According to this Legal Technology article, it could be.

Sometimes the cutting remark can blunt the cutting edge. Every year firms spend millions of dollars on hardware and software, but when we asked third-, fourth- and fifth-year associates about their firm’s technology as part of our annual midlevel job satisfaction survey (August 2008), we heard a lot more about long waits and condescending IT staffers than we did about innovative products. Specifically, we found, the quality of tech support — the size and organization of the help desk, and the responsiveness and attitude of its employees — often was the make-or-break factor in respondents’ opinion of their firm’s IT efforts.

I saw this first hand a number of years ago. Not specifically with a help desk, but I saw how a crummy attitude, and an unhelpful support person can ruin a tech project. I came in to an organization that had a fairly complex, yet very useful database system. Unfortunately, hardly anyone ever used it for anything outside of it’s main membership function. It had meeting planning, and subscription modules, and no one used them. When I suggested using them to some folks, I was met with fierce resistance, and came to the realization that everyone in this small organization simply hated this database, and I couldn’t really figure out why. I made an effort to educate people on the benefits, help them learn how it worked, etc. and nothing helped. Everyone still hated it.

It was only a couple of years into this job that I learned the reason why. Apparently, when they purchased this software, the software company sent a trainer to work with all of the staff. This person was not especially helpful to new users, had no patience for questions, did not do a good job training, and just generally wasn’t very nice. Everyone hated her, ergo, everyone hated the product.

I’ve continued to see the same thing play out over and over again. If your tech support folks convey a bad attitude when it comes to questions about your IT efforts, it will influence how people view the projects thesmelves.

Have you seen this play out in your own workplaces? Share your stories!

So you’re a PC tech, and you’re used to being called in to look at problem PC’s under all sorts of circumstances, and you probably have all the SysInternals tools loaded on a thumb drive just for those occasions. Well, what happens when you don’t have it available?

Head over to SysInternals Live and run them from the site! How very useful!

Have you been over there and run them? Let us know what you think!

(h/t to Ed Bott, who you really should be reading too…)

Most people have probably used the Microsoft knowledge base but did you know that Microsoft Certified Partners (anyone who has passed a Microsoft exam) has access to an internal database that may have more information and articles? As long as you are already certified and have a LiveID then you can access the Microsoft Partner Level Knowledge Base.

This was a warning message that I was greeted with on my new laptop at work today when I was messing around with dual screens and setting their resolution. Funny how it thinks the resolution I chose would result in a “fuzzy display” is worse off then its suggested “squinty display.”

Thanks, but no-thanks… I’ll keep my “fuzzy display” setting.

I was browsing the Sunday sales flier for a not so best purchase price establishment. $129 for their team of specialists to “protect your new pc.” Gets you Antivirus, antispyware, installation and a so called speed and performance boost. Ok. Let’s start with antivirus. AVG is FREE for home users. Antispyware? How about Microsoft Defender and occasionally run Adaware, again both are FREE. Top that with setting up your system for OpenDNS and you can block phishing, adult content etc. How much? You guessed it, FREE again. Lastly. Speed and performance boost?!? Are they kidding? On a new pc what are they going to do, remove all the crapware that comes on the pc while replacing it with some half junky bloatware AV package they love to sell in their ads? Any IT person with experience knows the two “classic” AV packages nearly rate as viruses themselves in what they do to Windows stability and performance. Do yourself a favor. Apply the $129 toward a nice iPod Nano, subscribe to some podcasts and use these free solutions instead. Don’t forget going into add/remove programs and removing all that crapware is free too with a few mouse clicks.

Links Mentioned:
AVG Antivirus
Microsoft Defender – Antispyware
Adaware – Antispyware
OpenDNS – help block phishing, adult content etc for free.
Previous FiT Post on OpenDNS

I’ve just posted a detailed guide on how I set up a Dell server to notify me whenever events such as hard disk failures or warnings occur on the server. The GUI web front end is painfully slow to setup with a lot of mouse clicking and pasting and is prone to error and can result in a non standard setup. By following the instructions in the Dell Open Management Server Administrator (OMSA) alert guide, hopefully you will see how quick and easy it is to ensure all of your Dell servers are setup in the same way.