[cratermoon]

This sort of "it's not been vetted and approved" business can get really silly though. Like one company I worked at a couple of decades ago that mandated Windows 95 for employees. IT staff would actually take new machines shipped with Windows 2000, wipe them, and install the corporate Win95 image.

[vetinari]

This is something I would totally understand. Many software packages had compatibility issues when moving from 9x-based Windows to NT-based Windows (like expecting they could do things that NT didn't allow), so the last thing you want to some random person complain that their computer is broken. Everyone gets the same system, where the issues are at least semi-known.

[whydoyoucare]

A common mistake I've seen in the industry is to "look down" upon the IT staff, which makes it much difficult to get a meaningful conversation going.

Yes, wiping W2K and installing W95 is problematic and insecure, but I always believe in the power of a polite conversation and have had great success in persuading the powers-that-be to change their stance. :-)

[cratermoon]

Oh, but I was IT staff at the time. I wasn't in charge of desktop support, but I knew the guys. They didn't care for it either, it was policy from a high level in a company that, as a whole, did look down on IT. One of my coworkers actually went through the whole process of talking and negotiating to try to get a Win2K laptop instead of having W95 forced on it. No luck.

And, if anyone has been wondering, yes, there was hardware in the brand-new laptop that W95 didn't support. It "worked" with a generic fallback driver but lost some of the functionality that made the laptop worth buying.