Office IT rant

[Ns1]

wtf is the point of that??

security?

We have a somewhat similar pilot program at our company. You bring in a laptop, we'll treat it as a thin client so you can use your precious MBP.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

lol this is so my VP in IT....x truck driver who was slightly geeky and friends with the owners (owners still drive for the company) so he got put in charge of IT when the company was smallish, now its grown somewhat but its still not a huge company as far as # of employees that have a work station (25ish total i'm guessing) no one knows how to program yet we keep moving to these open source platforms for "flexability" yet then we pay someone to fix bugs...freaking money pit if you ask me...

I think you found your answer. The guy has no clue about corporate IT, but with only 25 users, perhaps he doesn't need to have one. He wouldn't make it in a larger shop.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

wtf is the point of that??
stop saying lappy, it make you sound retarded especially if you work in IT.

No idea. We currently have old Linux desktops (most are E6600s w/4GB RAM).
God forbid that I work in IT. Chip design engineer

 

[nageov3t]

I love thin clients

that said, they're not great for all users... for those of us whose primary jobs just involve webpage guis, the ticket system, email, and RDP/SSH'ing into different servers, thin clients are great.

but they're not for everyone... departments with different needs (typically either security requirements or processing power needs) get physical desktops.

 

[Dumac]

departments with different needs (typically either security requirements or processing power needs) get physical desktops.

We use thin clients for security reasons

 

[AznAnarchy99]

I'm not IT but we converted to thin clients about a month ago and there are nothing be bugs and hiccups when the regular old desktops worked just fine.

Converting to thin clients right now actually. Only upside is that they are small. Performance and everything else they suck.

In addition, Ive been fighting to put Windows 7 64 bit on everything but since there is one professor that has some random program that he uses for one day in every quarter we are appeasing him and keeping 32 bit. And this professor made us buy 8gb of extra ram for the staff laptop. Yes lets put more ram in when we cant even use the 4gb thats in it right now.

Blaah

 

[nageov3t]

We use thin clients for security reasons

our legal department uses desktops. I always assumed it was for security reasons, but it's above my paygrade.

(I work at a tech company, but I'm not part of our internal IT team)

 

[Dumac]

(I work at a tech company, but I'm not part of our internal IT team)

Same here. Plus I'm new, so I don't even know how all the system are set up yet.

 

[SMOGZINN]

shouldn't the idea of the IT department be to make the rest of the companies lifes easier?

No. The idea of IT is to help the company make a profit, just like every other department in a company. In your case their job is probably to reduce the overhead of IT as much as possible.

oh I understand saving money, just don't see how replacing 25 good working computers and replacing them with 25 thin clients and a big ass server saves money. I can understand if it was a new deployment but this is just replacing what we had.

Those computers were probably leased, or could be re-sold/re-purposed for less then their operating cost. Computers have a large maintenance cost associated with them, and thin clients cut that down considerably. So much so that it is probably worth the loss in productivity that sometimes comes with them.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Those computers were probably leased, or could be re-sold/re-purposed for less then their operating cost. Computers have a large maintenance cost associated with them, and thin clients cut that down considerably. So much so that it is probably worth the loss in productivity that sometimes comes with them.

Yep and once properly setup they can usually be so seamless to the user that it's the same experience as a PC. When I left the hospital they were playing around with a setup like that using VMware PC over IP and as a test we watched a full HD LOTR video through the thin client and it was only slightly choppy. There are some pretty awesome products out there for thin clients. I believe this is a better solution than "cloud" since it's like cloud, except you own and control it.

Of course for a graphics or gaming company a solution like this would not be as good. But for typical office type work it's fine. The best is if the user's hardware fails you swap it with a new one and they're good to go. No reconfiguring profiles, copying data etc. Their profile is on the VM server.

 

[Icepick]

so any IT people out there want to let me know why ZIMBRA would make sense?

Yes. Zimbra makes sense when your VP gets a healthy kickback for purchasing licenses for your entire corporation.

 

[Ns1]

Yes. Zimbra makes sense when your VP gets a healthy kickback for purchasing licenses for your entire corporation.

Or saw the fees for new licenses and said "fuck that shit"

 

[Oceanas]

In addition, Ive been fighting to put Windows 7 64 bit on everything but since there is one professor that has some random program that he uses for one day in every quarter we are appeasing him and keeping 32 bit

Blaah

Install Win 7 64 bit and use XP mode for the other program?

 

[Narse]

I can't tell you how much I fucking hate Outlook. I used Lotus Notes at my last job, and no one liked it. I loved it compared to Outlook at my current org.

What I really love about my IT management is that they think of an idea and it's just knee-jerk from there... "Oh yeah, let's get that!" and have no idea how to properly implement it, or support it. Such a waste of time. We have spent millions of dollars on apps that users don't even use correctly.

Does Google Mail have LDAP support? I'd take that over anything in a heartbeat. My Outlook crashes nightly, and requires a reboot each time it crashes. It also takes about five to ten minutes to even just open the app. Windows profiles don't help.

We use Lotus Notes 8.5 at work. Notes does so much more than Outlook it's not even funny. I would almost say they are not even in the same class. I actually think for a large corp Notes/Domino is better than Outlook/Exchange.

 

[Narse]

I currently work on Lotus Notes. I cannot stand it. Some parts of it a ok, but overall it makes me want to beat it to death with a virtual trout. It isn't good that there are programs out there called "Notes Medic" and "Kill Lotus" just to get you back on your feet when Lotus decides not to work.

I have admined and worked with Notes for 14 years now and have never heard of nor ever needed those programs.

 

[quikah]

so any IT people out there want to let me know why ZIMBRA would make sense? Also I'm not officially sanctioned to have mobile email, but my Boss (VP) said its fine for me to have it if I can figure out how to make it work on my phone. I'm assuming we have the free version of this POS anyone know how to figure out all the settings of the server without actually being able to talk to the admin about it?

We have zimbra, it was pretty buggy at first, but they finally ironed out all the issues I have had. I now think it is fine. One thing that is freaking awesome is the search. It is SOOO fast. I think the calendering is still behind exchange, but I don't really use it too much, so I don't care about that.

I am guessing you can figure out if you have the paid version or not by going to Help>About from the web interface? there is an outlook connector for zimbra if you still want to use outlook, but that might require the paid version.

 

[blurredvision]

Yep and once properly setup they can usually be so seamless to the user that it's the same experience as a PC. When I left the hospital they were playing around with a setup like that using VMware PC over IP and as a test we watched a full HD LOTR video through the thin client and it was only slightly choppy. There are some pretty awesome products out there for thin clients. I believe this is a better solution than "cloud" since it's like cloud, except you own and control it.

Of course for a graphics or gaming company a solution like this would not be as good. But for typical office type work it's fine. The best is if the user's hardware fails you swap it with a new one and they're good to go. No reconfiguring profiles, copying data etc. Their profile is on the VM server.

One of the clients I support was moved over to VMware View a few months ago, I think it's probably about 100-150 clients. We got a demo of what they were calling a "zero" client using PCoIP...very impressive. These units only ran like $200-$300 and were as fast as the server providing the VDI. Of course, the client aren't using this, just their normal desktops from before. Half of them don't even bother with logging into the VDI and just use their computer like before. Not sure why they even bothered.

 

[Bateluer]

What I really love about my IT management is that they think of an idea and it's just knee-jerk from there... "Oh yeah, let's get that!" and have no idea how to properly implement it, or support it. Such a waste of time. We have spent millions of dollars on apps that users don't even use correctly.

I think this is the biggest problem. A system was picked without properly researching it. Zimbra sounds like a good platform, and there's many extremely good open source programs out there for a variety of things. But they mean squat if they're poorly implemented by developers/engineers/IT staff.

It becomes worse when you consider that users are often very firmly entrenched in one product, most often a Microsoft one. In their eyes, everything is crap but Outlook.

We use a web-based email/calendar/collaboration system currently, and I utterly loathe it. The email part is slow as molasses, the filtering options are a joke, and the calendar is so laughably bad its actually better to write your meeting times on a Post It.

 

[cirrrocco]

wtf is a thin client.

Kinda makes sense now

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_client

 

[Imp]

Don't understand...

But maybe an IT person could tell me why the hell my IT department enjoys running a weekly virus scan scheduled during the day on my computer like I have nothing to do (ok, I turn my computer off at night), and why it runs 50+ processes in the background turning any machine into a slow performing piece of shit... Then I have to bring in my personal computer to get important stuff done.

 

[Falloutboy]

Don't understand...

But maybe an IT person could tell me why the hell my IT department enjoys running a weekly virus scan scheduled during the day on my computer like I have nothing to do (ok, I turn my computer off at night), and why it runs 50+ processes in the background turning any machine into a slow performing piece of shit... Then I have to bring in my personal computer to get important stuff done.

lmao so this...been bringing in my laptop for the past year so I can do work without lag...

 

[Falloutboy]

I think this is the biggest problem. A system was picked without properly researching it. Zimbra sounds like a good platform, and there's many extremely good open source programs out there for a variety of things. But they mean squat if they're poorly implemented by developers/engineers/IT staff.

It becomes worse when you consider that users are often very firmly entrenched in one product, most often a Microsoft one. In their eyes, everything is crap but Outlook.

We use a web-based email/calendar/collaboration system currently, and I utterly loathe it. The email part is slow as molasses, the filtering options are a joke, and the calendar is so laughably bad its actually better to write your meeting times on a Post It.

this...its just the little things people think are no big deal that you miss. now that its all web based I don't have the rules where I would get a notification that I got an email from an important contact that I really need to respond to asap, I've already pissed off one customer because I missed an email from them earlier today (I get something like 400 emails a day of only 10 i really need to read)

 

[OutHouse]

Don't understand...

But maybe an IT person could tell me why the hell my IT department enjoys running a weekly virus scan scheduled during the day on my computer like I have nothing to do (ok, I turn my computer off at night), and why it runs 50+ processes in the background turning any machine into a slow performing piece of shit... Then I have to bring in my personal computer to get important stuff done.

if you work for a public company there is a royal pain in the ass thing call Sarbanes/Oxley audits. these audits scare the living shit out of upper management so they make us cube monkeys do stupid shit.

 

[amish]

I have admined and worked with Notes for 14 years now and have never heard of nor ever needed those programs.

it could be an issue of where I work at. Notes Medic is installed on all computers. we also get "custom" IE7 loadsets to use as our only supported web browser...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Don't understand...

But maybe an IT person could tell me why the hell my IT department enjoys running a weekly virus scan scheduled during the day on my computer like I have nothing to do (ok, I turn my computer off at night), and why it runs 50+ processes in the background turning any machine into a slow performing piece of shit... Then I have to bring in my personal computer to get important stuff done.

Even as an IT guy myself I have never seen the point of running virus scans, especially in the day. That's what the on access scanner is for. Can run the occasional scan on the file server directly (nobody should be storing stuff on their machine anyway) but to run it on every single individual machine is wasteful for nothing given how much it slows things down. Corporate machines tend to be way under powered because it cost too much to replace them all, which brings us back to thin clients making more sense. You just need to spend money on beefy servers instead of a workstation for each user.

Windows XP with AV and other software running on a P4 with 512MB of ram is bloody slow as hell. Yet that's pretty much what tends to be running in most corporate settings.