Service? Service?

Where are you, service?

To What Degree Service?

The view from the soapbox is always clear; I hope this article is as clear as my view. I'm questioning when does service need to be straight, clean, between-the-eyes advice to change the status quo.

Yesterday was a tough day for me. I worried and fretted about two of my favorite clients. I worked into the evening, watching the U.S. presidential debates on a portable TV in the office. Then I fell asleep in my reading chair by the fireplace while reading Harry Potter but thinking about one of my clients' networks. When is it ok for my to stop fretting about my clients and the advice I must give them?

Both networks and most of the workstations are over three years old. That's about the limit of a PCs life in my book. We're fortunate if our PCs last for three years, and we're blessed mightily if they last longer. And both networks are showing signs of aging: printers disappearing, unused shares still resident, operating systems upgraded once or twice, old applications only half uninstalled. I'll be you've seen it a dozen times yourself, it's how our PCs look after we've used them for a while.

I starting the day off by working on one of the networks, primarily to install an Ethernet/parallel printer sharing box. No sweat, add IPX and TCP/IP to all of the workstations that only had one, the other, or NetBEUI. Then configure private IP addresses and install the print driver. Modify the printer definitions, and each PC found both of the newly-shared printers: an aged Okidata "laser" clone, and an HP inkjet.

I also found thousands of temporary files on the workstations. All had large recycle bins, one had 367 files! The workstation doesn't have a separate file server, each of the four workstations is sharing one or more hard drives of the other three stations -- 6 shares, 14 mapped drive letters. Intuitively I know that at some point the Win98 OS upgrades won't handle all the peer-to-peer overhead.

For over three years I've explained orally and in writing that Windows peer-to-peer networks need tender, loving care. They aren't as robust as networks with a separate file server; however, they can be an inexpensive way to quickly share a few files and an occasional print job. After yesterday morning, I'm vexed that I should be recommending a separate file and print server to handle the thousands of shared files this client uses each year, and the dozens of multi-page graphic/text print jobs that are produced each day.

I enjoy finding stable shortcuts that elegantly solve technical problems and save money at the same time. And that's the type of service this client wants. We're a good match for one another. But my heart tells me that this small network has, over the years, transformed from elegant to cobbled.

Ok, I'm off the soapbox. Here it is from my heart: I'm just waiting for the grace to tell my client the truth. It's time for a separate file/printer server and a few new workstations. We had a good 3-year run, and we got our money's worth from these workstations. Let's upgrade.

Maybe the grace and courage will come today. Or, maybe my client will read this article.

I hope your clients read it too.

P.S. I'll tell you about the other client network in a few days -- I'm too tired to climb on the soapbox twice.

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References

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updated , 2000
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