Leave Windows Alone

I’m currently consulting for a very large corporation.  They use Windows.  I don’t mind using Windows.   In fact, even though I prefer a number of open source alternatives, I am a firm believer in using the right tool for the job.  Sometimes, that tool is Windows.  What drives me nuts though is that apparently, they didn’t feel that Windows was the right tool for the job.  Instead of selecting a new tool, they bolted third party utilities onto Windows until they had some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.  It takes no less than 6 minutes for my company supplied laptop to boot up and logon to the network and that’s assuming that it does so on the first time.  Most mornings, I suffer at least 3 blue screens of death before I successfully startup and get logged in. 

My point here is if you’re going to use Windows, use Windows.  This particular environment has replaced the usual Windows login with a Novell one, then removed that to use a single sign on mechanism with the hard drive encryption system, replace the change password feature with a third party one (that seems to have been developed in house).  It’s no wonder my laptop doesn’t want to start up.  It’s launching multiple third party applications to replace existing Windows functionality before it even begins to load my personal settings.  Microsoft doesn’t fully share all the details regarding their API.  The result is that third party programs are often less stable than their Microsoft counterparts.  Replacing core utilities (like the password change tool), seems like trouble waiting to happen.

Tags: third party utilities, windows