I was troubleshooting a particular business and needed to get on line. The slowness of the connection made me think this was a 2400 modem, not a cable connection.
I terminated my efforts and went to bring up a common program which took so long that had I needed to type a letter, a manual typewriter would have been quicker. The problem was elementary. The computer had never had never been subjected to basic daily maintenance. I went to find "disk clean up", couldn't, nor defragmenter. I sent for the "IT" expert. He babbled the usual nonsense. When he was done, I went into the C.E.O.'s office.
Fortunately, this was a technologically astute person who understood and the next order of business was that anything business related that was saved on the hard drive was to be copied to CD because all the computers were going to be reloaded.
The Techie was angry. I knew what he was about. About getting the company to buy new computers, no doubt expecting to get the old ones out of the rubbish.
It is a typical scam. Disable natural maintenance on the computers, allow the staff to save everything to C: then claim the computers are "obsolete", which is why they run so very slowly. In offices concerned with documents when computers run so slowly as to take "forever" to bring up the word processing program, "a day" to send a message to a printer, the office is handicapped. Even new out of the box computers will soon be running like 486s, when the C drive is cluttered with gunk, and files are scattered like confetti, because there has been no defragging, no clean up, nor removal of "temp" files. There is no reason for the IT "god" to be the only one capable of doing simple maintenance.
In early days, true secretaries or typists, were responsible for cleaning their machines. From using a pin to clean keys to mentholated spirits to wipe down a roller. Anyone who uses a computer must be taught how to do simple maintenance. And if one is so afraid of their employees, then set maintenance at ten a.m. on Monday and have everyone attend a "staff meeting" while the computers are "cleaned."
Just before the computers were reloaded, I did a quick inventory. Games were filling the hard drives. Employees were downloading games and other toys. Many games carry malware. It should be a nearly religious tenet that nothing should be downloaded on the computers which is not business mandated. Another interesting aside was the "piracy" issue. Many Kumputa Kompanees sell "pre-loaded" machines, full of pirated software.
The easiest way to tell is when one asks for the original CD and it doesn't exist.
Fortunately, in this company, the original CDs were present and each machine had its hard drive cleaned, the Operating System reloaded along with necessary software. The employees were taught how to do a disk clean up and a defragging.
Subsequently, the computers ran as fast as they were supposed to, and the company saved thousands of dollars. Never allow your It "god" to disable or hide the maintenance packages. And make sure when you are advised to replace your computers, they really do need replacing.?
