In my personal experience, I've had good luck with them from a security and stability standpoint. Granted, there is better stuff out there, but it still works pretty well for me. I also have a few music programs and games that I use which don't work on Linux (yes, even through WINE), and I don't want to have to pay extra for Apple-branded hardware, so Windows + self built systems it is.
Be sure to take a look at the [H]ard|Forum worklogs, there are a lot of active, small form factor projects going on right now. One guy has a SUPER awesome mITX rig in the process of being built, complete with custom case and watercooling solution.
Also, for kicks, my (non-impressive) [H]ard|Forum sig:
Disclaimer: This is only my opinion, nothing more.
It's the same problem I have with Apple keeping people locked into the Appstore. It's not that the action itself is a big deal, it's the fact that they are actually doing it that's the problem. The consequences of that action is irrelevant; the action itself is bad.
Because I'm not. Sure, I do mail merge programming for documents, but that hardly requires high level skills. Aside from some of the mathematical calculations necessary when pulling in insurance verification info, it's all extremely simple stuff...I would place it as being about as difficult as vanilla HTML. As far as the validation documentation is concerned, all that requires is that I'm familiar with how our database is configured. Other than that, it all comes down to organizational skills.
You're only looking at it from a user perspective. Migration involves lots of IT people, the people who create the standard configuration, the people who do the installs and migration of your applications/settings/files (which can be very complicated if it involves a lot of custom applications)
From a staffing perspective, this isn't that big of a deal. Again, we have about 20 IT people who work at this location servicing roughly 600 users...that's only thirty computers per IT person. Upgrade to every person having the same hardware, make a bunch of copies of an image, and there ya go...it could be done over a single weekend.
and the people who handle help desk... yes there will be a large spike in help desk calls after migration.
This is very true. We already have a fairly robust help desk (I think we have 15 full timers and 10 temps working help desk duties), but more would likely be necessary.
Actually, as far as pay is concerned, that is one area our buisness unit does very right. The manager in charge of our business unit gave up his bonus completely this year, as did his second-in-command and third-in-command. Between those three people giving up their bonuses, every full-time employee had their bonus raised by 1% (the average bonus paid to full-timers this year was 3%...not bad, considering many other companies in our industry are not just cutting bonuses, but even cutting regular salary.)
The culture around here is great, and everyone watches out for each other. Some questionable business decisions may be made every now and then, but no one can accuse upper management of being greedy.
True...I guess this is indicitive of the difference between myself and him, then. I hear change the world, and I think of positive things that benefit all mankind. He hears change the world, and he thinks of leaving the world a different place than it was before he showed up, good or bad.::shrug::
They don't produce their hardware, but they do design it. The back of my iPhone says "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China". In the end, it doesn't really matter who puts consumer electronics together since 95% of the work is the design (by Apple) and making sure they're built to spec (also by Apple).
Yeah, I know...still, in my opinion, if you are going to call a company a hardware company, they should be the ones who build it. Just my opinion, nothing more.
Who manufactures your Google Nexus One? Was it Google? Nope. But everyone still calls it the "googlephone", and for good reason.
People don't claim Google is now a hardware manufacturer, though...
We decided to migrate to Siebel almost 5 years ago because of the awesome reporting we can do on the back end for our clients (we were previously using Lotus Notes, which from a reporting standpoint is about as useful as tits on a bull.) We have actually had pretty good success with it from a client satisfaction perspective as well as a productivity perspective...but, as you pointed out, it is likely the reason we are still stuck with XP and IE6.
That's just it though, there wouldn't be that large of a productivity hit because we've had Office 2007 for a bit over a year now...everyone is caught up on that. The day-to-day interface differences between XP and Windows 7 are trivial to learn.
While there would be training costs associated with a migration here, it wouldn't be as bad as you think. Most of our software is up to date, it's just IE6 and XP SP2 that are lagging behind.
Exactly my point:-) There is no way we would spend that much per employee. I purposely cited a high estimate to demonstrate that even if we spent that ludicrous amount on each employee, the total cost would be trivial compared to our annual revenue.
what the hell does this mean? "My primary role is programming mail merge documents while maintaining all of the document templates we use within Siebel. My secondary role is maintaining validation documentation for new database releases."
you send spam?
I'll start with the mail merge.
Our particular business unit is a pharmaceutical call center. Patients contact us when they have questions regarding their medication. We also provide Patient Assistance Programs, conduct Insurance Verifications, and also assist in claim denials. Obviously, there are a lot of forms associated with this work. My job is to design these forms based on our clients needs (our clients tend to be Pharmaceutical companies), and then program them with the necessary code to pull demographic information, therapy information, diagnosis, and dosage from our database (filled with data that has been provided by patients or doctors over the phone so that patients and physician's don't have to fill out the whole form manually. Everything we submit is explicitly requested by a patient, physician, or medical office. Our business unit receives around 20,000 calls per day and makes around 12,000 calls per day.
We have enough trouble keeping up with stuff that is actually requested, we wouldn't have the time or resources to send out unsolicited documentation even if we wanted to.
Validation Documentation is the process of ensuring that our final testing of new database releases matches what our release plan was, making sure our release plan matches our functional design, and making sure our functional design matches our requirements. Basically, it's a glorified way of saying "making sure we don't miss anything we intended to build into our monthly Siebel releases." It's simple but essential work in case we have to retrace our steps due to database errors after modifications are made to the system.
but if their advertising practices are any indication, they are in it for the money. I'm pretty happy with many of the security changes they made a couple of weeks ago after the furor over privacy reached the boiling point, but to claim they have benevolent intentions is ignorance at best.
Let's assume we have exactly 10,000 employees, and the company spent on average $500 on every employee for a new computer. It would cost only $5 million to replace every employee's computer in the entire company. Factor in upgrading the servers, and you're looking at $10 million, tops...and that is if we did it internationally for every single employee. Upgrading just our business unit (which doesn't bring in the most revenue, but is the most client facing unit) would cost substantially less.
Let me guess, you aren't in the IT department, are you?
My primary role is programming mail merge documents while maintaining all of the document templates we use within Siebel. My secondary role is maintaining validation documentation for new database releases.
How large is your organization?
The company as a whole has over 10,000 employees internationally. Our specific business unit, however, is only about 600 people.
How many folks are working in IT?
In our business unit, we have about 20 IT people, not including help desk folks. Company wide, we have literally hundreds of IT employees.
I suspect they are starving the IT department to keep the company afloat,and WinXP SP2 and IE6 may be the most recent they can get from MS - you may not have software that passes Microsoft Genuine Advantage, making IE8 (or maybe even IE7) and SP3 unavailable to you...
Last year, the company netted $1.8 billion in revenue ($106 million of which came directly from our business unit). That was the best year ever for both the company and our business unit (in fact, our unit won an award for highest year-over-year percentage increase in both income and profit). I think we can afford to upgrade our computers.
I think the way Apple sees it is that, by providing the hardware, software, and services together, they offer a complete package in a way that Microsoft and Dell just can't.
I would agree with you if Apple actually manufactured all of their hardware...but if you open up an Apple device, literally everything is manufactured by someone else. I know Apple sells branded hardware, but because they don't actually produce any of it, I don't consider them to be a hardware company.
...is my company still using Windows XP SP2, but we are still using IE6. Feh...and they complained that Audacity was a security risk because it was "open source, so anyone could hack it".
On a related note, what's with Apple pimping Bing all of a sudden?
Because, at this point, Google is more of a threat than Microsoft. Apple knows that the chances of OSX catching up to Windows in terms of market share are practically zero. However, Android poses a credible threat to Apple's mobile popularity here in America.
I miss the days when Altavista was king (purely nostalgia, I assure you). I don't, however, miss getting marked down in Spanish class due to using BabelFish -_-;;
Slashdot Mirror
In my personal experience, I've had good luck with them from a security and stability standpoint. Granted, there is better stuff out there, but it still works pretty well for me. I also have a few music programs and games that I use which don't work on Linux (yes, even through WINE), and I don't want to have to pay extra for Apple-branded hardware, so Windows + self built systems it is.
Be sure to take a look at the [H]ard|Forum worklogs, there are a lot of active, small form factor projects going on right now. One guy has a SUPER awesome mITX rig in the process of being built, complete with custom case and watercooling solution.
Also, for kicks, my (non-impressive) [H]ard|Forum sig:
Display: Asus VH236H | Dell 2005FPW
Foundation: Cooler Master Storm Scout | OCZ ModXStream Pro 700w
System: Gigabyte GA-MA785GM | AMD Athlon 64 X2 5400+ @ 3.2 GHz | Corsair XMS2 4GB DDR2 800 | ATI 4850
Internal Storage: Diamondmax 21 system | WD15EADS archives
External Storage: 1.25TB in a KINGWIN DK-32U-S | WDMER1600TN
Input: Kensington 64325 Expert Mouse | Saitek Eclipse II | M-Audio Axiom 25
Headphones: non-amped Audio Technica ATH-AD700
The consequences of that action are irrelevant
Fixed.
Disclaimer: This is only my opinion, nothing more.
It's the same problem I have with Apple keeping people locked into the Appstore. It's not that the action itself is a big deal, it's the fact that they are actually doing it that's the problem. The consequences of that action is irrelevant; the action itself is bad.
I like your products, Microsoft...but I still abhor your business practices.
Kinda like Sony, Apple, etc...
I can understand why they want to do this for tracking purposes, but won't this break a lot of older Twitter apps?
Because I'm not. Sure, I do mail merge programming for documents, but that hardly requires high level skills. Aside from some of the mathematical calculations necessary when pulling in insurance verification info, it's all extremely simple stuff...I would place it as being about as difficult as vanilla HTML. As far as the validation documentation is concerned, all that requires is that I'm familiar with how our database is configured. Other than that, it all comes down to organizational skills.
I have no problem with the fact we are still using XP...but the fact that we are still using IE6 is scary.
Security, ESPECIALLY at a company such as ours, is immeasurably valuable.
"The Audacity of dope", as my fiancee put it :-)
You're only looking at it from a user perspective. Migration involves lots of IT people, the people who create the standard configuration, the people who do the installs and migration of your applications/settings/files (which can be very complicated if it involves a lot of custom applications)
From a staffing perspective, this isn't that big of a deal. Again, we have about 20 IT people who work at this location servicing roughly 600 users...that's only thirty computers per IT person. Upgrade to every person having the same hardware, make a bunch of copies of an image, and there ya go...it could be done over a single weekend.
and the people who handle help desk... yes there will be a large spike in help desk calls after migration.
This is very true. We already have a fairly robust help desk (I think we have 15 full timers and 10 temps working help desk duties), but more would likely be necessary.
Actually, as far as pay is concerned, that is one area our buisness unit does very right. The manager in charge of our business unit gave up his bonus completely this year, as did his second-in-command and third-in-command. Between those three people giving up their bonuses, every full-time employee had their bonus raised by 1% (the average bonus paid to full-timers this year was 3%...not bad, considering many other companies in our industry are not just cutting bonuses, but even cutting regular salary.)
The culture around here is great, and everyone watches out for each other. Some questionable business decisions may be made every now and then, but no one can accuse upper management of being greedy.
True...I guess this is indicitive of the difference between myself and him, then. I hear change the world, and I think of positive things that benefit all mankind. He hears change the world, and he thinks of leaving the world a different place than it was before he showed up, good or bad. ::shrug::
They don't produce their hardware, but they do design it. The back of my iPhone says "Designed by Apple in California, Assembled in China". In the end, it doesn't really matter who puts consumer electronics together since 95% of the work is the design (by Apple) and making sure they're built to spec (also by Apple).
Yeah, I know...still, in my opinion, if you are going to call a company a hardware company, they should be the ones who build it. Just my opinion, nothing more.
Who manufactures your Google Nexus One? Was it Google? Nope. But everyone still calls it the "googlephone", and for good reason.
People don't claim Google is now a hardware manufacturer, though...
We decided to migrate to Siebel almost 5 years ago because of the awesome reporting we can do on the back end for our clients (we were previously using Lotus Notes, which from a reporting standpoint is about as useful as tits on a bull.) We have actually had pretty good success with it from a client satisfaction perspective as well as a productivity perspective...but, as you pointed out, it is likely the reason we are still stuck with XP and IE6.
That's just it though, there wouldn't be that large of a productivity hit because we've had Office 2007 for a bit over a year now...everyone is caught up on that. The day-to-day interface differences between XP and Windows 7 are trivial to learn.
While there would be training costs associated with a migration here, it wouldn't be as bad as you think. Most of our software is up to date, it's just IE6 and XP SP2 that are lagging behind.
Exactly my point :-) There is no way we would spend that much per employee. I purposely cited a high estimate to demonstrate that even if we spent that ludicrous amount on each employee, the total cost would be trivial compared to our annual revenue.
what the hell does this mean?
"My primary role is programming mail merge documents while maintaining all of the document templates we use within Siebel. My secondary role is maintaining validation documentation for new database releases."
you send spam?
I'll start with the mail merge.
Our particular business unit is a pharmaceutical call center. Patients contact us when they have questions regarding their medication. We also provide Patient Assistance Programs, conduct Insurance Verifications, and also assist in claim denials. Obviously, there are a lot of forms associated with this work. My job is to design these forms based on our clients needs (our clients tend to be Pharmaceutical companies), and then program them with the necessary code to pull demographic information, therapy information, diagnosis, and dosage from our database (filled with data that has been provided by patients or doctors over the phone so that patients and physician's don't have to fill out the whole form manually. Everything we submit is explicitly requested by a patient, physician, or medical office. Our business unit receives around 20,000 calls per day and makes around 12,000 calls per day.
We have enough trouble keeping up with stuff that is actually requested, we wouldn't have the time or resources to send out unsolicited documentation even if we wanted to.
Validation Documentation is the process of ensuring that our final testing of new database releases matches what our release plan was, making sure our release plan matches our functional design, and making sure our functional design matches our requirements. Basically, it's a glorified way of saying "making sure we don't miss anything we intended to build into our monthly Siebel releases." It's simple but essential work in case we have to retrace our steps due to database errors after modifications are made to the system.
but if their advertising practices are any indication, they are in it for the money. I'm pretty happy with many of the security changes they made a couple of weeks ago after the furor over privacy reached the boiling point, but to claim they have benevolent intentions is ignorance at best.
For further clarification:
Let's assume we have exactly 10,000 employees, and the company spent on average $500 on every employee for a new computer. It would cost only $5 million to replace every employee's computer in the entire company. Factor in upgrading the servers, and you're looking at $10 million, tops...and that is if we did it internationally for every single employee. Upgrading just our business unit (which doesn't bring in the most revenue, but is the most client facing unit) would cost substantially less.
Let me guess, you aren't in the IT department, are you?
My primary role is programming mail merge documents while maintaining all of the document templates we use within Siebel. My secondary role is maintaining validation documentation for new database releases.
How large is your organization?
The company as a whole has over 10,000 employees internationally. Our specific business unit, however, is only about 600 people.
How many folks are working in IT?
In our business unit, we have about 20 IT people, not including help desk folks. Company wide, we have literally hundreds of IT employees.
I suspect they are starving the IT department to keep the company afloat,and WinXP SP2 and IE6 may be the most recent they can get from MS - you may not have software that passes Microsoft Genuine Advantage, making IE8 (or maybe even IE7) and SP3 unavailable to you...
Last year, the company netted $1.8 billion in revenue ($106 million of which came directly from our business unit). That was the best year ever for both the company and our business unit (in fact, our unit won an award for highest year-over-year percentage increase in both income and profit). I think we can afford to upgrade our computers.
I think the way Apple sees it is that, by providing the hardware, software, and services together, they offer a complete package in a way that Microsoft and Dell just can't.
I would agree with you if Apple actually manufactured all of their hardware...but if you open up an Apple device, literally everything is manufactured by someone else. I know Apple sells branded hardware, but because they don't actually produce any of it, I don't consider them to be a hardware company.
...is my company still using Windows XP SP2, but we are still using IE6. Feh...and they complained that Audacity was a security risk because it was "open source, so anyone could hack it".
Insanity.
On a related note, what's with Apple pimping Bing all of a sudden?
Because, at this point, Google is more of a threat than Microsoft. Apple knows that the chances of OSX catching up to Windows in terms of market share are practically zero. However, Android poses a credible threat to Apple's mobile popularity here in America.
I miss the days when Altavista was king (purely nostalgia, I assure you). I don't, however, miss getting marked down in Spanish class due to using BabelFish -_-;;
Hell yeah, it's Sealab:-) Sealab 2021, that is, not the original 2020.