Silly Clients

EVH said:
What I've garnered from this thread is that my NHS trust are backward-compatibility whores!

Every machine I've ever used (including new Dell laptops) have Windows XP. Even when the OEM badge clearly shows the machine shipped with 7/8.... Windows XP is there.

I don't know how much longer I can take IE 6 running in compatibility mode :mad:
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Two weeks ago I had delivery of a new Windows 7 machine and it is a revelation.
I no longer have to wait 15 minutes to login and I'm one of about 5 people who are allowed to write cd disks and it is quite quick now compared to two weeks ago when a 600 meg disk would take at least 30 minutes to burn.
I also have access to at least 25 other systems and I can run them all at the same time.
I'm dead chuffed.

Our Trust has got to upgrade 3,500 PCs to Win7 :eek:
 
I'm seldom surprised when a client professes to have never installed the multitude of registry cleaners, tune-up utilities, and backup tools which now plague their PC.
 
Pestilence said:
Sheesh. Was the 1st Line in that company outsourced, per chance?
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Bingo.

Virtually all of our IT provision is outsourced. Some bits are retained (e.g. IT security), but support and procurement are all handled by a contractor.

I sometimes feel a bit sorry for first line support - they spend most of their day resetting passwords and answering dumb questions. I suspect ours is staffed accordingly, but that means that real problems are sometimes difficult to explain properly.
 
I don't even work in IT but have some random problems with other members of staff asking daft stuff. Today was the MD asking why when he clicks o the drop-box link in Firefox he cannot search for things in the drop-box folders using the the search box on the top right hand side of Firefox like he can when clicking the drop-box icon on the desktop.

Me: well that's the internet and the other is your computer.
Him: but drop-box is on a cloud not on the internet or my computer.
 
grumpysculler said:
I sometimes feel a bit sorry for first line support - they spend most of their day resetting passwords and answering dumb questions. I suspect ours is staffed accordingly, but that means that real problems are sometimes difficult to explain properly.
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I worked for a bit in a similar setup (we were a 3rd party contractor to a large organisation). The focus was never on taking ownership of problems and resolving them - it was always on keeping the number of tickets in the queue down.

For example, a switch goes down somewhere and takes out an entire office. One guy phones and says he cant connect to the network. 1st line support log it as a 'networking issue' and they get given a list of steps to go through. First is most likely reboot computer. 1st line tech knows that it's nothing to do with the computer because the entire office is offline but if he doesnt go through the steps, 2nd line will bounce the ticket back to keep their queue down saying that not all steps have been followed.
1st line then has to phone the customer back and get him to reboot, find that it doesnt help, add it to the ticket and assign it back to 2nd line. 'Bouncebacks' like this get monitored the same as call answer times, etc.

Chances are most of the time the 1st line support know exactly what the problem is but cant do anything about it and have to get you to jump through pointless hoops anyway.
 
spoffle said:
Yeah, no.



Yeah, the annoying part is that they are unable to understand that it's not their email address. There are emails going back for years with updates from family members. The most annoying aspect is that the guy clear hasn't noticed he's not been getting these important emails that his family are sending to him on a regular basis, or the fact that I've emailed him and he hasn't bothered to respond to say he'll stop giving people the address.
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I had a similar issue where a charity, rethink, was giving out my mobile number as an emergency contact. The worst bit was that it was on a load of printed and distributed literature so even after I made them aware of the issue it still continued. Started off as just one or two calls a month and then I had to change my number in the end as it just got a bit much :(
 
EVH said:
What I've garnered from this thread is that my NHS trust are backward-compatibility whores!

Every machine I've ever used (including new Dell laptops) have Windows XP. Even when the OEM badge clearly shows the machine shipped with 7/8.... Windows XP is there.

I don't know how much longer I can take IE 6 running in compatibility mode :mad:
Click to expand...

I may or not be one of the team responsible for upgrading xp to Windows 7 Enterprise within said trust.... :D You are quite right in that its absurd. The trouble is that at 35, I am the youngest member of IT and for the most part you have people who would have been made redundant years ago, but had to have a role found for them. Hence no real IT knowledge and no desire to change. I have had Windows XP taken off the build server, which caused ructions, to the point where I have found one or two trying to use OEM build disks. If I was their boss, they would have been sacked, trust me.

Anyway, Windows 7 enterprise 64bit is all I am allowing them to roll out and there are currently 2781 pcs/laptops that need to be upgraded to Windows 7. On top of that, I am involved in HVS, so busy busy busy!.

And you haven't used the newest Dell laptops because I only dish those out to the people I like ;)

You will be glad to know that the IT person unloading the 470 pcs and 30 laptops yesterday was actually me.
 
touch said:
I worked for a bit in a similar setup (we were a 3rd party contractor to a large organisation). The focus was never on taking ownership of problems and resolving them - it was always on keeping the number of tickets in the queue down.

For example, a switch goes down somewhere and takes out an entire office. One guy phones and says he cant connect to the network. 1st line support log it as a 'networking issue' and they get given a list of steps to go through. First is most likely reboot computer. 1st line tech knows that it's nothing to do with the computer because the entire office is offline but if he doesnt go through the steps, 2nd line will bounce the ticket back to keep their queue down saying that not all steps have been followed.
1st line then has to phone the customer back and get him to reboot, find that it doesnt help, add it to the ticket and assign it back to 2nd line. 'Bouncebacks' like this get monitored the same as call answer times, etc.

Chances are most of the time the 1st line support know exactly what the problem is but cant do anything about it and have to get you to jump through pointless hoops anyway.
Click to expand...

:eek:
 
touch said:
I worked for a bit in a similar setup (we were a 3rd party contractor to a large organisation). The focus was never on taking ownership of problems and resolving them - it was always on keeping the number of tickets in the queue down.

For example, a switch goes down somewhere and takes out an entire office. One guy phones and says he cant connect to the network. 1st line support log it as a 'networking issue' and they get given a list of steps to go through. First is most likely reboot computer. 1st line tech knows that it's nothing to do with the computer because the entire office is offline but if he doesnt go through the steps, 2nd line will bounce the ticket back to keep their queue down saying that not all steps have been followed.
1st line then has to phone the customer back and get him to reboot, find that it doesnt help, add it to the ticket and assign it back to 2nd line. 'Bouncebacks' like this get monitored the same as call answer times, etc.

Chances are most of the time the 1st line support know exactly what the problem is but cant do anything about it and have to get you to jump through pointless hoops anyway.
Click to expand...

Just LOL. I'd be posting rants on Yammer about that!
 
EVH said:
What I've garnered from this thread is that my NHS trust are backward-compatibility whores!

Every machine I've ever used (including new Dell laptops) have Windows XP. Even when the OEM badge clearly shows the machine shipped with 7/8.... Windows XP is there.

I don't know how much longer I can take IE 6 running in compatibility mode :mad:
Click to expand...

Wow that's not just me that has that then....
 
Was on a customer site last week, control centre was demanding we end to end the third party metering systems.

Customer metering comes over a RS485 link from their DCS, easy enough to do apart from the fact they were under NRO and not flowing. Not much point end to ending zeros.

Took about 45mins to get this through to them.

* Purposely made as boring as possible
 
One of our ex-employees once brought down our exchange environment for almost a full day by sending a 9MB bitmap image of his new receptionist to everybody in the company (around 1000 people).

After a good talking to from out IT director he decided to send around an apology email to everybody in the company...containing the same bitmap image.

We started limiting message sizes shortly after XD
 
ThePirateHulk said:
One of our ex-employees once brought down our exchange environment for almost a full day by sending a 9MB bitmap image of his new receptionist to everybody in the company (around 1000 people).

We started limiting message sizes shortly after XD
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It was my understanding that Exchange keeps one copy of the attachment and lets everyone share it, so you don't suddenly increase the store by 9Tb for what is an identical file.

If that crashed the system then something else is behaving incorrectly on your network, probably 1000 people requesting the same file be served.

If so you don't need to limit attachments, just disable use of the everyone contact to numpties. It may even be possible to remove attachments from messages sent to the everyone contact using a script.
 
I'm an admin assistant at work and i deal with the mail amongst other things,

Some guy came in about five minutes ago.

Guy: Has a bike came in for me?

Me: Nah no bike has arrived yet, when is it due?

Guy: Friday, do the bikes come pre built?

Me: Erm, im not sure, depends on where you bought it from?

Guy: The internet.

Me: Yeah but what company.

Guy: I dunno, i just bought it off the internet.

Me: Okay if you find out whos sending it you can ask them

Guy: Okay cheers, if it arrives in a million pieces ill look like a right idiot.

Me: Okay, cya!

Im shocked as he doesn't know where he even bought it from... haha.
 
bitslice said:
It was my understanding that Exchange keeps one copy of the attachment and lets everyone share it, so you don't suddenly increase the store by 9Tb for what is an identical file.
.
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They did away with that for Exchange 2010 and beyond ;), a well setup exchange environment will have limits imposed on sending to all staff, especially with 1000 employees, sounds more like an Admin error to me :p
 
LizardKing said:
They did away with that for Exchange 2010 and beyond ;), a well setup exchange environment will have limits imposed on sending to all staff
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Really? What was the thinking behind that :confused:
I am a bit behind on newer exchanges

I think I had a couple of cut down distribution lists, as generally 'Everyone' isn't interested in 99% of what gets sent there.
 
ThePirateHulk said:
One of our ex-employees once brought down our exchange environment for almost a full day by sending a 9MB bitmap image of his new receptionist to everybody in the company (around 1000 people).

After a good talking to from out IT director he decided to send around an apology email to everybody in the company...containing the same bitmap image.

We started limiting message sizes shortly after XD
Click to expand...

Something is very wrong with your infrastructure if that brought down exchange.
 
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