I work for a software company. My bosses have started telling our clients we can support Mac systems, but none of us techs have any experience running OSX (because our software only runs on Internet Explorer - it is ASP based) but they figure they can give the clients a remote desktop account into a webserver running the application and the platform the client has no longer matters.
The problem is that us techs don't really think when something goes wrong we can say "oh well - the RDP server appears fine - it's your system - you fix it" - we are going to have to troubleshoot the remote system which means knowing OSX. The company figures learning new skills is our problem, not their problem so they've nixed providing us with Mac systems to learn on. So, what is the cheapest version of the Mac laptop I can buy to learn OSX but without limiting common things?
For example, if I bought a netbook running Win7 Starter, there are compromises - no changing the background, screen size normally too small (our software runs on min 1024x768.) Blah, blah, blah. Are there any such limitation on the Mac platforms or could I just start with the cheapest like the plastic Mac Book and learn virtually everything? Speed and performance and other factors don't really matter, but it needs to be able to dual boot Windows or else run Bootcamp or something similar (since some clients have this sort of setup.) Laptop only - must be portable. My needs aren't sophisticated, just boot, be able to navigate, learn all normal aspects of desktop and app operation and limited troubleshooting skills. This isn't to develop on, run gaming or anything else.
Thanks for any help.