Laptop Spawn Breed User

Laptops spawn a new breed of uber-entitled user. Fay really hates the fact that his users watch TV. Those glossy ads of people effortlessly using laptops in a diner, or on a mountaintop or while driving, all give his users ideas. Bad ideas. Ideas that make them expect that they can be online anywhere and everywhere.

“Television ads make everything seem so easy and apparently so secure. We are constantly fighting that tide,” he says. The problem, he explains, is that the very nature of mobile computing has given users the expectation that they ought to be able to work when and where they want to, regardless of what’s involved in supporting them.

They want their instant connection and they want it now, and when the IT call center can’t give it to them, well, watch out.

“I get e-mails constantly from people saying they can’t get online at a friend’s house, so they can’t pick their football draft in their football pool, so I’m getting in the way of their personal life and I need to fix this situation immediately,” Applied Materials’ Archibald says. “I get beat up by users every single day who want to be able to do whatever they want, and have us support it.”

When support staffers aren’t struggling to get remote users online for their own personal needs, they’re fending off users who want nay, demand that their laptops boot up instantly and stay on no matter what, no boot-up passwords and no screen locks, thank you very much. “Users tell me regularly ‘the damn screen lock is killing my productivity,’” Archibald says.