January 17, 2004
Pros and Cons
Today I got my new standard issue laptop for work. I was all excited because it was a shiny new Thinkpad. All nice and fast. My other Thinkpad was getting older and didn’t have all the cool things the other kids have. So after powering it on saw the bootup screen and it read “Windows 2000”. Crap. Windows 2000 was great — back in 2000. Man, I am so used to the little things in XP. Now of course I can upgrade, but then I am off standard IT support (which actually seems like its worthwhile) and some of the utilities that I need don’t work. Shoot. Hopefully, they change the standard soon.
Then to get onto the corporate VPN, we have some ultra-secure VPN client software that you use. You have to get a token and enter it as an extra annoying step to login. When you are connected, your machine can only see the corporate network. It cannot see any other computers on your home network where your computer resides. This is done for security purposes so one of your machines can’t bridge to the corporate machine and do damage. Makes sense but now I can’t do simple things that I used to — like use my network printer at home unless I disconnect. Man, life was so easy when we just used the built-in Windows VPN client. Maybe I will have to do a Bluetooth peripheral network or something so I can access the printer all the time.
Need to find out what other telecommuters are doing about this.
