More IT Fun!

More news from the silly world of IT (if you think about it... technology in general seems to be a pretty silly place to work).

I've decided to just post new developments in my ongoing ummm... 'battle' with the IT group here at work to get a productive computing environment, just because it's sort of humorous sometimes. So, here's the lastest silliness coming out of it:

I have a compaq scroll mouse hooked up to my generic, no-frills, low-performance compaq PC here on my desk. The scroll wheel on the mouse spins and all, the only problem is that sometimes when I spin it for "scoll up", it scrolls all the way to the bottom of the focused window (vey slowly... which is terribly irritating on long windows), then 'bounces' back up to near where I started (but slightly lower on the window). A guy from tech came to look at it and we fiddled with settings for awhile to no avail. I suggested a driver upgrade. I kid not, this is a real policy: the company stipulates that the drivers on the $9 mice must not be changed because they should all be the same, standard (apparently b0rked) driver. That's right, there's a policy that addresses mouse drivers..... weird.

I also have to note that this poor tech guy got slapped with a project to go around and clear out "Hotbar" installations on a bunch of people's PCs. Apparently, folks are installing "Hotbar" so they can insert silly things like smileys and whatnot into their Outlook e-mails. I can understand why the IT group would be suspicious of a program like that being installed, I'm just glad I'm not the one who got tasked with cleaning it up

Oh well, the mouse driver policy gave me my chuckle for the day anyhow!

Wow its -amazing- what some companies will spend money on to police!

Wouldn't the solution be to upgrade everyone's driver?

Oh, wait, that would entail work.

And I thought our IT policies were strict... CTB, thats just amazing. I think I'd go nuts working where you are. The NPO I work at has some stringent policies in place, but the internet group gets admin accts on their machines, so if we need to do updates, we're allowed... not so for the rest of the company

What I don't understand is that the fact that your company will go through the time and energy to remove all the of the hotbar installations, but at the same time allow them to install it in the first place.
What kind of workstations do the standard users run there? If it is NT/2000, then maybe they should consider doing actual administration and not allow the users to install anything in the first place. I can see where exceptions would happen in this, but in general a typical user doesn't need the rights to install anything on a work computer. If they have the right, then they will install stupid stuff.
They go through the effort of having and enforcing a policy on a mouse driver, but allow something like that?!? Tis a little off IMHO.

Well I am my works entire IT department

You need this shirt, akoepke

The bucket hat is much better. Get the bucket hat and get yourself a shaded one-eyed eye glass...

You guys would hate working here. We have everything locked down extremely tight using Windows 2000's Group Policy. The less users can mess up, the less we have to fix. You're here to work not play on the Interenet and solitaire.

LOL

Actually, normal users can't install anything that tries to meddle with the registry which eliminates most installations. I'm not sure how the Hotbar install works (because I didn't install it), but if it doesn't fiddle with the registry, it will clear. However, they do regularly audit the machines which is how they found out about the installations. I, on the other hand, reported so many problems to our tech support that they gave me administrative rights on my own box to shut me up. The only thing I can't do is fiddle with the registry directly.

I think the problem is that, for the most part, they're used to supporting Mr. and Mrs. Joe Schmoe. I think the policies are unnecessarily strict, but I suppose they do make a little more sense when you consider that they were written in order to protect company computers from "techno-idiots", not developers. Unfortunately, there's really only two people who do what I do, and I'm one of them, so I doubt I'll get my own policy set anytime soon

I believe most of our IS staff (around 30) have rights to install things and such things as that. But we have around 1200 users and only really 2 techs so we have to keeps users from doing things they're not supposed to do. Therefore the only way they can launch apps is through a web interface and we determine which links they get.

damonbrinkley is right. You really can't criticize the policies until you have administered a large network. The most important thing is for the network to continue running and for people to be able to use the programs that get company work done.

When computers are not standardized it is difficult to diagnose problems and get things running when there is a problem.

The things that users can do to their computers is beyond your imagination. Pretty much everyone here is well versed in how to administer your own computer. You may not get to see all the crapola that unskilled users inflict on your IT dept.

BTW - Hotbar is considered spyware, and it also disables certain features in Outlook as well as adding things to each email (apparently).

I understand the need to have sound policies in place, I just think making a policy that all Compaq mouse drivers must be standard is odd. Making the standard mouse driver the broken one is just plain goofy.

On top of that, I'm just peeved about all this (as I'm sure you've noticed recently) because everytime I tell them that something they did that I didn't want them to do broke something, all I get in response is "it's the standard" with no good reason as to WHY it's the standard. This is particularly true of the botched Office XP move.

The crummy computer at work has gotten so snaggled that I've started dragging my laptop in with me to do all of my work. I installed all the stuff they said I couldn't install on my work PC, plus kept all the crap they wanted me to use off of it, and I'm back to a cheerful, productive state. All that and the company got a $700 paperweight! Woohoo!

ctb,

what's the standard desktops and apps you guys use?