Well, Ed, that’s not very mature of you. ;)
“I don’t have administrator access on my computer”??? Is this a common scenario? Is it because IT departments are control freaks, or do users actually have a proven track record of fucking up their own machines?
Yes to all of the above. Not all companies are staffed by tech-savvy people like Microsoft. In the Fortune 500 world, it is totally common for mediocre IT admins to restrict user access to computers because they can’t risk having to emergency troubleshoot 20K machines. Also, most users are dipshits and will gladly install spyware just because a dialogue box suggested they should.
Our entire campus locked every user out of admin rights as a matter of policy some years ago due to the massive cost of cleaning up a major malware infection. It has nothing at all to do with being a control freak, and everything to do with not having the resources to constantly troubleshoot and/or reimage machines. And frankly there’s no reason why a user should need admin access to their system anyway. If they need a piece of software to do their job it’s probably already installed, and if it’s not they’re free to request it.
Administrator access? If your corporate standard desktop is correctly set up you won’t even be able to change options in every application installed, let alone make changes to the OS. I cant change anything of importance in control panel, ie options, MS office options. Even wallpaper and icons on desktop are locked down.
- standard desktops make for easier maintenance, support and rollouts.
- no untested software, all licences accountable.
- protection against malware.
- physical security of data (no usb, no optical drives, no external drives, no wifi/bluetooth allowed)
People click on anything and everything at work. You oughta try cleaning up a 5k+ computer infection. Lots of fun, especially when those same people can’t follow simple instructions for their computers. Not everyone is under 30 and tech savvy.
Is this a serious question?
There’s a definite reason why a lot of admin lore prominently features the term “luser”.
Well, I feel smarter than at the beginning of the thread.
On a serious note, everything y’all said makes sense, and it makes me glad that I work at a company where we’re expected to maintain our own machines.
Dude, you just got pwned!
How many people do you have?
My aforementioned corporate environment is 175,000 users. With regards to Firefox, there are hundreds of ie only applications, widgits and intranet sites that would require changing and testing and would be economically unviable.
While I certainly agree that limiting user control is important in a wide variety of businesses, it can be frustrating if you are a competent user who sometimes knows more than the IT people (or at least some of those people). I was asked to find a cheap printer for our department last Fall, for example. I found a great deal at Newegg, but we didn’t get it in time because the IT people had apparently never heard of the site and wanted to make sure it was legit before we could order it. Newegg!!