Are you forced to use XP at work?

[ZeshanA]

XP is still on almost all the machines at college. Most are the old RM computers that have been rebuilt and beaten for years and years with a whopping great CRT placed on the top.

What is worse is that we dont have the software we need either. Part of the IT Course I am doing is Graphics, the computers are terrible and dont have more than 512mb of RAM, we only have FREE Graphics software in most rooms like Paint.NET which is horrible and then to top it off a teacher who doesnt know what she is doing so we end up watching some dull video on doing something using Photoshop and then have to do it on Paint.NET which doesnt have all the features

Then they got some new computers to run 7 in our graphics room which they have gone over the top with. They have Quad-Core Processors, 8GB RAM and Windows 7 64-bit on them which took about 1 month for them to setup and we got to use them once to install Virtual XP

WOW! At school, the best computers (that we've ever seen) is a Mac Pro in the Art Department. It's alone. One of a kind. Belongs to our art teacher.

ZeshanA

 

[armyslowrdr]

We are on XP. However the company just did recently stop farming out the IT stuff and hired its own 4 person IT staff. We are first now getting around to using share-point, having an accessible company intranet and stuff like that.

I don't mind XP. I thought I might have trouble using XP now that I have 7 at home, but I seem to transparently switch back and forth as needed with ease.

 

[nate42nd]

We are on XP. However the company just did recently stop farming out the IT stuff and hired its own 4 person IT staff. We are first now getting around to using share-point, having an accessible company intranet and stuff like that.

I don't mind XP. I thought I might have trouble using XP now that I have 7 at home, but I seem to transparently switch back and forth as needed with ease.

This is a good point as I switch back and forth with ease also. I am "locked out" of any administrative functions. (I do need to find a way around that) So I have not learned XP very well. Admin stuff is slightly different in XP.

My company also has an "internet blocker" they can block any web address they choose, if fact I was watching the weather one day and someone must have noticed the bandwidth from the flash recording of the weather broadcast......a few minutes later, the site was blocked. I had to e-mail the IT guys to get it "un blocked"

 

[Bare Foot Kid]

My company also has an "internet blocker" they can block any web address they choose, if fact I was watching the weather one day and someone must have noticed the bandwidth from the flash recording of the weather broadcast......a few minutes later, the site was blocked. I had to e-mail the IT guys to get it "un blocked"

They probably just use the Hosts file - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[armyslowrdr]

pesky IT guys..

LOL. That reminds me one day the new IT staff came to Killeen from Austin to get us all set up. They said they didnt care abt my yahoo messenger, chat camera and some other stuff I installed. BUT they please requested that I rid my computer of Weather Bug.

No big deal, especially since I set the weather station up in the back yard and now can go here (well I have to reset every several days because sometimes the wireless between downstairs laptop and home office gets "lost") : New Page 1

It only seems to work properly in Internet Explorer however---I guess I need to redo with something other than front Page---maybe Expressions or Nvu.

.......if fact I was watching the weather one day and someone must have noticed the bandwidth from the flash recording of the weather broadcast......a few minutes later, the site was blocked. I had to e-mail the IT guys to get it "un blocked"

 

[Zen00]

If you're a student, you can get the Expression Web Suite for free from Dreamspark.

 

[burtie]

We still use XP at my work. I work for a local authority and for them to upgrade everything would cost them a fortune for the thousands of employees and they simply don't have that kind of money as they have other priorities. We still use ie6 too and its a right pain. I wish they could upgrade everything though...it would make work so much easier if we using W7. It doesn't help that all out IT staff are like dinosaurs...and I think if they did upgrade they would have to have some kind of retraining programme for everyone in the authority to learn how to use it all again as people will be totally confused with the change of layout etc. You would be surprised how dull a lot of the people who work in local authority's are...most of them cant even carry out basic tasks which is surprising considering they sit in front of a computer all day :S

 

[nate42nd]

My company also has an "internet blocker" they can block any web address they choose, if fact I was watching the weather one day and someone must have noticed the bandwidth from the flash recording of the weather broadcast......a few minutes later, the site was blocked. I had to e-mail the IT guys to get it "un blocked"

They probably just use the Hosts file - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I wish that was it. I think it's a "barracuda" hardware based thing. I don't know much about it other than they can add any URL to the "list" and it comes with a "list"

 

[Flatlands]

Where I worked before the economy failed last year we were using XP Pro. It took years for us to upgrade and that was from 95-98 era. I don't see them changing again until the economy improves, but then there is nothing wrong with XP. I still run it on my home PC and this maybe because of it's ease to use. Come Monday i will be using it again as I return to help my old team in the transition and merging of company files. Home also has the ASUS windows 7, 64 laptop networked with my desktop

 

[Jimfof1913]

As I read the posts I'm amazed at how many people think they 'own' the PC given to then by the company they work for to perform company work. I have always had a personal computer at home that had an OS ahead of the one at work. I have never heard of a company that furnishes a PC to its workers to perform company business that allows them to make any changes they want. I could use my home PC to dial into the company after going to layers of security. When they offered VPN they made it quite clear that the VPN would NOT be installed on a workers personal PC.
Another issue is that there is no upgrade to Windows 7 from XP. Windows 7 requires a complete installation on more powerful hardware than a base XP system. If you have Oracle, Sybase, and a number of other business software installed you are talking about reinstalling them after the installation of Windows 7. During this time the user of the PC would not be able to do his/her work. If you have a small shop this might be doable but if you work for a company that has hundereds of PCs you might not be in a rush to upgrade to an OS that doesn't greatly improve what your staff does.