its amazing the continuing trend of folks using the 'my mind was warped by the normalisation and glamour of violence in video games and horror films' but these same people have sufficiently strong minds to not succumb to the continuous deluge of advertising thrust upon us every day.
in the 90's we had advertising everywhere, the sidewalk, the urinals, the sky, but NEVER in our dreams
One thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned here is proper use of offline modes, rather than being a hardware thing this is possibly more of an O/S or application thing, but is a crucial area which is often overlooked.
If you have a user with Windows who works mostly away, then domain credentials must have an absurdly high cache number or else they will no longer be able to login after working a month offline. Using local user/password instead means they have to keep typing in passwords when they eventually do access the network resources unless set in a batch file. Yes easy to do but not for a lot of differing users/connections/laptops.
Roaming profiles equally are great but troublesome - not immediately but think of the user who installs iTunes and then fills their 80gb ipod! Yes there are controls to stop certain folders syncing but there is no granularity.
Synchronisation of data files can be done in a variety of ways, but short of using a cumbersome safe that everyone has to check files in and out of, then there is always going to be problems with synchronisation: someone takes a file offline, makes a change then comes back and syncs a week later. The day before they sync someone else modifies the file - who wins?
Synchronisation of any database app also has similar problems, whether its keeping a CRM up to date or financial data, strict controls have to be enforced to make sure that when it does sync it syncs properly. The trouble is endusers always will request full access and it just 'to work'.
One day the entire world (read: including the green fields, yellow deserts and blue oceans) will be networked, and then we can issue thumbdrives that boot *nix and establish RDP back to the head office...
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its amazing the continuing trend of folks using the 'my mind was warped by the normalisation and glamour of violence in video games and horror films' but these same people have sufficiently strong minds to not succumb to the continuous deluge of advertising thrust upon us every day. in the 90's we had advertising everywhere, the sidewalk, the urinals, the sky, but NEVER in our dreams
One thing that doesn't seem to be mentioned here is proper use of offline modes, rather than being a hardware thing this is possibly more of an O/S or application thing, but is a crucial area which is often overlooked. If you have a user with Windows who works mostly away, then domain credentials must have an absurdly high cache number or else they will no longer be able to login after working a month offline. Using local user/password instead means they have to keep typing in passwords when they eventually do access the network resources unless set in a batch file. Yes easy to do but not for a lot of differing users/connections/laptops. Roaming profiles equally are great but troublesome - not immediately but think of the user who installs iTunes and then fills their 80gb ipod! Yes there are controls to stop certain folders syncing but there is no granularity. Synchronisation of data files can be done in a variety of ways, but short of using a cumbersome safe that everyone has to check files in and out of, then there is always going to be problems with synchronisation: someone takes a file offline, makes a change then comes back and syncs a week later. The day before they sync someone else modifies the file - who wins? Synchronisation of any database app also has similar problems, whether its keeping a CRM up to date or financial data, strict controls have to be enforced to make sure that when it does sync it syncs properly. The trouble is endusers always will request full access and it just 'to work'. One day the entire world (read: including the green fields, yellow deserts and blue oceans) will be networked, and then we can issue thumbdrives that boot *nix and establish RDP back to the head office...