Impacts from OS Upgrade

From IT perspective, users who were on Windows NT 4.0 should have found Windows 2000 familiar. Hence, the operating system upgrade should have little impact on users. “It looks the same for the user, “Start,” “Run,” it’s like Windows 95/98, NT4.0 … they can care less,” said the project leader.An IT contractor echoed that, “…So it's the same log-in process. It's just that they have new user name and new domain to login to.”

Overall, changes from the operating systems upgrade were fairly minimal to the user. The largest noticeable change was the way they logged in every morning. “The login security feature seemed to be a little different. The login is different here than it used to be,” commented one business user, Wilson.

Other than the log-in changes, a few users also noticed that computers seem to perform slower at certain functions. According to an IT user who manages logistic systems at a different department, he noticed the performance of Windows Explorer has gone down. “Every time I go click on to save a file I can literally go do something else and come back before it drops down my box because it’s trying to understand where all my drives are mapped to and trying to synchronize files.” His situation was fairly unique because as a system administrator, he had many network drives that he was connected to. At the same time, he acknowledged that offline file synchronization, a new feature in Windows 2000 that synchronized users’ files on the hard drive with their files on the network, was a beneficial feature.

Nellie, who was responsible for rolling out Windows 2000 to users at headquarters, recalled that some users were skeptical about the receiving new operating systems after hearing rumors about its performance. “For the most part, they were like ‘I’ve heard stories about this new operating system’ and from a technical standpoint, the biggest complaint about the operating

system is that it’s slower to shut down,” said Nellie. The slower shutdown was again attributed to offline file synchronization that goes into action the moment users click on the “logout” or “turn off computer” function. Nevertheless, one user, Calvin, commented on the quicker boot up speed that he noticed switching from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000. “What most people perceive is it boots up faster and they like that. It took NT awhile to boot up once you had turned your machine off and turned it back on,”Calvin explained. For some of the users at the manufacturing facilities that were still using Windows 95, after they received the upgrade, one of the visible benefits was their operating systems no longer crashed once a day. “One of the biggest things was stability. It was reliable, it did not crash and using the old software compared to Windows 2000 was like night and day. There’s a big difference,”said Lance at manufacturing facility A.

At some of the manufacturing facilities, the system administrator took the advantage of the Windows 2000 security features and restricted users from performing system activities. After the upgrade, many users found themselves stripped of their capability to install programs and in extreme cases, unable to change the time clock on the computer.“It’s very inconvenient,” said Ben, “I could understand to a certain extent why it’s done that way. You may have some people that are not computer literate enough that it could cause you problems but for the most part the power users, what does it hurt me to set my clock?”

The change certainly affected power users more than standard users because power users were the one who used to have more privileges in the past.

“I don’t necessarily want to have free access to delete files and install other programs, but what Windows 2000 does with the new file security prevents an installation of any software. So I could not install anything without the approval and support of IT

…Obviously I don’t like it but I do understand the reason it’s there. I obviously respect it.”

– Lance, Business Manager at Manufacturing Facility A

To Lance, the inability to install software meant he had to rely heavily on IT people to get the needed installation, which was less convenient and more time consuming.

“That’s the biggest problem, then, I could fix it myself at whatever timeframe I had but now I have to rely on them. So, I’m trying to push them to help us quicker. I mean just having to call somebody takes more time than me being able to check a setting or let’s say if I could be able to do something I could go in and change that and then we’re fine if it worked.”

Even though users explained they understood IT’s reason for not allowing them to install software, they did not like the fact that their freedom to install screen savers or change the time on the clock was taken from them.