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If I had a pound for every customer who runs off to Currys/PC World or Amazon, for that matter, patting themselves on the back at how clever they are and how they have saved themselves a few quid, I'd be a millionaire.
A customer asked me to quote on some tablets for their field engineers a while back. I can't remember now what the total was, but I think it was somewhere near £1500, with the installation/configuration attached to the deal. Suffice it to say that deal fell through. I can see the Director now: "Aaawwww Gawd no!" fast-forward to last week, and the same individual emailed asking if I could supply some ASUS E510MA laptops that PC World was doing in a sale at the time for £160.00. Luckily I found a supplier who could do them at a price I could make a small profit on. Now, these things are basically a glorified NetBook. To be fair, they're not too shabby if you just want simple stuff like Internet access, email, and the odd letter to say The Socialist Worker what they are NOT is full-fledged laptops able to run your SAGE accounts et al.
We see this all the time, staff looking to score brownie points with their boss by buying Windows Home machines and then discovering that Home will not connect to Active Directory. Sure, you can get out on the web, and you can even set up email of sorts, but you can't connect to the company domain.
There was a reason the laptops were cheap; they run Windows S mode. Windows S runs apps that you download from Microsoft's Windows store. The key here is that said apps run in a secure container, a bit like Docker for the Geeks among us reading this. 😉
This ensures that the apps don’t muck up your registry in the event of, say, a malware attack, making them perfect for children and web browsing.
Come the day they are to be delivered, and guess what? They want some management, and quoting software on them, don't they? We explain that they are S mode, and the penny drops. They've just bought a load of machines that are not [potentially] fit for purpose. Now, of course, the member of staff at the customer is desperate to conceal the error and lack of understanding on their part and so pleads with our Engineer to find a solution. Now dear reader, here's the thing. Personally, I would have told them there was little, if anything, we could do. Now that's not strictly true, BUT that little lie would save us a whole heap of grief later on down the line. Sadly, my engineer didn't consult with me and told the customer that they can take the laptops out of S mode, which will allow them to install applications outside of the Microsoft store.
I'm not a happy bunny, and I'm sure this will all end in tears.
My actual name is Pete. Here is why I have the username dickturpin.
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Podcaster. FOSS, Linux & Creative Commons Advocate.
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