The Magic of Administrator Access

Most of the time, Einstein's law stands true - Everthing that CAN go wrong, WILL go wrong. While we constantly attempt to control all factors of everything we do so that the impact of this law is minimized (yes, I confess that I'm a control freak yet again), fate sometimes performs a rare act of kindness and you find an accident happening that actually REMOVES a big pain in your life. Like how penicillin was discovered, but I digress.

I remember blogging that my previous laptop had crashed. So when they gave me a new laptop, they weren't able to transfer my hard disk image to the new laptop as it was dead. Which means that they had to install ALL my applications to my laptop again. As I had to resort to tugging on a few (right) strings under consultation and support from my boss so that my need for a new laptop got immediate attention, the head engineer was assigned to my case instead of my regular engineer (No, I don't have a personal engineer assigned to me, but I have managed to obtain the direct line of one of the best engineers at work and made pals with him).

In my letter of complaint to a certain personnel that could make things move, I had highlighted the number of work days lost as a result of having laptops that were not functioning properly. As a result, the head engineer was under pressure to get me a new working laptop in the shortest possible time. So instead of taking a day to install all my applications (yes, I have a lot of applications installed because a web manager needs all kinds of tools to get her job done!) before giving me the laptop which was what my regular engineer did, he brought the new laptop to my work station and installed my applications in front of me so that I could see that he was working as hard as he could to get my system up and running for me.

While it was not a well calculated move (I had to make my phone calls sitting on my desk as he was hunched over my chair fixing my laptop), it did give me the peace of mind that he was installing the right applications and I was able to tell him what he missed and what settings were required.

So I have been working on my new laptop for 2 weeks, enjoying the new speed and quietness it gave without the "click-whirring" noise from my previous laptop before I made a discovery that would change my life! Ok, so I'm being dramatic. But it has made my life at work a lot easier.

When I was installing iTunes 7 on my laptop, my colleague in the next cubicle who was previously with the IT department commented that installation of iTunes required administrator access. See, our company has this policy that where users (i.e. me) would not be able to install programs without administrative access (i.e. a company engineer). This was to protect against employees installing pirated software on corporate laptops. Only certain programs like Yahoo Messenger! that were free for download did not require administrator access if we were not logged onto the company network.

I had assumed that iTunes was in the same category as Yahoo Messenger! until my colleague told me otherwise. He explained that the head engineer who had set up my laptop programs for me must have enabled administrator access on my laptop to install my programs and had forgotten to take it off. Apparently, he had administrator access on his laptop as well.

As I was sceptical, he located the "rights" folder on my laptop and lo and behold! The administrator access id was there. I was elated and gleeful. For every single program that I had required, I have had to find the application on our company network and request for permission to install something as basic as Photoshop. That request would be directed to my boss who had to approve it first before the IT department would grant me access to download and install it on my laptop.

This process could take from a couple of days (if my boss were in Singapore and I could pop into her room to highlight that I required her permission for a software installation) to almost never (when my boss was traveling without stop and there was no delegation of authority for such approvals). As this process was such a pain, I shunned from installing any application apart from those that were absolutely necessary for me to carry out my job.

Things were different now. I promptly installed the PC suit software for my mobile as well as the palm OS. Now both my mobile and clie UX50 are synced to my outlook calendar, contacts and tasks. I can check my next days' meetings on my phone (which alerts me 15 minutes before a meeting) and check off completed tasks on my palm. In addition, the complete profile of all work contacts (email, land line & mobile number) have been automatically updated to my mobile. To my amazement, apparently the syn works both ways as well - all the mobile text messages in my in and sent box in my handphone were also saved onto my PC. Talk about having a central terminal for all your communication messages!

I am now more mobile than ever. The level of my efficiency has just been upgraded, and will have any and every type of information I need with me all the time. The only downside is that the number of cables at my cubicle have increased (it now looks like a mini powerhouse!) and you will see chargers and syncing cables as well as my iPod hooked up to my laptop as a hard disk or during synchronization. I dread the day the world runs out of (electrical) power.