Anyone use Brother? We're HP/Xerox right now, but I've heard some good things about them but outside of my own personal printer at home, not any experience with their laser devices.
We have lots of Brother printers. They are good if you don't mind a cheap printer that you plan on replacing in 3 years. We eventually decided we did mind, and are currently switching to HP.
The Brother's we have print quickly and the drivers work well, but keep in mind I run a Linux shop.
Yeah, I second this. All printer suck, but Brothers suck least.
HP is still okay.
I mean, you still want to avoid the usual pitfalls:
Never buy inkjets. Laser only.
Never use a printer's built in wifi. Wired Ethernet only. If it absolutely positively needs to be wireless, use an Ethernet-wifi bridge.
Never buy multifunction machines. Printers should print, nothing more. (Obvs this doesn't apply to big copiers.)
But in these parameters then a Brother HL or an HP LaserJet M6xx work fine.
I dunno, we have Brother MFC's that we use strictly as printers, and I occasionally use as a scanner/copier, and I've found them to be more reliable than the printers. The 7860, in particular. I have about 5 of those still in service, and they've been in service for 5+ years.
Scanning on those... Do they deliver the scan via email or drop it on a network folder...
...or do you have to have scanning software installed on your workstations?
If they do plain old scan to email or scan to network folder then I can see that. It's usually the workstation software that's shitty.
I scan from my workstation. I've been using gscan2pdf for a few years now. The developer is super easy to get a hold of and is very responsive to issues.
Another one I like is VueScan, except when I don't.
I have to work all 5 days this week. Because of reasons I haven't worked a 5 day work week the last 5 weeks. I know I probably won't get much sympathy in this thread, but this week is going to suuuuck.
IT manager quit. Found out via other employees that they're not going to replace them, immediately at least or at all most likely. I'm sure i'll be compensated for the extra workload. HAHAHAHA! j/k TIME TO UPDATE THAT RESUME!
It's so weird when companies just kind of like... let a position go away when someone quits.
They did that with the billing manager here then realized that the remaining employees couldn't just "pick up her slack" and had to offload it to another company that charges a percentage. There's no way that's cheaper than having in house. Outsourcing is never cheaper. Offshoring is hardly ever cheaper, and they make fractional of what is paid in the US.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yea, I don't know. I mean, there are some positions that can absolutely be done without in a lot of places, especially bigger small companies. But they're almost always lower level positions. To just say "yea we don't actually need this manager job?" lolwut
RandomHajileNot actually a SnatcherThe New KremlinRegistered Userregular
We've gone from a peak of right around 900 to 650 through "attrition" over the past 4 or 5 years, and it's scary because they're not willing to replace anyone when they leave. Like, yeah, that's fine in the generic labor crews, but if we lose one more person in IT we'll sink. The thing that sucks about IT is that every single initiative that makes another department more efficient has a technological component that is a burden on us.
IT manager quit. Found out via other employees that they're not going to replace them, immediately at least or at all most likely. I'm sure i'll be compensated for the extra workload. HAHAHAHA! j/k TIME TO UPDATE THAT RESUME!
I've seen this happen three times in my career, and I should have left all three times, so I think you're on the right track.
Yea, I don't know. I mean, there are some positions that can absolutely be done without in a lot of places, especially bigger small companies. But they're almost always lower level positions. To just say "yea we don't actually need this manager job?" lolwut
Like I said, I've seen it three times now. It's a small company thing. Lots of dissolving this job here and handing the responsibilities......around.....haphazardly...and just hoping things will keep functioning regardless. Metaphorically taking their job duties and tossing them in the air in the center of the office and hoping people will snatch up the few pieces here and there, and throw away anything that doesn't get grabbed.
I currently have no manager, and the guys in my old department supposedly have me for a manager, but I'm still technically not their manager at all. Just a fuckton of dysfunction and misery abounds!
Yea, I don't know. I mean, there are some positions that can absolutely be done without in a lot of places, especially bigger small companies. But they're almost always lower level positions. To just say "yea we don't actually need this manager job?" lolwut
The worst is, if you let a manager position lapse like that, introducing a new manager is going to be near impossible because everyone has routines and is set in their ways and the new manager won't be able to pick up on that from the previous one.
So you're going to probably gimp the department until they figure out how to work together, if they even can, because most managers are headstrong and set in their ways and usually they just quit instead.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Yea, I don't know. I mean, there are some positions that can absolutely be done without in a lot of places, especially bigger small companies. But they're almost always lower level positions. To just say "yea we don't actually need this manager job?" lolwut
The worst is, if you let a manager position lapse like that, introducing a new manager is going to be near impossible because everyone has routines and is set in their ways and the new manager won't be able to pick up on that from the previous one.
So you're going to probably gimp the department until they figure out how to work together, if they even can, because most managers are headstrong and set in their ways and usually they just quit instead.
Which is why some people do the "smart thing" and promote one of the lower level guys who has no management skills, instead.
That is definitely better than just letting the position be vacant and then realizing "holy shit they were actually important"
It's been half a year and they're still limping along here because the billing company wants to just write shit off if it becomes too difficult to collect, you know, because they did a cost benefit analysis of it and realized getting 5% on a small claim wasn't worth it to them.
So our billing department reabsorbed that because that adds up super quick to us. They just recovered 10k from last month's right write offs from insurance companies.
Ain't nobody going to spend 15+ hours trying to get $500 back... but $10,000 is a different beast.
I tried to get the management to realize that and they just didn't understand that.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
you know, I thought this was chat... but I'm leaving it
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
What blows my mind on Fiserv is there's NO help but Fiserv's help. There's a subreddit with like five 1 year old posts, and that's it. You don't find shit on stack exchange, there's no independent knowledgebase or forums or message boards... There's fucking nothing. If you need to know how to do something in Fiserv, you ask Fiserv or you go fuck yourself.
Monday client is a bank. Go up front to install some bank shit for a hardware token on one of the thin clients. Workstation is just sitting there, signed in, unlocked, logged in to the teller application. I ask where the teller is cause I want her to save anything she needs so I can log her off. She's at lunch. I mention to the teller supervisor that this is probably not ok and she should ask the tellers to lock their computers when they leave.
"But we never lock our computers."
Yeah, but.... you're a bank.
"But if I need to go up and help out on the teller line while someone's at lunch, I cant use their workstation if it's locked. The way we do it is I just walk up and use their workstation cause it's already signed in."
None of these words are making things better you work in a fucking bank.
Monday client is a bank. Go up front to install some bank shit for a hardware token on one of the thin clients. Workstation is just sitting there, signed in, unlocked, logged in to the teller application. I ask where the teller is cause I want her to save anything she needs so I can log her off. She's at lunch. I mention to the teller supervisor that this is probably not ok and she should ask the tellers to lock their computers when they leave.
"But we never lock our computers."
Yeah, but.... you're a bank.
"But if I need to go up and help out on the teller line while someone's at lunch, I cant use their workstation if it's locked. The way we do it is I just walk up and use their workstation cause it's already signed in."
None of these words are making things better you work in a fucking bank.
The trick with banks is the same assholes that are bulk real estate moguls in a random county will also be able to open and run a bank. So while some are run capably, quite a few are about as shady as a random car insurance franchise. A huge chunk of the FDIC's job time is spent just trying to keep these things from collapsing the national economy.
Its things like this that unfairly give IT a bad reputation. I could tell that lady was irritated and impatient with me and couldn't understand why I was so alarmed and unhappy about their arrangement. I was just trying to fuck up the way things had always been there. They've always worked fine, why can't I just leave it be?
God if people had to like... LOCK their workstation or (heaven forbid!) log off when they left for lunch, do you know what an inconvenience that would be?? Customers might have to stand in line for a few extra moments! It would add tens of seconds to my day! Why can't you just understand that we have a system here and it works fine for us and be-damned your "compliance" and "accountability" and "security".
I mean, when my argument of "Anyone could walk up and use that computer at any time" is met with the counter argument of "well yeah that's so anyone can walk up and use that computer at any time".... the fuck am I supposed to say?
One of the banks around here gets around that whole "waiting to login" thing by using the guest username and just letting the software handle credentialing. Basically their workstations are all thin clients to this software.
It works well enough, not sure how compliant that is.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
When I worked at a bank, we had federal IT auditors every 1.5 years that we had to appease, and by that token, were able to ramrod a lot of security practices down upper management's throats, and therefore, the users.
I'm assuming this is a local/regional bank? In this case, I think it would warrant some sort of anonymous call to banking regulators (or non-anonymous because fuck them).
I'm assuming this is a local/regional bank? In this case, I think it would warrant some sort of anonymous call to banking regulators (or non-anonymous because fuck them).
It's local, small town, like 3 branches.
I just stirred some shit with this "policy" with the bank controller, my contact here. We looked up their handbook policies. Their policy about what to do when you walk away from your computer is dated and dumb and not helping. But, they're going to re-write it and try to put a stop to this bullshit.
I'll probably put in a super-draconian screen lock timer, too.
Doesn't matter what their handbook says, non-locking workstations is a PCI violation.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
+3
That_GuyI don't wanna be that guyRegistered Userregular
At least I have the old HIPAA card to fall back on with most of my clients. I get to tell them to lock their computers when they walk away and implement short auto-lock timeouts. If anyone complains about it I just hide behind compliance guidelines and tell them that the practice would get fined thousands of dollars a day if it were discovered they didn't do that. Someone tried to go over my head to the practice manager to complain about it. They were not happy to have been shut down so quickly.
this is why you see places have a bunch of teller/cashier/customer service stations but never fill them all
users get assigned to some station and only ever use that station
no having people jump onto random computers they just go use their computer
life's a game that you're bound to lose / like using a hammer to pound in screws
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
At least I have the old HIPAA card to fall back on with most of my clients. I get to tell them to lock their computers when they walk away and implement short auto-lock timeouts. If anyone complains about it I just hide behind compliance guidelines and tell them that the practice would get fined thousands of dollars a day if it were discovered they didn't do that. Someone tried to go over my head to the practice manager to complain about it. They were not happy to have been shut down so quickly.
I think there's no set guidelines, just that we have some specific timeout in re: HITECH/HIPAA. They recommend 15 minutes at the most last I knew.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I'm assuming this is a local/regional bank? In this case, I think it would warrant some sort of anonymous call to banking regulators (or non-anonymous because fuck them).
It's local, small town, like 3 branches.
I just stirred some shit with this "policy" with the bank controller, my contact here. We looked up their handbook policies. Their policy about what to do when you walk away from your computer is dated and dumb and not helping. But, they're going to re-write it and try to put a stop to this bullshit.
I'll probably put in a super-draconian screen lock timer, too.
You get one god damned minute. Be grateful.
So, basically, the Ruby Tuesday's that the tellers go to for lunch has a more robust computer security policy than the bank at which they work.
I think I've mentioned it here before, but when I went and opened up a new bank account last year, they signed me up for online banking automatically and told me "your first and last name is your username, the password is NAMEOFBANK1" and I was like... uh... lemme get on my phone and change that right fucking now because woah that is a bad idea.
Posts
I scan from my workstation. I've been using gscan2pdf for a few years now. The developer is super easy to get a hold of and is very responsive to issues.
Another one I like is VueScan, except when I don't.
Also it's really hard not to feel like I am getting the shaft for losing a good portion of my weekend and a lot of week day sleep.
Update: be up at 8 am for a test of this. 12 o'clock. Still no test.
Grrrrrr.
XBL:Phenyhelm - 3DS:Phenyhelm
In fact, I kind of feel like
They did that with the billing manager here then realized that the remaining employees couldn't just "pick up her slack" and had to offload it to another company that charges a percentage. There's no way that's cheaper than having in house. Outsourcing is never cheaper. Offshoring is hardly ever cheaper, and they make fractional of what is paid in the US.
This is a clickable link to my Steam Profile.
I've seen this happen three times in my career, and I should have left all three times, so I think you're on the right track.
Like I said, I've seen it three times now. It's a small company thing. Lots of dissolving this job here and handing the responsibilities......around.....haphazardly...and just hoping things will keep functioning regardless. Metaphorically taking their job duties and tossing them in the air in the center of the office and hoping people will snatch up the few pieces here and there, and throw away anything that doesn't get grabbed.
I currently have no manager, and the guys in my old department supposedly have me for a manager, but I'm still technically not their manager at all. Just a fuckton of dysfunction and misery abounds!
The worst is, if you let a manager position lapse like that, introducing a new manager is going to be near impossible because everyone has routines and is set in their ways and the new manager won't be able to pick up on that from the previous one.
So you're going to probably gimp the department until they figure out how to work together, if they even can, because most managers are headstrong and set in their ways and usually they just quit instead.
Which is why some people do the "smart thing" and promote one of the lower level guys who has no management skills, instead.
It's been half a year and they're still limping along here because the billing company wants to just write shit off if it becomes too difficult to collect, you know, because they did a cost benefit analysis of it and realized getting 5% on a small claim wasn't worth it to them.
So our billing department reabsorbed that because that adds up super quick to us. They just recovered 10k from last month's right write offs from insurance companies.
Ain't nobody going to spend 15+ hours trying to get $500 back... but $10,000 is a different beast.
I tried to get the management to realize that and they just didn't understand that.
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
also the name of my indie rock band.
"But we never lock our computers."
Yeah, but.... you're a bank.
"But if I need to go up and help out on the teller line while someone's at lunch, I cant use their workstation if it's locked. The way we do it is I just walk up and use their workstation cause it's already signed in."
None of these words are making things better you work in a fucking bank.
The trick with banks is the same assholes that are bulk real estate moguls in a random county will also be able to open and run a bank. So while some are run capably, quite a few are about as shady as a random car insurance franchise. A huge chunk of the FDIC's job time is spent just trying to keep these things from collapsing the national economy.
God if people had to like... LOCK their workstation or (heaven forbid!) log off when they left for lunch, do you know what an inconvenience that would be?? Customers might have to stand in line for a few extra moments! It would add tens of seconds to my day! Why can't you just understand that we have a system here and it works fine for us and be-damned your "compliance" and "accountability" and "security".
I AM A DUMBASS AND MY COMPANY IS RUN IN AN ASS BACKWARDS MANNER.
"Thank you."
It works well enough, not sure how compliant that is.
It's local, small town, like 3 branches.
I just stirred some shit with this "policy" with the bank controller, my contact here. We looked up their handbook policies. Their policy about what to do when you walk away from your computer is dated and dumb and not helping. But, they're going to re-write it and try to put a stop to this bullshit.
I'll probably put in a super-draconian screen lock timer, too.
You get one god damned minute. Be grateful.
users get assigned to some station and only ever use that station
no having people jump onto random computers they just go use their computer
fuck up once and you break your thumb / if you're happy at all then you're god damn dumb
that's right we're on a fucked up cruise / God is dead but at least we have booze
bad things happen, no one knows why / the sun burns out and everyone dies
I think there's no set guidelines, just that we have some specific timeout in re: HITECH/HIPAA. They recommend 15 minutes at the most last I knew.
So, basically, the Ruby Tuesday's that the tellers go to for lunch has a more robust computer security policy than the bank at which they work.