My PC is managed according to corporate standards. I can’t install anything without an administrator signing on and authorizing it. I asked if I could install the software to link to my cell phone and load my contacts into it. Otherwise I’d be spending a couple of hours over the next week manually entering them all in via the keypad.
The day after I put the ticket in, someone called up and asked where the software was. I told him I had it on a CD. The local support guy came up the next morning, saw that it was an OEM disk and not some random thing I’d burned, and logged in as administrator so I could install it.
Sure, it was two days before I got what I needed, but it wasn’t a compelling gotta-have-it-today issue.
Everything else on here is available as a network install, and is set up in my profile. When I get a new PC — I’m due to be refreshed in the next month or so — I’ll go to a single application, check the boxes for everything I need, and go to lunch. When I come back, everything will be installed.
Every application that I install myself I’d have to reinstall when I get a new PC. How many hours would that take? Multiply that by the number of users in my office, which just relocated earlier this year. Most of us didn’t take the hardware from the old location, we just came to blank systems at our new desks and kicked off the install process.
If I’m paying for it, it is not worth my time to install software. If my alternatives are to load all my apps on a new PC I’ve just bought, or to work a billable hour and pay someone else to do the installs, I’ll pay the Geek Squad to click OK and reboot 14 times. Why should I expect the company I work for, who owns the PC I’m working on, to make a different decision?