No more so (and probably far less so) than the maze of rc scripts in your average Linux or BSD.
I don't know if you're an accidental or intentional troll, but there you go.
The Windows "search" feature by default will not search all the files to find by content, in fact it ignores a considerable number of file types. Linux (or cygwin) will happily -- and very quickly -- find portions of a config quite easily. The Windows registry is significantly more difficult to use, has significantly more entries, and you can prevent the machine from booting all too easily.
If the relatively simple rc files confuse you, and you don't understand the differences in complexity between the Windows registry and a few simple text files, you should probably find another line of work. The more difficult concepts will be far beyond you.
To be fair, Sidekick users didn't have a viable means to back up their personal data that was being pulled from Microsoft/Danger servers. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the users to find some hack or unofficial method to copy all their data from their devices.
Have you ever used RHN (Red Hat Network) / Red Hat Satellite -- you know, the one where you can schedule a patch to hundreds or even thousands of machines by clicking a couple of times in a web interface? Its ease of use and machine grouping abilities, together with the fact that most *nix upgrades don't require reboots (and are usually quite small) make the Microsoft patching procedure look fairly lame in comparison. Don't even get me started on shell scripting, for instance we use a custom script combined with SSH on our Windows machines so they automatically rsync the latest version of a particularly important homegrown Windows app at logon. The same tools work on *nix of course.
As far as reporting goes, have you ever used RPM? It tracks sooooo much more info than Windows does, for instance it can tell you if a file has changed since the original install, what files were part of the original install, and list any dependencies the package has. It can also solve dependency issues. To my knowledge these aren't things WSUS does.
Monitoring? I created a simple webpage which shows the status of all of our data replication tasks. It took me maybe 30 minutes to write the scripts, create the tables and sp's, install and configure UNIXODBC, create the webpage and test it.
There are many things you can do with scripting in Linux -- such as replicating config changes -- which don't require a reboot. We use rsync replication for many of the config files (so for instance all printer changes are replicated nightly to the other servers), which isn't something you can easily do with the registry. Note that's new and changed drivers, the full list of printers (over 100 in our organization), default page settings and fonts etc. The files are tiny and the rsync is completed in a few seconds over a bonded T-1.
That said, the Linux methodology of putting scripts in a semi-logical place is better than the chaos of all the ini files all over the place in the Windows 3.11 era -- and in that regard the Windows registry is certainly a step better than before. But I think the Windows registry still falls short when compared to the elegance and plain scriptability of *NIX systems' config files.
If I had to name some reasons I don't like the registry, it's that it's so *huge* and finding things like startup items requires viewing several different registry keys. It's a real PIA in the case you have a slow LAN connection and can't interrupt the user (so you can't logon locally). Having hundreds of desktops to manage is more difficult because of this. I think in general though that is a limitation of Microsoft systems in general -- you don't really have a good remote shell, at least not without adding something in.
Sounds like something is configured incorrectly. I copy a 30GB VM file to a LaCIE Big Disk nightly in around 13-14 minutes. That's on a 2-year-old MacBook Pro running Tiger (10.4). It also doesn't stop anything else from running or slow me down while it does the copy. Since mine is only a Core2Duo 2.4 with 4GB of RAM, your 17 MB file copy should be so fast you don't even see a progress dialog.
My laptop is significantly faster than the other laptops used in our MIS department -- all HP business-grade desktops, some of which are less than a year old. I run Windows XP in a Parallels VM every day at work (although I'd recommend VMWare over Parallels any day).
I played WOW on the MacBook just fine -- the only issue I had was because it's a widescreen I couldn't see as much vertically as I could on my home PC (which has since been given away). I really can't say I've had problems.
I suggest taking it into a local Apple store and finding out what they can do to help, this seems really abnormal. There's no reason your Mac experience should be like this.
I'm not Googling it for you, but I remember much debate during the Microsoft antitrust trials when Microsoft was found to be sharing people/code/documentation between their core OS team and the Office development team. There were documented examples of Windows features that Office enjoyed because they had access to this secret code. The practice was found to be unfair for competitors.
I'm not sure that there were necessarily tricks to make other software not function -- not aware of any "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run" or whatever -- but I certainly wouldn't put it past Microsoft, given their hideous track record in this area.
You don't need DRM for your purpose. Current law protects copyright holders adequately -- some say they are protected too much. Please tell me you aren't living under a rock and haven't seen the numerous civil cases with P2P file sharing services, to give an example. Please tell me you didn't miss TPB getting sued.
OTOH, DRM often gets in the way of legitimate customers. People who really want to break the codec won't be affected, just like someone who really wants to break into your house can't be thwarted without extreme means.
For those of us who have been negatively affected by DRM, we think it sucks.
I have no idea why you brought Linux or TV's into this conversation. Perhaps you are confused? Or just a troll?
Again, it worked fine when connected to a non-digital second monitor.
You might wish to do some research on problems with users trying to show digital content on digital monitors. It has been widespread, and all attributed to DRM.
Insensitive ass or Microsoft apologist? Maybe you're a little bit of both.
I don't know how to say this a different way, so let me be precise:
On the day of the celebration, the laptop was running with no video window open. We plugged in the digital projector. We opened the movie. Both displays were on, however the digital projector showed everything on the screen except the video. Playing the video resulted in sound but no video on the digital projector, and normal video playback on the laptop. It would not play in a window (not fullscreen) on the digital projector either. Everything on the screen -- start menu etc showed just fine on the digital projector. Only the actual video window did not show. We rebooted the laptop several times, closed and re-opened the player several times, no luck. We had no internet service at the location and this was one of the VERY FEW times I didn't have my MacBook Pro with me.
After the service, he tried it at his home (same laptop, same software, same settings). Both displays were on, and the external LCD showed the movie just fine. It also worked just fine with my home Acer box. To throw in some variety, it also works just fine with my MacBook Pro with an external monitor. I should have brought that with me.
I really don't know how to say in a different way that it worked fine with regular monitors and failed with a digital projector. On the digital projector, the Windows desktop, start menu etc all showed fine. The player window (WMP) showed, everything showed EXCEPT the actual movie. That showed as a black rectangle no matter what we tried. The guy showing the video had tested it with a "regular" monitor at home and was absolutely horrified. I felt really bad for him.
I don't know about Vista, but at my father's "celebration of life", the company who created a video memorial was unable to show it on a digital projector under XP because of DRM. The rest of the screen showed fine, but the video was just a black rectangle on the projector no matter what we tried.
Hooking the same laptop up to a regular (non-digital) monitor later proved it worked fine when not connected to a digital projector.
For this reason alone I won't purchase any more Microsoft products.
And yes, the company should have tried it before. The guy whose daughter did it arranged for the video equipment last-minute, and he was very close to the family and as a result was having trouble maintaining his composure. I wasn't familiar with the problem, and in my state of mind I couldn't fix the issue. What's done is done -- imagine 100 people gathered around a laptop screen 5-6 at a time, trying to hear the tinny speakers instead of using the PA system.
Yes, that's one of many reasons I *hate* Microsoft.
I think we're on the same page, so to speak, but there are differences in perspective.
My job in IT is to keep systems running, period. I have one VP between me and the CEO, and the CEO says to keep the systems running, and keep personal crap off there. If that means taking someone off the network, disabling their account, etc then that's specifically approved in advance. Draconian? You are expressly allowed to do only the things we have spelled out in your job description. If you can't defend something as a business need, you shouldn't be doing it. Period.
In our environment, we have (very) expensive T-1 connections between our 19 locations, and corporate VOIP traffic has to compete for bandwidth along with all the other required services. Sharing a T-1 with 10 people is only possible if we limit services to legitimate reasons. Streaming music is specifically not permitted in our environment simply because we don't have the bandwidth to allow it. You are allowed to bring in your own radio/MP3 player and plug it in to the wall socket (but not your computer), and if your job isn't answering phones all day then you can wear headphones if you want.
As far as users go, when the CEO had to send out a letter to everyone asking them not to use our network for any personal use because it was causing widespread problems, and people did it anyway, people were disciplined including terminated. We have been as nice as we can, but when we get salespeople's laptops in for service and their home pages are escort services or they've got a hard drive full of porn and/or MP3's then we have a problem.
Remember, it's not "your" computer, it's the computer assigned to you and owned by the company. You don't control the software that gets installed, you don't get to upgrade components, you don't get to download screen savers. When you start allowing that you have people with nude screen savers or malware screen savers (been there, done that). You truly cannot trust people to act like they're in a corporate environment unless you either watch them like a hawk or you have a very small number of people. We have more than 300 -- too many to fool around with.
As far as the Flash goes, a lot of our online service goes through a 3rd party web portal and that uses Flash. It's a bandwidth hog on Terminal services but there's not much we can do about it -- it's a legitimate business use and we aren't currently in a position to force the 3rd party to change their page.
So we focus on things that aren't legitimate, since asking users to comply wasn't doing it for us. We had to make some examples, and get a little nasty, and eventually even that didn't work. Now we just report them and let HR and their supervisors deal with it.
Try using a Mac. I use one everyday, and I develop for Windows. For the most part things just work. My time is more costly to my employer than spending the extra $200 it cost for my MacBook Pro than a similar machine available at the time. Since I got it in September 2007, 3 members of the MIS team have all had trouble with their laptops, and a couple have had to migrate to new ones. We're buying the corp HP laptops and they just don't seem to hold up over time -- and they're one of the better vendors. Hinges fail, optical drives fail, video card went out on one etc. These weren't refurbs either. Most failures occurred right after the 1 year mark. This isn't limited to laptops either, one developer has an HP desktop that he swore would be faster with a Raptor. The drive sounds horrible -- very noisy -- and because he couldn't get the correct bracket for the second monitor (low-profile brackets won't fit correctly) he had a raw cable hanging out of the slot until someone finally made a custom bracket with a Dremel.
I haven't had any issues with the Mac. I upgraded to 4GB and have thought at times about upgrading to Snow Leopard, but hell it works why risk breaking it? Maybe in another couple of years it will be slow, but I regularly (daily) run XP Pro in Parallels and sometimes open a RHEL5 or CentOS 5 VM simultaneously to test something before pushing it into production. My rdesktop is faster on the Mac than in native Windows, my printer is faster (shared via CUPS over http), and if Windows crashes it doesn't affect my host OS. I have 2 screens active, and "Desktop Manager" gives me a virtual desktop on both, so I can have 2 rdesktops open then hit a key and flip to my XP VM and web browser.
The aluminum case hasn't warped and other than a couple of small scratches looks new. Their plastic laptop covers are all beat up. My boss is reminded of the savings every time he signs off on a repair for one of their machines. I don't have exposed brackets or Frankenstein modifications to make something work. The $200 was well spent.
The solution for "regular users" is to either pay someone to fix it, or buy a new computer when their old one breaks.
My brother is 31 and I still can't convince him that he shouldn't use IE -- he says it's "easier" to use. Same with other family members. You have to let them get infected time and time again and refuse to help -- or get paid for it -- before they will bother to learn. It has to be painful for them so they will learn.
To use a car analogy, if you had someone who constantly burned out their clutch, the problem isn't the clutch. It's the user. If the user won't or can't learn how to prevent it, you can get an automatic (buying a new machine) or keep fixing the same problem over and over. Fixing the clutch for free makes the problem worse.
You can't educate users, so stop wasting your time. People don't care.
I agree -- it's called an acceptable usage policy. Unless your department was charged with training the users, your job is to keep things running for the majority of the users, even if (and sometimes especially when) you disable or otherwise inconvenience a user not following policy.
In our MIS dept, we are only 5 people (3 help desk, 1 of which is a network admin, 1.NET coder and me). We oversee 300+ users, approx 40 servers and 50 laptop users, over 19 locations. We could not do all that we do if we had to train people or if we didn't have usage policies.
I had your viewpoint many years ago, but along the way I discovered that most users don't care. Use your time and effort convincing management that the users' behavior has a cost. Once management understands the cost (even if it's a lost opportunity cost) they will create (or allow your dept to create) an acceptable use policy. Then implement the policy.
We had users viewing, emailing and saving porn on their computers. We had chain emails. We had people installing screen savers and other third-party software. We had a lot of personal web browsing on company time, often to bikini or shopping sites. Users were going to YouTube and typing up all of their location's bandwidth. Users were getting infected because the Symantec AV was not good enough.
When you find people not following policy, the first notice goes to their supervisor with a description of our policy, a description of the problem, and asking them to review it with the employee. The second notice goes to the VP and their supervisor. In some cases a phone call is made or accounts are deactivated depending on severity.
Trying to educate users is a waste of time, you need either a carrot or a stick or they won't listen. GP is suggesting a less formalized approach; we found that no matter how well you lock down the user, without a formal usage policy there are always issues. Now people understand what is not allowed, and they understand they are risking their jobs if they get caught. The network is healthier, the total bandwidth usage has decreased by half, and we're not getting so many screwed up machines in our Help Desk.
Implement the policy, lock the machines down as much as possible, and monitor the results. It simplifies everything. In our case, the technical side involved placing users on a Terminal Server, installing a web filter to block sites and content, and removing users from local admin unless absolutely necessary. We switched AV to Trend Micro and also switched to Trend for Exchange. The policy was explained and signed off by every employee and was made part of all employee reviews. There are no excuses now and everyone understands they are here to work not play.
The Guitar Center warranty of which you speak is remarkable compared to all other warranties I have ever purchased. The Wal-Mart electronics warranty covers only manufacturer defects, not accidents. It specifically does not cover if you drop your iPod Touch for instance. The warranty I purchased for my 2 videocameras I bought at J&R was not honored when my ex-wife dropped one of the cameras and the "on/off/play/record" switch broke off, rendering it unusable. We spent quit a bit of money and effort on that one, shipping it back and forth and talking to foreigners in India. Most warranties are little more than a source of additional income for retailers.
Consumer-grade surge suppressors are little more than outlet duplicators. Clamping time and total suppression ability make most of them totally useless, yet Monster Cable et al will gladly sell you a $50 piece of junk that isn't worth more than $2.50. Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Best Buy, Home Depot etc will all sell these devices to you that do absolutely nothing other than duplicate the outlet. Yes, outlet duplicators have their purpose but giving people a false sense of security is foolish.
Selling an HDTV to someone in the market for a new TV in itself isn't always a bad thing, but the salesperson needs to make sure the customer understands they won't be getting HDTV quality without HDTV service. Often, picture quality of standard def TV on an HDTV set is terrible (which is one of the reasons I went with a $350 tube RCA HDTV from Wal-Mart 2 years ago -- both standard def and HDTV display well).
But he did say K-Mart, and it's one of the lowest of the low-grade bargain bin stores. I would be surprised if the salesperson had any training at all. You have to pay someone more than $10 an hour for them to care.
Slashdot Mirror
I wish you were wrong.
MOD PARENT UP...
No more so (and probably far less so) than the maze of rc scripts in your average Linux or BSD.
I don't know if you're an accidental or intentional troll, but there you go.
The Windows "search" feature by default will not search all the files to find by content, in fact it ignores a considerable number of file types. Linux (or cygwin) will happily -- and very quickly -- find portions of a config quite easily. The Windows registry is significantly more difficult to use, has significantly more entries, and you can prevent the machine from booting all too easily.
If the relatively simple rc files confuse you, and you don't understand the differences in complexity between the Windows registry and a few simple text files, you should probably find another line of work. The more difficult concepts will be far beyond you.
70 TB a day? <sniff> You have neater toys than me.
To be fair, Sidekick users didn't have a viable means to back up their personal data that was being pulled from Microsoft/Danger servers. I don't think it's reasonable to expect the users to find some hack or unofficial method to copy all their data from their devices.
Absolutely correct. Wish I had mod points.
Have you ever used RHN (Red Hat Network) / Red Hat Satellite -- you know, the one where you can schedule a patch to hundreds or even thousands of machines by clicking a couple of times in a web interface? Its ease of use and machine grouping abilities, together with the fact that most *nix upgrades don't require reboots (and are usually quite small) make the Microsoft patching procedure look fairly lame in comparison. Don't even get me started on shell scripting, for instance we use a custom script combined with SSH on our Windows machines so they automatically rsync the latest version of a particularly important homegrown Windows app at logon. The same tools work on *nix of course.
As far as reporting goes, have you ever used RPM? It tracks sooooo much more info than Windows does, for instance it can tell you if a file has changed since the original install, what files were part of the original install, and list any dependencies the package has. It can also solve dependency issues. To my knowledge these aren't things WSUS does.
Monitoring? I created a simple webpage which shows the status of all of our data replication tasks. It took me maybe 30 minutes to write the scripts, create the tables and sp's, install and configure UNIXODBC, create the webpage and test it.
Maybe I'm missing something in your post.
(slow WAN connection)
There are many things you can do with scripting in Linux -- such as replicating config changes -- which don't require a reboot. We use rsync replication for many of the config files (so for instance all printer changes are replicated nightly to the other servers), which isn't something you can easily do with the registry. Note that's new and changed drivers, the full list of printers (over 100 in our organization), default page settings and fonts etc. The files are tiny and the rsync is completed in a few seconds over a bonded T-1.
That said, the Linux methodology of putting scripts in a semi-logical place is better than the chaos of all the ini files all over the place in the Windows 3.11 era -- and in that regard the Windows registry is certainly a step better than before. But I think the Windows registry still falls short when compared to the elegance and plain scriptability of *NIX systems' config files.
If I had to name some reasons I don't like the registry, it's that it's so *huge* and finding things like startup items requires viewing several different registry keys. It's a real PIA in the case you have a slow LAN connection and can't interrupt the user (so you can't logon locally). Having hundreds of desktops to manage is more difficult because of this. I think in general though that is a limitation of Microsoft systems in general -- you don't really have a good remote shell, at least not without adding something in.
Actually you can polish a turd, it was a surprising result from a Mythbusters episode a while back. Denser turds turn out especially shiny.
<gagging> Teaches me to read Slashdot while I'm eating...
LOL I deserve it
It's too bad you couldn't have used your talent for a better end. The work you've done for Microsoft has cost you your soul.
sudo mod parent up
Sounds like something is configured incorrectly. I copy a 30GB VM file to a LaCIE Big Disk nightly in around 13-14 minutes. That's on a 2-year-old MacBook Pro running Tiger (10.4). It also doesn't stop anything else from running or slow me down while it does the copy. Since mine is only a Core2Duo 2.4 with 4GB of RAM, your 17 MB file copy should be so fast you don't even see a progress dialog.
My laptop is significantly faster than the other laptops used in our MIS department -- all HP business-grade desktops, some of which are less than a year old. I run Windows XP in a Parallels VM every day at work (although I'd recommend VMWare over Parallels any day).
I played WOW on the MacBook just fine -- the only issue I had was because it's a widescreen I couldn't see as much vertically as I could on my home PC (which has since been given away). I really can't say I've had problems.
I suggest taking it into a local Apple store and finding out what they can do to help, this seems really abnormal. There's no reason your Mac experience should be like this.
I'm not Googling it for you, but I remember much debate during the Microsoft antitrust trials when Microsoft was found to be sharing people/code/documentation between their core OS team and the Office development team. There were documented examples of Windows features that Office enjoyed because they had access to this secret code. The practice was found to be unfair for competitors.
I'm not sure that there were necessarily tricks to make other software not function -- not aware of any "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run" or whatever -- but I certainly wouldn't put it past Microsoft, given their hideous track record in this area.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1390221&cid=29620065
DRM != copyright.
You don't need DRM for your purpose. Current law protects copyright holders adequately -- some say they are protected too much. Please tell me you aren't living under a rock and haven't seen the numerous civil cases with P2P file sharing services, to give an example. Please tell me you didn't miss TPB getting sued.
OTOH, DRM often gets in the way of legitimate customers. People who really want to break the codec won't be affected, just like someone who really wants to break into your house can't be thwarted without extreme means.
For those of us who have been negatively affected by DRM, we think it sucks.
I have no idea why you brought Linux or TV's into this conversation. Perhaps you are confused? Or just a troll?
Again, it worked fine when connected to a non-digital second monitor.
You might wish to do some research on problems with users trying to show digital content on digital monitors. It has been widespread, and all attributed to DRM.
Insensitive ass or Microsoft apologist? Maybe you're a little bit of both.
I don't know how to say this a different way, so let me be precise:
On the day of the celebration, the laptop was running with no video window open. We plugged in the digital projector. We opened the movie. Both displays were on, however the digital projector showed everything on the screen except the video. Playing the video resulted in sound but no video on the digital projector, and normal video playback on the laptop. It would not play in a window (not fullscreen) on the digital projector either. Everything on the screen -- start menu etc showed just fine on the digital projector. Only the actual video window did not show. We rebooted the laptop several times, closed and re-opened the player several times, no luck. We had no internet service at the location and this was one of the VERY FEW times I didn't have my MacBook Pro with me.
After the service, he tried it at his home (same laptop, same software, same settings). Both displays were on, and the external LCD showed the movie just fine. It also worked just fine with my home Acer box. To throw in some variety, it also works just fine with my MacBook Pro with an external monitor. I should have brought that with me.
I really don't know how to say in a different way that it worked fine with regular monitors and failed with a digital projector. On the digital projector, the Windows desktop, start menu etc all showed fine. The player window (WMP) showed, everything showed EXCEPT the actual movie. That showed as a black rectangle no matter what we tried. The guy showing the video had tested it with a "regular" monitor at home and was absolutely horrified. I felt really bad for him.
Again, it worked fine when connected to a "regular" LCD monitor later.
I don't know about Vista, but at my father's "celebration of life", the company who created a video memorial was unable to show it on a digital projector under XP because of DRM. The rest of the screen showed fine, but the video was just a black rectangle on the projector no matter what we tried.
Hooking the same laptop up to a regular (non-digital) monitor later proved it worked fine when not connected to a digital projector.
For this reason alone I won't purchase any more Microsoft products.
And yes, the company should have tried it before. The guy whose daughter did it arranged for the video equipment last-minute, and he was very close to the family and as a result was having trouble maintaining his composure. I wasn't familiar with the problem, and in my state of mind I couldn't fix the issue. What's done is done -- imagine 100 people gathered around a laptop screen 5-6 at a time, trying to hear the tinny speakers instead of using the PA system.
Yes, that's one of many reasons I *hate* Microsoft.
I think we're on the same page, so to speak, but there are differences in perspective.
My job in IT is to keep systems running, period. I have one VP between me and the CEO, and the CEO says to keep the systems running, and keep personal crap off there. If that means taking someone off the network, disabling their account, etc then that's specifically approved in advance. Draconian? You are expressly allowed to do only the things we have spelled out in your job description. If you can't defend something as a business need, you shouldn't be doing it. Period.
In our environment, we have (very) expensive T-1 connections between our 19 locations, and corporate VOIP traffic has to compete for bandwidth along with all the other required services. Sharing a T-1 with 10 people is only possible if we limit services to legitimate reasons. Streaming music is specifically not permitted in our environment simply because we don't have the bandwidth to allow it. You are allowed to bring in your own radio/MP3 player and plug it in to the wall socket (but not your computer), and if your job isn't answering phones all day then you can wear headphones if you want.
As far as users go, when the CEO had to send out a letter to everyone asking them not to use our network for any personal use because it was causing widespread problems, and people did it anyway, people were disciplined including terminated. We have been as nice as we can, but when we get salespeople's laptops in for service and their home pages are escort services or they've got a hard drive full of porn and/or MP3's then we have a problem.
Remember, it's not "your" computer, it's the computer assigned to you and owned by the company. You don't control the software that gets installed, you don't get to upgrade components, you don't get to download screen savers. When you start allowing that you have people with nude screen savers or malware screen savers (been there, done that). You truly cannot trust people to act like they're in a corporate environment unless you either watch them like a hawk or you have a very small number of people. We have more than 300 -- too many to fool around with.
As far as the Flash goes, a lot of our online service goes through a 3rd party web portal and that uses Flash. It's a bandwidth hog on Terminal services but there's not much we can do about it -- it's a legitimate business use and we aren't currently in a position to force the 3rd party to change their page.
So we focus on things that aren't legitimate, since asking users to comply wasn't doing it for us. We had to make some examples, and get a little nasty, and eventually even that didn't work. Now we just report them and let HR and their supervisors deal with it.
Try using a Mac. I use one everyday, and I develop for Windows. For the most part things just work. My time is more costly to my employer than spending the extra $200 it cost for my MacBook Pro than a similar machine available at the time. Since I got it in September 2007, 3 members of the MIS team have all had trouble with their laptops, and a couple have had to migrate to new ones. We're buying the corp HP laptops and they just don't seem to hold up over time -- and they're one of the better vendors. Hinges fail, optical drives fail, video card went out on one etc. These weren't refurbs either. Most failures occurred right after the 1 year mark. This isn't limited to laptops either, one developer has an HP desktop that he swore would be faster with a Raptor. The drive sounds horrible -- very noisy -- and because he couldn't get the correct bracket for the second monitor (low-profile brackets won't fit correctly) he had a raw cable hanging out of the slot until someone finally made a custom bracket with a Dremel.
I haven't had any issues with the Mac. I upgraded to 4GB and have thought at times about upgrading to Snow Leopard, but hell it works why risk breaking it? Maybe in another couple of years it will be slow, but I regularly (daily) run XP Pro in Parallels and sometimes open a RHEL5 or CentOS 5 VM simultaneously to test something before pushing it into production. My rdesktop is faster on the Mac than in native Windows, my printer is faster (shared via CUPS over http), and if Windows crashes it doesn't affect my host OS. I have 2 screens active, and "Desktop Manager" gives me a virtual desktop on both, so I can have 2 rdesktops open then hit a key and flip to my XP VM and web browser.
The aluminum case hasn't warped and other than a couple of small scratches looks new. Their plastic laptop covers are all beat up. My boss is reminded of the savings every time he signs off on a repair for one of their machines. I don't have exposed brackets or Frankenstein modifications to make something work. The $200 was well spent.
The solution for "regular users" is to either pay someone to fix it, or buy a new computer when their old one breaks.
My brother is 31 and I still can't convince him that he shouldn't use IE -- he says it's "easier" to use. Same with other family members. You have to let them get infected time and time again and refuse to help -- or get paid for it -- before they will bother to learn. It has to be painful for them so they will learn.
To use a car analogy, if you had someone who constantly burned out their clutch, the problem isn't the clutch. It's the user. If the user won't or can't learn how to prevent it, you can get an automatic (buying a new machine) or keep fixing the same problem over and over. Fixing the clutch for free makes the problem worse.
You can't educate users, so stop wasting your time. People don't care.
I agree -- it's called an acceptable usage policy. Unless your department was charged with training the users, your job is to keep things running for the majority of the users, even if (and sometimes especially when) you disable or otherwise inconvenience a user not following policy.
.NET coder and me). We oversee 300+ users, approx 40 servers and 50 laptop users, over 19 locations. We could not do all that we do if we had to train people or if we didn't have usage policies.
In our MIS dept, we are only 5 people (3 help desk, 1 of which is a network admin, 1
I had your viewpoint many years ago, but along the way I discovered that most users don't care. Use your time and effort convincing management that the users' behavior has a cost. Once management understands the cost (even if it's a lost opportunity cost) they will create (or allow your dept to create) an acceptable use policy. Then implement the policy.
We had users viewing, emailing and saving porn on their computers. We had chain emails. We had people installing screen savers and other third-party software. We had a lot of personal web browsing on company time, often to bikini or shopping sites. Users were going to YouTube and typing up all of their location's bandwidth. Users were getting infected because the Symantec AV was not good enough. When you find people not following policy, the first notice goes to their supervisor with a description of our policy, a description of the problem, and asking them to review it with the employee. The second notice goes to the VP and their supervisor. In some cases a phone call is made or accounts are deactivated depending on severity.
Trying to educate users is a waste of time, you need either a carrot or a stick or they won't listen. GP is suggesting a less formalized approach; we found that no matter how well you lock down the user, without a formal usage policy there are always issues. Now people understand what is not allowed, and they understand they are risking their jobs if they get caught. The network is healthier, the total bandwidth usage has decreased by half, and we're not getting so many screwed up machines in our Help Desk.
Implement the policy, lock the machines down as much as possible, and monitor the results. It simplifies everything. In our case, the technical side involved placing users on a Terminal Server, installing a web filter to block sites and content, and removing users from local admin unless absolutely necessary. We switched AV to Trend Micro and also switched to Trend for Exchange. The policy was explained and signed off by every employee and was made part of all employee reviews. There are no excuses now and everyone understands they are here to work not play.
The Guitar Center warranty of which you speak is remarkable compared to all other warranties I have ever purchased. The Wal-Mart electronics warranty covers only manufacturer defects, not accidents. It specifically does not cover if you drop your iPod Touch for instance. The warranty I purchased for my 2 videocameras I bought at J&R was not honored when my ex-wife dropped one of the cameras and the "on/off/play/record" switch broke off, rendering it unusable. We spent quit a bit of money and effort on that one, shipping it back and forth and talking to foreigners in India. Most warranties are little more than a source of additional income for retailers.
Consumer-grade surge suppressors are little more than outlet duplicators. Clamping time and total suppression ability make most of them totally useless, yet Monster Cable et al will gladly sell you a $50 piece of junk that isn't worth more than $2.50. Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Best Buy, Home Depot etc will all sell these devices to you that do absolutely nothing other than duplicate the outlet. Yes, outlet duplicators have their purpose but giving people a false sense of security is foolish.
Selling an HDTV to someone in the market for a new TV in itself isn't always a bad thing, but the salesperson needs to make sure the customer understands they won't be getting HDTV quality without HDTV service. Often, picture quality of standard def TV on an HDTV set is terrible (which is one of the reasons I went with a $350 tube RCA HDTV from Wal-Mart 2 years ago -- both standard def and HDTV display well).
But he did say K-Mart, and it's one of the lowest of the low-grade bargain bin stores. I would be surprised if the salesperson had any training at all. You have to pay someone more than $10 an hour for them to care.