Undoing the work of the corporate Computer Nazi...

[bonj2]

this is a true story of IT stupidity:

i freelanced in the studio at mbna europe for a while. their IT department didn't understand macs, so they were not allowed on the main network. the account execs had pcs with the cd drive removed, only a floppy drive. no mac since the imac has had a floppy drive. so, they were unable to send any files over any network or on a disk. eventually some usb floppy drives were bought for the macs, but as most pdf files were over the 1.4mb you could fit on them, they were almost useless

superb, you couldn't make it up.

well why should they bloody HAVE to cater for macs...
If people are allowed to keep being different, certainly in such a major way as having a whole different operating system, that just causes a lot of extra work - because you're presumably going to want it supported. No - forget that, it's not YOU that WANTS it supported - the FIRM NEEDS it supported. Because it's the firm's data stored on it, and the firm that pays if there's some reason work can't be done on it - even if it's not your, or its, fault.

You need to realise that uniformity is a necessity in IT. They haven't got the resource to cater for each user having a completely different bloody set up, just 'cos it's what they prefer. Please do understand this.
You need to realise that when you go to work, and sit down at the pc, it isn't YOUR pc, it's the company's pc that it employs you to work on. If the company wants to have ITS pc exactly the freakin' same as every other PC and KEPT like that, then it should be perfectly at liberty to do so, without having idiots clogging up the helpdesk whinging that they can't find their personal photos on their roaming profile any more.

 

[Fab Foodie]

well why should they bloody HAVE to cater for macs...
If people are allowed to keep being different, certainly in such a major way as having a whole different operating system, that just causes a lot of extra work - because you're presumably going to want it supported. No - forget that, it's not YOU that WANTS it supported - the FIRM NEEDS it supported. Because it's the firm's data stored on it, and the firm that pays if there's some reason work can't be done on it - even if it's not your, or its, fault.

You need to realise that uniformity is a necessity in IT. They haven't got the resource to cater for each user having a completely different bloody set up, just 'cos it's what they prefer. Please do understand this.
You need to realise that when you go to work, and sit down at the pc, it isn't YOUR pc, it's the company's pc that it employs you to work on. If the company wants to have ITS pc exactly the freakin' same as every other PC and KEPT like that, then it should be perfectly at liberty to do so, without having idiots clogging up the helpdesk whinging that they can't find their personal photos on their roaming profile any more.

Steady bonj, you're getting awfully close to making sense...

 

[alecstilleyedye]

well why should they bloody HAVE to cater for macs...
If people are allowed to keep being different, certainly in such a major way as having a whole different operating system, that just causes a lot of extra work - because you're presumably going to want it supported. No - forget that, it's not YOU that WANTS it supported - the FIRM NEEDS it supported. Because it's the firm's data stored on it, and the firm that pays if there's some reason work can't be done on it - even if it's not your, or its, fault.

You need to realise that uniformity is a necessity in IT. They haven't got the resource to cater for each user having a completely different bloody set up, just 'cos it's what they prefer. Please do understand this.
You need to realise that when you go to work, and sit down at the pc, it isn't YOUR pc, it's the company's pc that it employs you to work on. If the company wants to have ITS pc exactly the freakin' same as every other PC and KEPT like that, then it should be perfectly at liberty to do so, without having idiots clogging up the helpdesk whinging that they can't find their personal photos on their roaming profile any more.

well it wasn't my own mac, but the company's, so it's their own fault. find me a credible graphics studio or advertising agency that solely uses windows, as opposed to someone who thinks they can do the job with page plus and paintshop pro.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

We have the problem at school. You can only do so much on them. So if you put headphones in and your lucky the volume is up, you can listen to music. Problem is that it is normally right up, so its too loud.
There is also a company that blocks out websites tahts got games on them, or will play the radio or music, i tried to find a recipy for banana muffins, and that was blocked. the proxies are also blocked, even the ones on page 156 were all blocked. Even the head of ICT doesnt agree with it because he knows from looking that the kids just spend the time loking for websites that arent blocked, so its a waste of time.
They also blocked wallpapers, until i found out you could set it as desktop icon, then just make it bigger. Only works for some, some get pixalated.

not to mention the apparent lack of the teaching of grammar, punctuation and spelling

 

[Jaded]

You need to realise that uniformity is a necessity in IT. They haven't got the resource to cater for each user having a completely different bloody set up, just 'cos it's what they prefer. Please do understand this.

You should probably think about what IT is actually there for.

Clue: It isn't there to ensure the continued employment of the IT support team.

 

[bonj2]

well it wasn't my own mac, but the company's, so it's their own fault. find me a credible graphics studio or advertising agency that solely uses windows, as opposed to someone who thinks they can do the job with page plus and paintshop pro.

It was probably only there because some maccist had managed to gain responsibility for PC purchasing. Any monkey can get to order their own PC nowadays, because IT departments are often too slack or lazy to take control of it. Someone obviously decided to put personal preference above uniformity, and couldn't see beyond their own desktop.

Graphics studios/advertising agencies are generally poncy, arty-farty companies full of camp media types, who love nothing more than messing with purple translucent computers and matching, huge 3 foot deep CRT monitor that look like they're from Early Learning Centre. They're fine with the labour of configuring and figuring out the macs themselves, as that's what they want - so that's fine, people who get jobs in these types of companies will probably know what they're letting themselves in for.
They aren't generally big enough companies to NEED much 'corporate policy'.

 

[bonj2]

You should probably think about what IT is actually there for.

Clue: It isn't there to ensure the continued employment of the IT support team.

It certainly isn't there to do exactly what you want it to do. Largely because you are JUST ONE person, so what YOU want might not be the same as what someone else wants. Therefore, the IT department can't just be at your beck and call to make your PC exactly the way YOU want it. You have to accept a certain degree of conformity for the good of the whole.
The relationship between people like you and IT, is similar to the relationship between simoncc and politicians.
He thinks they are 'his' employees, and should do what he tells them - but in reality, they are needed to ensure the system keeps going and to make and implement necessary rules which he has to live by. The difference being IT can't be voted out as easily.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

It was probably only there because some maccist had managed to gain responsibility for PC purchasing. Any monkey can get to order their own PC nowadays, because IT departments are often too slack or lazy to take control of it. Someone obviously decided to put personal preference above uniformity, and couldn't see beyond their own desktop.

Graphics studios/advertising agencies are generally poncy, arty-farty companies full of camp media types, who love nothing more than messing with purple translucent computers and matching, huge 3 foot deep CRT monitor that look like they're from Early Learning Centre. They're fine with the labour of configuring and figuring out the macs themselves, as that's what they want - so that's fine, people who get jobs in these types of companies will probably know what they're letting themselves in for.
They aren't generally big enough companies to NEED much 'corporate policy'.

have you actually seen (let alone used) a mac bonj (the crt imac that i believe you are crassly referring to has been out of production for a long time)? the reason there is a hard core of mac evangelists is that we love them for their simplicity, ease of use, and the fact that you don't need "a" level geek to get them to work. in the last two years, i have not lost one single hour of productivity/forum time because the mac had a problem. that covers both home and office machines. think about that next time you're rebooting xp after a crash.

 

[Danny]

...Still for the decision makers to talk to users first would require some communication ability...

This is sadly true. Most of the IT people who make these decisions are total computer nerds who are incapable of speaking in plain English, and only feel comfortable communicating with like minded nerds and geeks.

 

[bonj2]

have you actually seen (let alone used) a mac bonj (the crt imac that i believe you are crassly referring to has been out of production for a long time)? the reason there is a hard core of mac evangelists is that we love them for their simplicity, ease of use, and the fact that you don't need "a" level geek to get them to work. in the last two years, i have not lost one single hour of productivity/forum time because the mac had a problem. that covers both home and office machines. think about that next time you're rebooting xp after a crash.

i'm on one of the vista machines in our office at the mo, and the whole OS never crashes. Individual software does, but the time it spends crashing is a lot less than the time i spend reading papers, making tea, eating, etc. So it's not really a disadvantage. Never lose any work as it will only usually crash when running, and it has to compile in order to run, and it has to save in order to compile. So it' always saved.

 

[bonj2]

This is sadly true. Most of the IT people who make these decisions are total computer nerds who are incapable of speaking in plain English, and only feel comfortable communicating with like minded nerds and geeks.

Just how exactly DO you communicate about computers with people who type 'yes' in the 'confirm password' box, rather than the password again, and who panic that "it says 'press any key' - but my keyboard hasn't GOT an 'Any' key!"

 

[simon l& and a half]

What bemuses me is this - the bigger the IT 'provision' the slower the computers. I worked in a place once where the second you thought that the person next to you had a faster computer, you grabbed the boss's credit card and rang up Watford Electronics for a better one still. No IT department (we ran the network on Windows 2000, and used off-site storage) just competitiveness between users.

 

[alecstilleyedye]

This is sadly true. Most of the IT people who make these decisions are total computer nerds who are incapable of speaking in plain English, and only feel comfortable communicating with like minded nerds and geeks.

…who see macs as a threat to their livelihood as they don't require micromanagement and regular fixing. they don't suffer from viruses, spyware and all that stuff that IT people lose sleep about to anything like the degree that windows pcs do. i used to be the "it" guy for a network of six macs in a small publishers back in the early '90s. it wasn't my main job, it's just that it had to be somebody's, and it took up so little time anyway that it didn't even feature as a talking point during my performance reviews. and that was back in the days of system 7, not solid-as-a-rock-unix-based osx.

the anti-mac brigade on here are the equivalent of the chavs on halfords ironmongery who mock the bloke who goes flying past on his colnago. they've never ridden one, but it must be shite because they don't have one.

 

[bonj2]

…who see macs as a threat to their livelihood as they don't require micromanagement and regular fixing. they don't suffer from viruses, spyware and all that stuff that IT people lose sleep about to anything like the degree that windows pcs do.

Hang on - bit of a contradiction in terms there. Surely if IT people require things like that to keep them in a job, then as long as there's a healthy dose of it around then they're not going to lose any sleep over it...

Seriously though, who are management going to ask about having macs, company-wide, if such a hair-brained idea was ever to take germination in one of their minds? Yep, the IT brigade. Who probably wouldn't deny that a mac is easy to use, but in all likeliness haven't ever used a mac, and are suspicious of them, as they perceive them to be just a bit noddy - and they do the sharp-intake-of-breath thing amid much moustache-sucking, as the thing that often instantly springs to mind is 'I wouldn't like to guarantee that people are going to be just as productive with macs, as i don't know that macs can even DO all the things that they're going to be required to do here'.
I'm sure in a lot of cases macs CAN do all the things they need to be able to - but most IT people don't know that, so wouldn't be likely to recommend macs to management, that added to the fact that many businesses have got custom-written software that hasn't been written for mac.
Then on top of that you've got the training issues and what not, and it's not hard to see why you have to be a pretty serious mac devotee to even consider recommending macs to the decision makers, let alone campaign for them. People know where they stand with windows.

And another thing - people seem to be under the impression that it's the 'geeks' who make the decisions about what PCs/OSes to get, and corporate policy. It's not - it's usually bean-counters who make the decisions. The geeks will make recommendations, and they will often be able to influence the decisions by what facts they present and services they profess to be able to offer with a particular implementation, but it's the bean-counters that actually make the decision and therefore that ultimately stand by them, so this is why you needn't be surprised that IT policy is money-driven.

the anti-mac brigade on here are the equivalent of the chavs on halfords ironmongery who mock the bloke who goes flying past on his colnago. they've never ridden one, but it must be shite because they don't have one.

If you like your mac for what you want to use it for, great. I wouldn't diss it if it's what suits you and it does what you want it to do, and well. But just don't evangelistically whinge about other people and organisations not using/understanding them or come over all indignant that companies haven't "seen the light" because they haven't rolled out macs across the board.

 

[bonj2]

i used to be the "it" guy for a network of six macs in a small publishers back in the early '90s. it wasn't my main job, it's just that it had to be somebody's, and it took up so little time anyway that it didn't even feature as a talking point during my performance reviews.

well in my current company the network admininistrator is one of the two DIRECTORS, so it shows how much time that takes up...