Best posts made by Carnival Boy

@Minion-Queen said:

We also have people that while are in IT are not mature or have much wisdom

Hey!

@scottalanmiller said:

So just be aware that this question is asking for a fair but of business understanding, not just technical understanding.

I am aware of that. But if they gave an answer like this (for example):

@scottalanmiller said:

Windows 10 is essentially a "patch" to Windows 7, they are the same OS (Vista is the base of the family of which they are all members.) Windows 10, even as an upgrade patch, is heavily tested already... Windows 10 is the third version update to the Windows Vista family post Windows 7.

then I would be impressed. But if their answer was "I always recommend waiting until the first service pack is released" then I might suspect that they are just following the (Spiceworks) crowd and don't particularly understand how modern Windows OSs work.

That said, I'm ultimately looking for someone who can eventually do my job better than I can (scary though that concept can be), and that includes making business decisions. If people just want to be techs and not have any business understanding (and there are many like that), then I normally suggest they'd be better off in larger organisations.

They look ok to me. Of course, it all depends on how much they cost. They look cheap and cheerful, so if they were actually quite expensive....

I have more of a problem with the content. 10% off what? $750 off what? I've never got this kind of advertising ("call now and we'll give you 10% of an arbitrary price that we set"). We're trying to buy some French windows at the moment and it's impossible to get any prices, even ballpark prices, without registering with resellers and installers and we're reluctant to register because we fear being hassled for eternity by sales reps.

Well, "do nothing" is my default plan for everything in life

We have a butcher in our village and I used to buy all my meat from him. It's about a hundred yards from my house. But then a rather good supermarket (Waitrose), opened up a mile away. The problem is the meat from our butcher isn't actually that good, and I prefer the supermarkets, so I've been buying a lot more of my meat from there instead. I always feel really guilty whenever I run into the butcher in the village. The butcher knows I'm buying my meat elsewhere.

I feel bad because he's a decent bloke and I feel bad because supermarkets are taking over the country and we're running out of independent butchers.

On the other hand, his meat isn't that good, so it's not my fault.

I always get advice from my staff and encourage them to tell me I'm an idiot and explain why. But at the end of the day the buck stops with me. I don't expect them to always agree with me, but I wouldn't be happy if they took that to my boss.

Setting up a demo will nearly always require a much greater amount of time and effort than participating in a webinar.

A lot of the ones I've found useful are where companies have just posted their webinars onto youtube and allowed anyone to watch them. I guess that at that point they're not technically webinars.

Talking of security, have you cracked my 7-zip file yet?

I don't have a gun so I'd probably try and hit it with my frisbee.

I could do with a new ticketing system. I currently use a self-written one, which is ok, but I'd like something a bit more fancy and powerful. But not so powerful that it takes a lot of time and effort to set-up and manage. Budget is pretty small but not zero.

What do you use? What have you used? What do you recommend? What do you not recommend. The only thing I am sure about is that I am not going to start using Spiceworks!

Initially, it's for one company with around 100 users and 2 agents/engineers. Probably 10 tickets a day, on average. If successful I may role it out to other, non-IT departments, so I'd like something that can scale a bit.

I'm currently trialling Zendesk, which I like so far. I love the simplicity. I also use Asana (thanks to @Minion-Queen's recommendation) for project management and I'm trialling Zapier which links the two applications, so that certain tickets created in Zendesk automatically create tasks in Asana, which is pretty cool although ultimately I'd love one single application that does both helpdesk ticketing and project management.

I prefer hosted with a decent iPhone app. Although I have mild concerns about security with hosted solutions - some of our helpdesk tickets contain relatively confidential information.

I used to teach English as a foreign language to kindergarten kids (mainly Chinese, Korean and Japanese), so I'm fascinated to find out what these "tells" are...

A quick Google suggests FCI is the way forward, but I need to look into it more.

It's an easy one for anyone who hangs around the same forums you do

We have some O365 Business Premium accounts. I swear these used to include Access. But now they don't. Only E3 includes it (if you want e-mail as well) which is double the price. I'm not paying double just to use Access.

Is this something they have removed recently (eg with Office 2016) or am I mistaken. I am sure it used to include Access until fairly recently since I have some Business Premium users with Access 2013 installed, and I don't know how that could be possible if it wasn't included.

I've Googled, but can't find any mention of any changes and am now worried I am going mad.

"Here are 8 entrepreneurial skills that will help your kids become the next Steve Jobs - leading successful, fulfilling lives"

Euugh, why would anyone want their kids to be like Steve Jobs? He was a complete bastard who treated his family like dirt. I'd hate my kids to grow up like him. His life doesn't even sound very fulfilling either.

And since when has empathy been an "entrepreneurial skill"? A significant number of successful entrepreneurs are psychopaths with no empathy whatsoever.

I think I might have figured it out. We were on Small Business Premium, which includes Access. That plan doesn't exist anymore and so we were migrated to Business Premium, which doesn't include Access. I suspect our old users, originally signed up for Small Business Premium, will continue to get Access, but any new users won't. I don't think it's an Office 2016 issue, I think it's a migrating from Small Business Premium to Business Premium issue.

It sucks though. Is there any way to get Access other than buying a retail copy (which sucks) or going to a different plan (which is expensive)?

I've been lucky because I've never really experienced this. You got any examples? I've had people treat me like crap, but that's because they're dicks and treat everybody like crap - it's not specific to IT.

Is it possible to have Veeam Backup Free Edition and Veeam B&R Standard Edition in the same environment (but installed on separate servers).

All the Veeam FAQ says is "only one edition (Standard, Enterprise, or Enterprise Plus) can be used in the same physical location. ". It doesn't specifically mention Free edition.

I have Standard Edition to backup my main three ESXi hosts and all licences are used up on backing up those hosts. I want to install ESXi free edition on some additional hosts, and would like to back those hosts up. I can't use my main licenced software for this, but can I use the free edition?

@Dashrender said:

LOL that is another desk.

That open air thing seems to be all the rage in younger tech companies.
that and everyone wearing headphones so they don't hear the other people around them....

I think it's fair to say that office space overlooking Tower Bridge is seriously expensive so you need to cram in as many workers as possible.

I'm doing it. I've used Hotmail (aka Live.com) for nearly 20 years for my personal e-mail but I've fallen out of love with Microsoft lately. Too many problems. I'm going all in with Google.

The only downside is my Gmail username isn't as good as my Hotmail one which annoys me, so I'm going to have to use a custom domain, which means I'm going to have to pay for Google Apps. But it's pretty cheap, so no problem. I already have a custom domain with a Microsoft O365 account, and I'm cancelling that, so I won't be out of pocket.