Symantec down-sizing

About four years ago, I worked for the IT group here at Symantec, and it was an amazing experience. Not only did I learn a lot, but I also gained quite a few friends along the way and most of then are still in IT.

A few weeks ago, one of my old IT buddies told me that Symantec was outsourcing the IT group to another company called EDS. I know nothing about them, other than they are from the mid-west. So far, a few of my buddies have been offered positions, while a few others have been given severence packages. It'll be interesting to see where the chips end up falling for everyone when its all said and done.

Either way, there are going to be a few new faces for me to learn.

Dell : A Customer Review

I have designed and built my own computer more than one time in my life. At work, I have used the Dell systems that were given to me to use, and had to deal with the issues that arise when they fail. I wanted to stop and give a few words about their support that I think aren't taken into consideratoin most of the time.

1. They're online support is about the best thing I have ever had to deal with. Today, one of our internal customers had an issue with their monitor. I hopped on to support.dell.com and chatted with a technican who arranged for me to get a replacement as soon as tomorrow without even picking up the phone and having to wait on hold. He was even nice enough to email the transcript of our conversation for my records so I knew when everything was coming in.

2. Overnight turnaround on your replacement parts making down time non-existant. I am not totally sure if this is offered on all systems, but the laptop and desktop market require this kind of speed the workforcce in motion. With IBM/Lenovo, we have had some serious delays -- which is better now that before, but I would still put my money on Dell.

3. I love the hardware. For some reason, the Dell's that I have had seem to plug away though things much faster than the 'homebuilt' or 'frankenstein' systems that I had been building. Maybe it was the large amount of RAM they are putting in these things now-a-days, but I am still overwhelmed that my home built systems crawls in comparison. Time to redesign.

Anyways, that's my two cents on Dell support. Two thumbs way up, and I hope to own another Dell soon.

A look back....

Back on May 20th, a disgruntled Symantec customer sent a package to the Springfield office with a powder inside that was not immediately identified as sugar. This caused a lockdown of the facility, and the 30 people lucky enough to be over by the zone in the mail room were quarantined for over 5 hours with very limited mobility. Those who were in the 'hot zone' were dubbed "The Mailroom 30", and I thought nothing of it until one of them went around wearing this shirt. While it may not have been a large scale attack on the software industry, it's amazing that it had such an impact here. You'd be suprized at how tightened our security has become.

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