04-21-2009, 04:22 PM
I'd love to let my users manage their own IT Issues, but there are times when I have to subscribe to the weakest link, lowest common denominator theory since there is only one of me, and 300 of them that I'm managing for the entire western US. I've found that some users are willing to learn, but don't have the skills yet, while others simply don't want to know anything about computers. To them, a computers is nothing more than an adding machine with a bigger screen. The concept of a virus moving from one 'adding machine' to another doesn't cross their minds. They have no concept of the difference between megabytes, gigabytes, or terabytes (hence the users storing 40 GB of music, movies and 'cute' powerpoint files to the servers getting backed up every night until I realize that all of their data, which I'm not allowed to look at, is not work related). I get questions like, "Can you come to my house so that I can connect to the company VPN using my son's 10 year old PC running Windows 95 with no AV software? I used to use it every day to do this, but all those Porn Popup ads make it difficult to get the VPN connected. I just copied the settings from the secured, updated, patched company provided laptop to his computer because I like the keyboard/mouse better. I had to turn off the AV software to make those annoying warnings go away." Sorry, you touched a nerve and I'm venting now...