Desktop Management – Where are you now?

Since desktop PCs first entered the world of business, IT managers and help desk staff have struggled for years to keep the machines running. And as anyone involved in IT support will tell you, the majority of the struggles have not been with the PC hardware or software but with the users attached to them. As we kick off this …

[Anonymous Coward]

Inventory is key

It's a major problem in our organisation nowadays trying to stay on top of all of the patch management. I have so many desktop users, so many mobile users and a raft of smartphones to manage, keep upto date, secure etc. We devolved the purchasing last year so each dept can do their own acquisitions - with what we thought, and still believe, were tight guiidelines. Somehow, people still sneak through with all kinds of configurations and it's killing us - so many deskside visits it's unbelievable. Chances are, unless the recession bites us again, we'll be doing a major upgrade of all desktops in Q2 next year to shift across to Windows 7 and we're frantically trying to reign in the purchasing before then - otherwise I will either resign or kill myself. I'm hoping neither but in this company you simply never know. I can't contend with not having the full view of our estate though. It's just not worth my while.

[Tony Lock]

Anarchy follows choice

There is no doubt that anarchy nearly always follows allowing users to purchase or acquire their own systems. There is almost no way to define selection criteria capable of stopping device escalation short of specifying a small number of precise machine models. If any generic criteria are published then users have the knack of managing to side step them. Remember the phrase, "Nothing is fool proof as fools are so ingeneous".

[Inachu]

Enough with the upgrades!

Dealing with IT issues I can say first hand:

A. Just max out the memory already!

People keep buying systems with just 512 megs of ram and they wonder why their new system is slow?

B. If your dept buys an entire fleet of new systems then it better be from our pre approved vendor list.

C. You just upgraded to the latest version of java and you want support for that? Good luck!(door shuts)

D. No I will not give you admin access to install your own cute screen saver.

E. You will only be allowed to write to your own profile and not the entire C:\ drive.

F. Fantasy football websites are banned. Go infect your own pc on your own time and not mine.

I could write so much more such as banning ebay and amazon and other purchasing sites that are not "company approved" . Some purchasing dept go so low to some sites to buy equipment they do not care if the website hosts malware on them.