? Because there, "single-platform" isn't always a death sentence for Macs. Check it out; faithful viewer (and iMac-usin' AtAT Dad-- Hi, Dad!) Joseph Miller forwarded us an article from the Daily Illini which notes a single-platform migration at the University of Illinois that's good news for Mac users. Reportedly the student union computer lab, formerly a mixed bag of Macs and Wintels, is now an all-iMac shop. Pretty cool, huh? Especially for a school that was talking about moving exclusively to Windows systems a couple of years back.

Apparently Apple actually went to the school and offered to donate a slew of iMacs in return for being able to use photos of the lab in advertising materials. Smart move. Now if Apple would just pull that kind of stunt in the corporate world, we'd all be a lot better off. For one thing, we'd have a lot fewer Mac users leaving the work force for the more Apple-friendly pastures of a professional student career. Hmmm... How many degrees are too many, we wonder?