by I think that it's no surprise that Management can come up with some
'interesting' mind-sets. I would be interested in getting a little
feedback on how 'your' company addresses this view point.
And just what 'is' this mind-set?... well, their position is that
everyone should have only 'one' keyboard on their desk. That means
you can have "A" PC or "A" workstation of some sort but not more than
one.
Now for the Users out there, I don't see this to be a big problem,
typically a User is assigned a task to perform and it should be
relatively easy to determine what type or computational resource would
be best to accomplish that task.
What is really interesting is that this mind-set apparently makes no
differentiation to the unique functional responsibilities of the
computer group's Admin. types. In a large company it is not uncommon
for there to be several thousand PCs* on the network as well as
Mainframes, Mini's, and a large pot full of printers and workstations.
You never seem to be fortunate enough to be dealing with a single
protocol so you have to deal with this mixed-bag of network chatter
all the while having to satisfy the Users 'connectivity requests' of
platform logins as well as NFS mount points etc.
The Computer group is chartered with the responsibility of keeping the
entire company computational enterprise functional, that much is a
given. Therefore I think that in order to gain and maintain your
proficiency in all the various platforms and O/Ss that are in use
within the company it is not unreasonable for the Admin. to have more
than a single keyboard "assigned" to them.
I would be interested in hearing how other companies address this
issue... what is the mind-set of your Management on this topic... (and
how do you deal with it in real life ;-).
Regards,
Eric