I just had to rebuild our CEO's Lenovo because of this problem. The worst part was that Lenovo absolutely refused to help because the laptop was purchased with Vista and upgraded to XP. Why do they even allow that option if they will not support it?

As someone who has been there and done that, my advice is to start activly looking for a new job today. It's one thing if management doesn't know what's going on but it's different if they know and don't care. In my case, I mentioned in several meetings that I needed to get legal and when my next review came around they needed someone with a different skill set. My two reviews before that were above average. The point is that if they are to cheap to get legal they are also to cheap to give you raises and support you and your job in other ways. Other places where I have worked that had no pirated software policies in place also had HR policies in place for cost of living and merit raises that were fair to the employee. Just get out of that place as fast as you can and you will be glad you did.

Must be a Hotblack Desiato concert.

I live at 11,000' in Colorado so it's more of a spring to autumn transation. Around here if someone asks 'what are you going to do this summer' the answer is 'well if it falls on a weekend, I'll have a picnic.'

I am in the same position, IT manager for a non-profit of about 70 people. We currently use Raiser's Edge and I find it to be at least twice as expensive as any other product on the market. Maintenance and support are very expensive and if I could use that money for a part time developer, we would be better off. And I've found that the sales people know next to nothing about their product. Every time you turn around, there's another module that they should have suggested for the last upgrade. Plus, you pay by the seat so it's not a good solution if you want several people to have access to the database. I've done a bit of research and testing with CiviCRM and I would like to replace Raiser's Edge with it. Raiser's Edge is a lot of overkill for what we do and CiviCRM looks like it would handle things nicely. But Raiser's Edge is entrenched so there's no replacing it anytime soon. But if I were starting from scratch, CiviCRM would be the way to go.

I thought the same thing when I saw that my PPC phone supported wifi. However, the battery on the phone has a very limited life when I have both wifi and bluetooth running. I'm lucky if I can get half an hour out of a fully charged battery. Also, the problem with non-EVDO wireless ISP's is that they are really designed for fixed wireless, not roaming. If you think you see to many dead zones with your cell phone, wait until you try WiMax.

If they do end up naming it after him, Colbert should do a 'better know a module' segment over the next year or so.

As yet another IT person who has been in this situation, I can say that BSA was pretty much worthless in my experience. When I was fired (mainly because of the noise I was making about unlicensed software) I tried to hand the company over to BSA on a silver platter and they were worthless. They just seemed totally incompentent and knew less about software licensing than the company I was working for. Of course that was a long time ago so I'm sure things are better these days. The bigger issue is the big suprise during an audit when the company is going public or trying to be sold. One place I worked ended up paying about $50,000 for software licensing when they tried to go public. And they were not even trying to pirate on purpose. If management really doesn't care about becoming legit, it's time to start looking for a new job. In my case, I ended up getting fired but I really should have started looking for a new job the day that they asked me to install the first unlicensed software. If that's the way they do business, they will take liberties with employees the same way they take liberties with software.

I live over 10000' in a ski town and have never been snowed in. They actually plow the roads around here.