Rodent Regatta

COSTLY TECHNOLOGY
I hope Sun and Apple can challenge the status quo

Sun details plans to sell Linux desktops. Move designed to cut into Microsoft’s desktop dominance [InfoWorld: Top News]

Today I spent three hours attempting to renew antivirus definition subscriptions at a client’s site. That’s 3 hours to provide a credit card number for a file server and six personal computers. One computer was running Windows XP, one was running Windows 2000, the server was running W2K Server. The other 4 computers were running W98SE.
Two of the machines couldn’t renew their antivirus subscriptions over the web. Others required as many as 6 Liveupdates to complete the task. Those machines required a restart after every liveupdate. Finally, the two machines that couldn’t be updated via the web required a phone call to Symantec. Long hold times. Lengthy explanations and Q&A to insure that what I wanted was what I needed!
Finally, I was provided with the subscription code I needed, but was told that I had to wait 24 hours so that Symantec’s servers could be updated. That means a return to the site tomorrow morning. Pick whatever hourly rate you want to for providing network support services. This effort is too expensive for a small business. Admittedly, this particular issue won’t have to be addressed again for 12 months, but it’s still to costly for something so ”simple.” Yes, I understand how costly it would become to troubleshoot a virus were it to get in there, but that’s not the problem here. This is simply renewing a magazine subscription! Think about how easy they make that!!!