Why users shouldn't have install rights, #17

[andygates]

"Fred, this is IT.  What's that ginormous six-gig Google cache in your filespace?  A Google Desktop search installation?  Of all the clinical drives you use?  That's nice."

Comments

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Almost all of ours - 5,800 or so - don't. But there's a large handful who have to because their crappy software requires it. Not to install, to *run*. This is stuff that started out as an Excel sheet and became some consultant in Dunfermline's pet VB project, and the guy never wrote it cleanly, so it needs to grant the user Full access to something incredibly dumb like, oh, Program Files or the whole registry. We have *dozens* of junk apps like this, and each one is unfortunately necessary because nothing else fills the niche.

Your user sounds like a unique and beautiful snowflake ;)

[lurkingcat]

Ah, those sorts of programs. It's amazing the number of essential ergonomics-related programs that start out that way too.

And my user was not a unique and beautiful snowflake - something about that particular course seems to want to make people ring up and ask that particular question. I now have a standard patter of "Are you going on that course or are you just setting it up? You're the sole student, huh? Well yes, it does need W2K3 and Monday you will find out why." And then I email the instructor and warn him or her :)