73% of meteorological scholars agree that the sky above the clouds appears to be blue.

This consensus is however disputed by the aforementioned 73% of IT folks thinking about quitting, seeing as how they haven't even seen the sky in a blue moon....LOL

It's more like the square of supply and demand:

Price, Performance, Product & Delivery.

Pick two.

Go back home to the P's :)

WTF? When is enough, enough?

Politicians are not earth friendly either due to the high methane content of all the manure they're constantly regurgitating.

After years of research and painstaking hours of coding, Common Sense Software of Cambridge recently released a package called Personal Responsibility v1.0.

It seems many people could actually use this. Too bad it's not FOSS.

Maybe we could get a crowd-source project to provide copies to all the members of the US Congress as they apparently have a problem focusing on their jobs also :).

Glad they made it easier to copy my personal files to an external drive so I can then reformat and install Ubuntu or OS-X (hackintosh).

The only touch device I like using with my computer only gets used when browsing for porn..... :) Seriously, it's bad enough to not be able to touch-type through a form without having to leave home-row and use the mouse or touch pad. I certainly don't want to be gorilla-swiping my screen in between fields just because Microsoft wants to make more money. WTF!

Up until last year, they had their own inside IT person who was from the mainframe world and was a bit out of her element. They have 50 people and 49 different workstations. Not my choice. Not my sale. They have been buying onesy/twosy machines since slooooooowly transitioning from Wyse serial terminals into the PC world.

Most of the people who commented on this portion of the main post should really sit down and watch Glengarry, Glenn Ross: "Never open your mouth when you don't know the shot". Jesus Christ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry! No more food here Mr. Troll!

............or Craigslist.....LOL.

Agreed! Unfortunately not my call.

I've been in this business for 30 years. How long have you been operating your own consulting firm? How many competitors do you have to be price competitive with?

Grow up and join the real world.

The only place you can get consultants for less than $150 per hour are from India and that is for remote support only.

Why should the fire me?

Rather than be a smart aleck, what would you do if: you warned the customer's about the specific viruses they're getting hit with, your warned them of the insufficiency of their current antivirus, you repeatedly told them that we have to upgrade from Outlook Express to a real email program, you warn that they need a much more reliable and secure email server with modern filtering capabilities, and they refuse to acquiesce to any of those recommendations?

Would you take it upon yourself, an outside consultant, to purchase licenses for them, and then go to each workstation and perform the necessary upgrades/changes without management approval on your time and your dime? I highly doubt it.

The one thing I've learned in this business is that people with unlimited funds will do the above without question. The other 90% of businesses operate on shoe-string budgets and will gladly pay the fireman fee if and when a problem arises but don't want the business upset of having to overhaul anything or the "unnecessary" costs.

I'll put that in my morning memo: "Please Note: An anonymous coward on the internet will be glad to replace my 20 years of working with your company and 30 years of experience with setups exactly as yours with his own home spun bargain basement virus repair. I'll gladly repair them when he is finished".