User managed PCs
Try reading this article in InfoWorld. I am beginning to find more and more support for the idea of letting users manage their own hardware. I have been trying to get Macs into the building for quite a while. We came up with a few cases to allow certain people have Macs. This year, we are adding an additional Mac user… and the Director of Tech just realized that the Macs are actually equal in price to the PCs we are buying. What I am not sure she has seen yet is that they are better machines, both in construction and in components.
We will have to wait to see how this one goes down.
Administrative Access
The boss wants to grant administrative rights to the Upper school students on their personal computers... I wonder about the wisdom of this decision. See... It seems to me that we have eliminated a good number of problems (viruses, spyware, p2p filesharing, etc. by simply restricting administrative access priviliges. By granting these priviliges to the students again, wouldn't we just be opening that same old can of worms??
I can certainly see the utility of granting such access to the students. They would be able to install home printers and other perhipherals, along with games and other distractions. Perhaps my role as Network Administrator really should be to maintain the network, not the students computers. Perhaps I really shouldn't be so concerned with what students install on their computers. It would surely make tonight easier though. The boss called me while I was at a going away party for my friends... She wanted me to call a parent and sort out their daughter's inability to install iTunes on her computer to support the brand new IPod that she had just gotten... On a Saturday evening!!! In the summer!!! School is out!!! WTF?!?!
The end of the year
I find myself near the end of another year at AWS. It is pretty impressive, the speed with which these years have passed. As I approach the end of this year, and begin to look towards the summer work that needs to be done to be ready for next year, I wonder how I will ever get it all done… One of the most impressive things to look at is the list of things to do this summer. It is pages long, and it continues to get longer as people present me with more items that need my attention.
This is a good point
This guy brings up an excellent point that I have always thought was unseen by many. In my organization of 400 users, there is a lot of not knowing what to do… Particularly among the adults… The kids are often not afraid to try clicking on something or to restart their computer, but the adults can become paralyzed by the most simple error message.
(Trackback is not working for some reason… here is the link)
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/networking/administrator/archives/the-problem-with-technology-5029
