For the first time ever, I’m working for a company that has an Exchange server, uses Outlook, and is pretty much that Corporate Windows thing. It’s a different world.
Mostly, I’m an individual guy. I mean, I work with publishers, but I use my own computers. My network is simple: peer-to-peer, nothing fancy. There’s no internal security or servers because, well, it’s mostly me. Sure, the kids come by and play games, but they’re not employees.
The organization I’ve been hired into is a medium-sized business, about 400 employees, $80M in annual revenue.
As part of my employment, I received a company laptop. It’s a Toshiba convertible, which means it can be a laptop or I can twist its screen around and use it as a tablet. Not an iPad tablet, but a Tablet PC, which is cool, but a feature I don’t use often.
Because I still work mostly out of my home office, I use the laptop to access the company network through the Internet. It’s a nerdy thing called VNC, or Virtual Network Computing.
VNC works like the old dial-up networks, but you use the Internet to connect with the mothership. Then using VNC software, I connect to the local network. That makes Outlook (Microsoft’s horrid email/calendar/scheduling software that I never use) happy, and it gives me access to the company’s network drives and all sorts of secret, forbidden information.
Just kidding.
I mean, I tried looking into those folders, but, well, “Access Denied.” And the IT guys won’t give me the master Admin password. Damn them for following the rules!
So the new tech things in my life are: Outlook for company email and VNC to access the company network. While I still sit in my office and write technology books, occasionally I have to spin my chair around, look at the Toshiba, and use Outlook to deal with company stuff.
Now, please don’t ask me any Outlook questions. Basically, I have no choice to but to run Outlook for their corporate email. (Well, I could access Outlook through the web, but no.) I’d prefer not to use Outlook. I’ve messed with VNC, but never used it for my own job, or had any reason to. I’ve also configured my Droid phone to access the Exchange server and get email. Glad I boned up on that. So it’s a different world for me, familiar but yet not what I’m used to.
Do you find it frustrating working with IT who treat you like you’ve never used a computer before? That’s what it was like where I worked and it annoyed me to no end.
Comment by gamerguy473 — January 21, 2012 @ 11:36 pm
Oh, no! The IT guys and I get along great. That’s because I know how things work. They handed me the laptop and were delighted when I told them I know how to connect to a wireless router, set up my printer, and do all sorts of stuff.
The only problem is that I do know how the thing is supposed to work. So I’m getting back to them on things that don’t work properly. I can still use the laptop, as I know various work-arounds. Still, it’s frustrating to me because Windows is begging for an update and I lack privileges to allow one. So I take in the laptop, explain what needs updating, they do it, and I’m off again. Or on again, depending on what’s getting fixed.
Comment by admin — January 21, 2012 @ 11:42 pm
What email program do you prefer? I used to use Thunderbird, but the calendar feature was bad, to say the least. I switched to Outlook for this reason (and because I had a Windows phone – shudder – and the integration was fantastic).
When I recently switched to an Android phone, I found that the local Outlook sync options were terrible; but I could easily link my university Exchange account with my local Outlook data. Like it or not, a lot of phones have great Exchange support. It seems like Exchange is the only common meeting ground among various platforms (I use Linux, Windows, and Android). The only other meaningful option was to go to a complete Google platform, but I prefer my work and person data to be kept separate.
Comment by sriksrid — January 22, 2012 @ 11:48 am
I use Mac Mail primarily, which is the Mail client on my iMac. I switched to reading email on a Mac back in the 1990s, mostly because the Windows email platform was so plagued with malware.
My Droid Bionic has no trouble linking into the corporation’s Exchange server. Setting everything up worked well. The only problem was that I had to specify the server’s IP address and not its domain name. After that, the updating works well. (I read email on my phone, I don’t reply mostly because it doesn’t work, but also because I prefer keeping my email replies on one device.)
Comment by admin — January 22, 2012 @ 11:56 am
I’ve had that issue in places I’ve worked where I have no administration privileges and Windows keeps bringing up updates, including one very urgent one Windows XP service pack 3. The other thing that amazingly is still a problem in some places is that the machines are still using Internet explorer 6! I’m sure Microsoft were forcing people to update this browser, I know some Libraries and community centres are still using it.
Comment by chiefnoobie — January 29, 2012 @ 8:35 am
Quite a few websites have IE 6 warnings encoded, so when you visit the page you see a warning telling you to upgrade immediately. I don’t think I have such a warning here on Wambooli (checking…). Nope, I don’t. But I know other pages do, and the warning code is readily available.
Comment by admin — January 29, 2012 @ 10:40 am
Yeah I’ve seen that warning I could have sworn I read something about a forced upgrade, I guess it’s Microsoft’s own fault for not updating IE6 for years so that’s why people still use it,
Comment by chiefnoobie — January 30, 2012 @ 9:29 am