Technological progress difficulties

Remember back when I posted on the phone system upgrade and associated computer problems?  Well, yes, the problems continue apace.

Last Thursday brought a nice tech who got the phone system running again.  Ten minutes after he left, I logged into IE to pull up our query tool - and discovered that everything except the address box had disappeared from the IE screen.  Place a call to the tech, who came back.  He couldn't figure it out.

On Friday, two techs came over, and proceeded to try every trick in the book to get the phone software and the browser to play nicely together.  When one worked, the other didn't.  This comedy continued most of the day, as they tried one thing after the other.   At the end of the day, I had a loaner laptop, thankfully hooked up to my full size monitor, keyboard and mouse, loaded with about half the programs I need to be productive.  My pc went with the techs for further investigation.

While no one will say anything officially, there have been problems like this all over campus (several others in our own office) since the phone system was installed.  Again, unofficially, it is beginning to look as if quite a few computers will need to be replaced in order for everything to be functional. 

In other words, it will cost us much more to make the switch than anticipated, as well as eat up some of the savings IT insisted we would see if we switched.  While I understand IT's desire to have the latest and greatest, a little more testing before rollout would have saved a lot of headaches.

Meanwhile, I have a faster computer and a little more room on my desk.  Now, if I can just avoid spilling coffee in it...