Dear Users... (A thread for Sysadmin, Technical Support, and Help Desk people)

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novaphile said:
Unfortunately, PC has become synonymous with "a computer running Microsoft Windows", probably because of the incredibly stupid "I'm a PC" "I'm a Mac" adverts.
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I think it's the other way around. "PC" and "Mac" were chosen for those ads because the marketing team knew they were already in common use and would properly convey the distinction they were selling.

I'm pretty sure the terms and the distinction were around since at least the mid-90s.

I'm also pretty sure there's nothing "unfortunate" about this development. Languages evolve all the time, especially during the creation of a new family of context-specific terms like jargon for a new technical field. And there's not actually any rule of language mandating that compound words and derived words must be a literal conjunction of the component or source words.

There's nothing insightful or productive about resisting the usage of "PC" to mean "personal computer running some form of OS other than Apple's Mac OS family".
 
theprestige said:
OS chauvinism is one of the stupidest memes to ever infect IT organizations. Worse than programming language chauvinism. Even worse than text editor chauvinism.

At least the vi and emacs nerds are willing to solve their own problems with the choices they've made.

"You have instructions for vi, but I prefer emacs... So I went ahead and wrote up a mail client/IDE that runs as an emacs macro and fulfills the use case, myself."
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Not sure which side you're arguing here, but I agree with the overall sentiment. You use the OS that's best for the job.

However, and my personal pet peeve lately, what a lot of departments tend to ignore is administrative and support costs. Especially at the level of workstations. Generally speaking, it's a lot more expensive to support multiple platforms than a single one. It requires multiple software versions, sometimes not covered under a single bulk agreement (so smaller licenses=smaller discount), restrictions in available software to something that run across multiple platforms, increased personnel requirements (additional people that know each OS), etc.

For servers it makes some sense, Linux is better for some applications, and servers tend to be more static and less multi-use. You don't have to have a plethora of productivity software that will run on every server, usually just the main product, your endpoint protection, and whatever monitoring and management agents you need (and most of those last are multi-platform).

I agree with everyone using what they like and/or are comfortable with. But don't except to get supported in your personal choice by your company :)
 
novaphile said:
Unfortunately, PC has become synonymous with "a computer running Microsoft Windows", probably because of the incredibly stupid "I'm a PC" "I'm a Mac" adverts.

It's also entirely possible that the poster is logging in from a tablet or telephone, which certainly meets the 1980's definition of PC (Personal Computer) but not the more commonly used meaning today.
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Eh, I've always used "PC" to refer to the hardware platform/type...which includes Macs, now.
 
When I was at school in 1987, we had a "PC lab" and a "Mac lab". The PC lab had IBM clones. The Mac lab had 512k and 800k Macintosh computers.

Anyway.

Has this happened to any of you guys? I often have someone call me up, and they have their phone set to speaker. For a start, that makes them hard to hear, but whatever. The weird thing is that when the call ends, they just don't bother to disconnect. They don't hang up. Which means I can hear whatever is going on in their office when the call is ended, unless I hang up the call, at which point I assume their phone starts beeping the disconnected signal and they hang up the call to stop it.

Do they realise that I'm listening in on their conversation with colleagues after the call is finished? I wonder if that's a local thing or if it happens in other places as well.
 
arthwollipot said:
Has this happened to any of you guys? I often have someone call me up, and they have their phone set to speaker. For a start, that makes them hard to hear, but whatever. The weird thing is that when the call ends, they just don't bother to disconnect. They don't hang up. Which means I can hear whatever is going on in their office when the call is ended, unless I hang up the call, at which point I assume their phone starts beeping the disconnected signal and they hang up the call to stop it.

Do they realise that I'm listening in on their conversation with colleagues after the call is finished? I wonder if that's a local thing or if it happens in other places as well.
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I have a weird, inverse version of that.

The Oncology group I support uses a Cisco IP based phone system so sites can fail over calls to other sites if they become backed up with calls, have to pull desk personal away to deal with an emergency, or whatever, pretty standard.

But about... 1 in 10 people know how to set the phones to "auto-answer" after X number of rings, usually the very front line people who spend the most time on the phone.

No less than 1 or 2 times a week something like this happens:

"Hey Karen, I'm here to fix that issue you reported."

"Oh okay, here I'll let you jump on the computer to work. Good time for me to go eat/bathroom/get coffee."

*Five minutes later*

Karen's phone rings. And then again. Then again. Then it autoanswers.

//one long unbroken sentence without pausing for breath//

"Hey Karen this Susan over in finance. Did you ever do a 4313A form on Mr. Johnson insurance to validate the payment for TRSTRN test in order to medicalbabble, medicalbabble, medicalbabble, medicalbabble, various more medicalbabble, some medicalbilling babble, and then some more medicalbabble...."

//oluswpfb//

*Beat*

*Beat*

"Karen? You there?"

"This is Joe. Karen isn't here."
 
I was defending the member who uses "PC" to mean a computer running windows, which is, in my humble opinion, common usage.

Example conversations:

"I have a linux box at home." "Oh."

"I have a PC at home." "What version of Windows are you running?"

YMMV
 
"Oh, hi, can I get an update on when this problem that I don't have any details about will be fixed? No, I don't know who logged it and I don't have a job number, but it's stopping me from working and I need to know when it's going to be resolved. Also, can you tell me if I have access to K drive?"
 
arthwollipot said:
"Oh, hi, can I get an update on when this problem that I don't have any details about will be fixed? No, I don't know who logged it and I don't have a job number, but it's stopping me from working and I need to know when it's going to be resolved. Also, can you tell me if I have access to K drive?"
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Recent Phone message: "Can you come and see the problem on my PC and fix it? I don't know what's wrong but it is making a buzzing noise and Word doesn't work. I've shut it down just now. And I'm going out for the rest of the day so I won't be here when you get here, and will be on leave for the next few weeks and I won't give you my password either. Also, I've moved desks recently so I'm not where the phone directory says I am."
 
Norman Alexander said:
Recent Phone message: "Can you come and see the problem on my PC and fix it? I don't know what's wrong but it is making a buzzing noise and Word doesn't work. I've shut it down just now. And I'm going out for the rest of the day so I won't be here when you get here, and will be on leave for the next few weeks and I won't give you my password either. Also, I've moved desks recently so I'm not where the phone directory says I am."
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Jesus Christ I will never get over how picky users are about how software "looks" when it functions exactly the same.

We upgraded one site from Outlook 2010 to Outlook 2013 overnight. Roughly 50% of the workforce is literally unable to function because things "look different then I'm used to."

And apparently all of them are legally blind and just have to have a color scheme darker then the "Dark Grey" option.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Jesus Christ I will never get over how picky users are about how software "looks" when it functions exactly the same.

We upgraded one site from Outlook 2010 to Outlook 2013 overnight. Roughly 50% of the workforce is literally unable to function because things "look different then I'm used to."

And apparently all of them are legally blind and just have to have a color scheme darker then the "Dark Grey" option.
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"I'm trying to log on, and the machine starts up and I press Ctrl-Alt-Del, but then it says 'Other User'. What does that mean? What do I do?"

Well, yes, it also has a picture of Uluru. Type your user ID and password.

"Oh, but what does it mean by 'Other User'?"

It's just what it says on the login screen. Nothing whatsoever has changed.
 
catsmate said:
Alpha...
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Heheheheh...

I used to have a DEC Alpha that I would trundle out to LAN parties to play Quake. It used to impress the crap out of other players, but wasn't really all that exciting, certainly not be today's standards.

:)

(Wasn't mine, but wasn't being used at work so I borrowed it to play with)
 
novaphile said:
Heheheheh...

I used to have a DEC Alpha that I would trundle out to LAN parties to play Quake. It used to impress the crap out of other players, but wasn't really all that exciting, certainly not be today's standards.

:)

(Wasn't mine, but wasn't being used at work so I borrowed it to play with)
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I can get you one. I've worked on Alphas for MANY years...still do!
 
The one I used to play with, had a customised version of linux.

I'm not certain now, but I think it started out as version of Mandrake (or I upgraded it to that).

I'm starting to lose a lot of details like that.

But it sure looked good when I wheeled it in on a hand truck.
 
novaphile said:
The one I used to play with, had a customised version of linux.

I'm not certain now, but I think it started out as version of Mandrake (or I upgraded it to that).

I'm starting to lose a lot of details like that.

But it sure looked good when I wheeled it in on a hand truck.
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That would probably be Mandrake 8. Alphas vary in size and shape from pizza box to phone booth. Hopefully you didn't have to wheel in the phone booth model?
 
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