Intezyne Technologies Inc. Research without worry.
“Despite my skepticism, I felt that we should give the Macs a try, so I purchased a 17-inch iMac with an Intel Core Duo processor,” Ms. Breitenkamp continues. “We were amazed with the new iMac. We were just looking for a stable computer with a stable operating system that could do what we needed, but we received so much more. It was a beautiful computer with numerous features that saved you incredible amounts of time and enabled you to be more productive. For example, we could search through our own work quicker and faster with Spotlight, and keep our open documents better organized with Expose. An added bonus was its small footprint. After this first iMac, we were sold.”
Personalized help
With so many different computing requirements, the company needed advice before it went shopping for hardware. So Rebecca Breitenkamp contacted an Apple representative, who was happy to advise her on her hardware and software requirements.
“We needed a computer to maintain our chemical inventory and purchased a Mac mini,” Ms. Breitenkamp says. “We purchased iMacs to run our instrumentation and help our scientists to analyze data. For running our accounting system—a Windows-based program using VMware Fusion—we purchased a Mac Pro. The Apple rep also gave us information on financing our computer needs and introduced us to the leasing option where we can trade in our old computers for new ones every two years.”
Intezyne’s Apple business consultant helps in other ways as well, says Ms. Breitenkamp. Together, Intezyne and Apple’s representative have worked through issues involving data storage requirements, back-ups, and software upgrades.
Home work
“As a small business owner, I bring my Apple laptop home every night to squeeze in a few more hours of work, whether it is finishing an investor report, updating financial records, preparing Keynote presentations, working up scientific data, or just replying to emails,” she says. “It always travels with me on business and even if I am leaving town on vacation. There’s always time on the plane to review paperwork.. Because company travel has increased, we recently invested in an Xserve to allow our employees vpn access to their files while on the road as well as to enable data backup.”
Keynote replaces PowerPoint
“We now use Keynote instead of PowerPoint for all of our corporate presentations, including weekly R&D meetings, conference and seminar talks, and board meetings,” says Ms. Breitenkamp. “At our weekly science meetings, our project leaders use Keynote to update everyone on their latest scientific data. Keynote includes the same features as PowerPoint but offers additional features such as exporting presentations to other formats like pdf, and for that matter, PowerPoint, in addition to professional and aesthetically-pleasing templates and fonts. Being able to export to other formats is key for us since we interface with many PC users. In general, we’ve found both Keynote and Pages to be more intuitive software than many of the other available programs.”
Intezyne gets iLife
iPhoto is another frequently used application at Intezyne: “When we were building our new lab, we documented progress at each stage of building with digital pictures and organized those photos in iPhoto,” says Ms. Breitenkamp. “iPhoto has also been helpful in organizing our microscope images for biological research and maintaining a picture inventory of our lab equipment.”
iTunes is just as heavily used at Intezyne as iPhoto, she adds: “We bought iPod Nanos for our employees for Christmas, and we all use our iPods when traveling, while running or working out, or just for enjoyment.”
“They just work.”
“Working on a Mac allows me to spend more time calculating and analyzing my data, and less time trying to figure out what’s wrong with my computer,” says co-founder Kurt Breitenkamp, Intezyne’s Chief Technology Officer. “I don’t miss having to restart my computer while trying to complete precious experiments.”
Kurt Breitenkamp agrees. “Programs like Keynote and Pages have revolutionized how we present our data and business to our audience,” he says.
“With Apple products, we never have to concern ourselves with the up-keep, maintenance, or installation of our computers,” adds co-founder Kevin Sill, Intezyne's VP of Product Development. “They just work.”
