12-31-2003, 10:00 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Sep 2006
Posts: 3,060
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Are You An Obedient Employee?
For four years now, I've been using a 400 mHz clod of a notebook PC for most of my work-related computing. It's been a faithful companion, albeit a slow one at times. So, you can imagine how excited I was when my employer told me that I'd be receiving a new 2 gHz, lightweight speester as a replacement! At last, no more waiting for large documents to load! No more rearranging my files every time I need disc space for a new download!
But... Now that I've got this cool new computer, the tempation to stray outside the "corporate standard" and install all sorts of operating system and applications upgrades is KILLING me! I mean, I can argue that I could be much more efficient if I were allowed to personalize my computer with all the tools and updates I want. On the other hand, I want to be a good employee and not create a Frankenstein machine that our IT department isn't prepared to support. What's a geek to do?
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12-31-2003, 10:10 AM
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Thoughts Media Review Team
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 599
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Just count yourself lucky that you don't work for the company that I manage the IT for :-)
We've been a bit lax over the last few years but, as part of the rollout of XP to everyone, we are going to be taking local admin rights away, and ensuring that all deployed software works with standard user accounts.
That should help to enforce the "this is company property, leave it alone" rule.
--Philip
P.S. It can be a right royal pain in the bum if staff start playing with their systems. True story as an example: one sales person recently admitted that he had been fiddling with his to get it to work on his home network and, as a result, had reconfigured it so that it was no longer a member of the domain. So no more email or any other productive work. He has now got to courier it back to us to fix.
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12-31-2003, 10:28 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 735
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As IT management, I would and so have the last couple of companies (both Fortune 500) take local admin rights away from end users. Save so much trouble from virus/spyware/adware/etc.
However, as a member of IT, I ask for admin rights the very first thing so I can install my needed apps (SQL plus, TOAD, etc) although I never mess with the core OS or MS Exchange settings.
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12-31-2003, 10:32 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 199
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You can install VMWARE and have your own "virtua; Win2K" running at the same time with the laptop's real OS.
You need at least 512 Mb though.
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12-31-2003, 10:38 AM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Aug 2002
Posts: 112
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My company is still using windows 95! I would be afraid that adding anything would cause it to explode!
__________________
leonard j. egan
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12-31-2003, 11:08 AM
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Sage
Join Date: Mar 2004
Posts: 717
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From an IT admin point of view... If the company is dumb enough not to lock up and image their inventory, the company deserves what it gets. That is how we used to do things, lock them, secure them and god forbid you touch them. There is a saying that goes: "if you spend less on your corporate security than on a cup of morning coffee, you will get hacked, in fact you deserve to get hacked" I rest my case. Hack it my friend � that�s what the company is telling you to do, that is what I would do, have that baby running Longhorn and experiment, hell put Lindows on it if you like! Having said that, this is why there are people like me, because there are so many companies that lack IT focus and direction who are supported by dumb IT guys. No offence, that�s the truth.
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12-31-2003, 11:24 AM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 146
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My IT dept remove all local admin rights. But I found that Activ sync would only run with full local admin rights! So they gave me admin rights but I don't abuse it too much!! I still don't think its my own Ipaq and not a corporate one!!
David
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12-31-2003, 12:33 PM
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Theorist
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 282
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Philip Colmer
Just count yourself lucky that you don't work for the company that I manage the IT for :-)
We've been a bit lax over the last few years but, as part of the rollout of XP to everyone, we are going to be taking local admin rights away, and ensuring that all deployed software works with standard user accounts.
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That was what we (I) did last year, but with Win2k. Calls to the Help Desk got reduced 30% after we were done with the rollout.
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12-31-2003, 12:50 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 10,981
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by lanwarrior
You can install VMWARE and have your own "virtua; Win2K" running at the same time with the laptop's real OS.
You need at least 512 Mb though.
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That's my suggestion, get Virtual PC from Microsoft. It's a small install, and very painless to operate. Then you can create you're own image and use whatever OS inside the VPC that you choose.
The big plus of this, you can take your image and copy to another machine. 8)
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"I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious" - Albert Einstein |
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12-31-2003, 01:23 PM
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Ponderer
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 54
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My company recently upgraded to Win2K. As part of the upgrade, they locked the PCs down really tight. I couldn't even change the monitor refresh rate! :evil: I called support so often that they made me "adminstrator for a day" so that I could set the PC the way I want it and install some licensed software that I need and use in my daily work that is not enterprise-level standard. Now the PC is locked down again, but I am happy and so is support! 
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