New Laptop

I was quite excited to receive my new work laptop given that my current laptop is old, has a low resolution display, and has been running really slow recently (mainly due to the increasing amount of “security software” mandated by IT).

After being told I was in the next group to receive mine, I was asked if I would be in to be able to take the delivery. So I responded that I would be in all week since I was working Mon-Fri

I received an email mid-Friday saying it had been dispatched next day delivery, but I planned to be out Saturday. Despite staying in to receive it, it never arrived. On Monday, I checked the tracking number and had a status update of “Partially Dispatched” then “Complete“; whatever that means. On a different page, it said it was “Out For Delivery”, but showed the expected delivery date as “tomorrow”. Soon there was a knock on the door, and there it was. So the status pages weren’t helpful at all.

So I turned it on and tried to add my account to it. However I saw a message saying the feature wasn’t supported.

A member of IT contacted me and said I should receive my laptop today. A bit late. He was on call to help me set it up which was nice. I asked if there was anything special to do because it wouldn’t let me log in. He sends me a PDF of instructions. Why wasn’t this sent to me before the laptop arrived? Why did I have to request it after attempting to set it up myself?

Regardless, I had selected the correct options so told him the step it was failing on. He suggested maybe I didn’t have an internet connection. So I enabled aeroplane mode and got an error about not having a connection, so it wasn’t that.

I messaged someone that I knew had the same new laptop. He said a team member had just received theirs too and it was supposed to have some kind of initial setup on it where it would have a Device Name. The first thing it asks when I turn it on is to set a device name so it hasn’t been set up. It was also supposed to have an Asset Sticker on it, but mine was a brand new, sealed laptop with no sticker on it.

It sounds like that IT put an order in via a third-party who are supposed to order the laptops. configure them, put a sticker on them, then ship them out. So they had 1 job, and didn’t do it.

So I told IT and they said they could configure something on their end which they did. As usual though, despite their process installing some default apps like Office, nothing else was configured so I had to install SQL Server and Visual Studio, and configure loads of options to set everything up. It’s such a time-consuming and error-prone process. Why can’t we just have a standard “Image” that gives us the majority of what we need?

A few days later, my Asset Number sticker arrived in the post. A large padded envelope inside another larger padded envelope. For 2 stickers. There was also 2 A4 paper which was the invoice; it didn’t need to go to 2 pages but it was badly formatted. Then they put in a couple of adverts for their services. What an absolute waste.

Recently, we promote “green” ideas, talking about reducing carbon emissions and being energy efficient etc. We also seem to want to reduce costs where possible. Then they do stuff like this. Even though it’s a third party that has caused the problem, it is still part of their business process isn’t it?