IE 7 and your library/company December 14, 2006
Posted by heyheypaula in Techie Stuff.trackback
This interesting post from the LibraryZen blog is two months old, but might be relevant in your libraries and workplaces now. IE7 rolled out in the form of an Automatic Update, which might have caused problems for institutions with limited technical staff. Enough time has passed for most of the kinks to be smoothed out, so it is interesting to see what problems occured for libraries, and what the solution was. In my office, we added a registry entry to prevent it from installing, but a couple people installed it anyway, and there were some conflicts with existing programs. Additionally, some users were used to IE6 and were confused about menus and features of IE7. This brings to mind the latest in the so-called “browser wars”. Does your library offer browser choices? Is it better to wait to implement a big change like IE7?
lisstlouis 
From a technie standpoint it is better to wait while the lead tech person evaluates how well it works with existing programs and sites. I know from experience that IE7 doesn’t work with the Harvard Business School’s website for downloading case studies. I had to unload it to get my purchases to download. In the brief time I had it installed I wasn’t that impressed. It seemed slow and cumbersome to use.
This kind of brings up an interesting point…what if your business/library/whatever doesn’t have a lead tech person? I would guess that some library systems are small and do not have many resources. I know with my company, part of our IE7 problem was that we don’t have a unified tech person who makes decisions/implements changes/communicates with the masses. Seems like this can lead to losses in time, engergy, data, money, security…you name it.
Usually even with small companies there is some person people turn to for advice on computers or they have an outside company that comes in and helps with problems.
However it is important for companies/entities to have some sort of a computer policy. Sometimes people act as if work computers are the same as their home computers and install all sorts of programs etc. without knowledge or consent of the management. As Paula points out a lot of time and money can be lost if the computer messes up.