Comment Re:Boring! (Score 2) 243
If not USING your PC is your idea of IT, I'm glad I dont' work w/ you!
Using it and doing silly hacks and customizations are not the same thing. It's fun to compile all your Linux binaries with non-standard tweaks, reskin everything, and customize the hell out of your computer when you're 12 years old and just learning. When you really want computers to work reliably, you have to consider that every non-standard tweak is another chance for something stupid to go wrong. To a certain extent, it's a trade-off: hacks and customizations vs. stability and reliability. Sometimes it's worth the trade-off. For most people most of the time, it isn't.
And keep in mind, I'm not talking about normal/supported customization. You want to change the background wallpaper or cursor? Great. If you want to install some freeware thingy that gives you whacky animated wallpaper and cursors? There's a decent chance it's malware. If not, it's probably going to break at some point, if you're lucky enough that it's not going to break something else.
Somethings make work easier, like AutoHotKey. The later, I only use every now (not even quarterly?) and then to create rapid text macros needed for doing manual manipulation of >20 records at a time. A rarity, but it saves hours!
Great. So that's a useful tool that improves your productivity. You use it. I said, "Don't have more software installed on your system than you use." So that counts as "software you use".
Like many I've used photoXXXX, (including bump mapping, texturizing, Masking, Merging multiple layers, color replacements, etc... not making Memes) but I don't use PhotoXXXX on a regular basis, maybe 2x a year. Should I uninstall / re-install that every time?
No, I'm saying don't install or uninstall software any more than you need to. If you use it, install it once, and keep it patched and up to date. Don't install it unless you have a reason to do so. Don't uninstall it unless you have a reason to do so. It may be almost a superstition with me, but for most of the computers I've seen over my career that have been well and truly fucked, to the point of needing to be reformatted and reinstalled from scratch, it's because someone has been installing, uninstalling, and reinstalling a bunch of crapware, screwing around with settings, and trying to "optimize" it in some way.
And this isn't an "IT vs. users" thing. I'm talking to IT people too. Don't customize things more than you need to. Don't install crap that people won't use. Keep it simple.