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November 20, 2010 1:41 AM Subscribe
I surf the internets for a living.
My office uses IE7 which is woefully inadequate for the task at hand and is seriously affecting my ability to do my job.
Everyone agrees this is a problem but the solution appears to be not so simple
I'm a prospect researcher for a fair sized charitable organisation so a large part of my job is trawling the internet at large, and several subscription databases in particular, looking for rich people who might be persuaded to give us money. This means I regularly work with several browser windows containing dozens of tabs at any one time which upsets IE no end and it becomes sluggish and crashes semi-regularly. IE is also very slow to return results from a couple of the databases I regularly search so I'm wasting a measurably large part of my working day staring at a blank screen waiting for the browser to catch up with me or cursing it for crashing and losing my last couple of hours of work.
I've spoken to my boss, his boss and our IT department and everyone agrees that this is a problem. Things are taking longer than they should and the organisation is spending a not inconsiderable amount of money on a resource (me and my databases) that they can't entirely effectively exploit.
For a while I was able to run the portable version of Chrome and life was good, deadlines were met and everyone was happy but recently Altiris Application Manager caught up with me and prevents Chrome from running so I'm stuck back with IE.
Simple solution, I think, talk to the IT department and ask them to install Chrome (or firefox or anything I guess). Except it's not so simple. Despite the fact that everyone agrees that I have a reasonable need to use another browser and I've made a strong business case supported by my boss and his boss there's an insane amount of bureaucracy involved and nobody's installing nothing before the relevant policies and procedures are in place which, at the rate the process works, means 12 - 18 months from now.
Which brings me, finally (apologies), to my question;
Is it possible to edit a portable app so that Altiris recognises it as an approved application and will let it run?
(changing the filename to 'explorer.exe' doesn't work)
and, to clarify slightly, is someone who has to ask the question in the first place (ie me) likely to be able to do this successfully?
(I have a tacit agreement from IT that they're OK with me trying to work around Altiris as a temporary solution)
Thanks in advance for any help
I'm a prospect researcher for a fair sized charitable organisation so a large part of my job is trawling the internet at large, and several subscription databases in particular, looking for rich people who might be persuaded to give us money. This means I regularly work with several browser windows containing dozens of tabs at any one time which upsets IE no end and it becomes sluggish and crashes semi-regularly. IE is also very slow to return results from a couple of the databases I regularly search so I'm wasting a measurably large part of my working day staring at a blank screen waiting for the browser to catch up with me or cursing it for crashing and losing my last couple of hours of work.
I've spoken to my boss, his boss and our IT department and everyone agrees that this is a problem. Things are taking longer than they should and the organisation is spending a not inconsiderable amount of money on a resource (me and my databases) that they can't entirely effectively exploit.
For a while I was able to run the portable version of Chrome and life was good, deadlines were met and everyone was happy but recently Altiris Application Manager caught up with me and prevents Chrome from running so I'm stuck back with IE.
Simple solution, I think, talk to the IT department and ask them to install Chrome (or firefox or anything I guess). Except it's not so simple. Despite the fact that everyone agrees that I have a reasonable need to use another browser and I've made a strong business case supported by my boss and his boss there's an insane amount of bureaucracy involved and nobody's installing nothing before the relevant policies and procedures are in place which, at the rate the process works, means 12 - 18 months from now.
Which brings me, finally (apologies), to my question;
Is it possible to edit a portable app so that Altiris recognises it as an approved application and will let it run?
(changing the filename to 'explorer.exe' doesn't work)
and, to clarify slightly, is someone who has to ask the question in the first place (ie me) likely to be able to do this successfully?
(I have a tacit agreement from IT that they're OK with me trying to work around Altiris as a temporary solution)
Thanks in advance for any help
IE is also very slow to return results from a couple of the databases I regularly search
This part of your question sticks out to me: I wouldn't expect the choice of browser to have a significant influence on the overall response time for a database query.
I'm guessing one of two things is happening here: Either the database interface is so horribly designed it takes a lot of time for IE to render it, or the database you are querying is taking a long time to generate some parts of the result page, chrome renders the page in an order that gives you the interesting parts first and you are not realizing your query isn't done yet.
Is there any chance you could talk to the people running the databases about this? If it's something fixable on their end they will be happy to know about it.
posted by Dr Dracator at 2:04 AM on November 20, 2010 [1 favorite]
This part of your question sticks out to me: I wouldn't expect the choice of browser to have a significant influence on the overall response time for a database query.
I'm guessing one of two things is happening here: Either the database interface is so horribly designed it takes a lot of time for IE to render it, or the database you are querying is taking a long time to generate some parts of the result page, chrome renders the page in an order that gives you the interesting parts first and you are not realizing your query isn't done yet.
Is there any chance you could talk to the people running the databases about this? If it's something fixable on their end they will be happy to know about it.
posted by Dr Dracator at 2:04 AM on November 20, 2010 [1 favorite]
Wild guess since I don't know how Altiris works, but since renaming the exe doesn't fool it, maybe it's blocking non-IE traffic based on the user agent? If so, you can try to change the user agent for chrome to send the appropriate IE string.
posted by hungrysquirrels at 2:14 AM on November 20, 2010
posted by hungrysquirrels at 2:14 AM on November 20, 2010
Run the math. IE takes n1, n2, and n3, seconds longer to do tasks X, Y, and Z, which you do A, B, and C times a day on average, so based on your salary (add 35%+ for benefits) it costs the charity $STUPID_MONEY_DOWN_DRAIN per year because they refuse to do something that costs absolutely nothing, takes 12 seconds of their time, and is done by literally thousands of top corporations worldwide. At $40,000/year, that's $20/working hour or $.33/minute. If we say that you're losing 5 minutes/day on this (and really it's more when we count your time and your boss's time and his boss's time), that's $1.65/work day = $412.50/year (assuming a 50 week year) of your donors' money being wasted on nonsense.
Also, is there a reason your IT department can't let you use IE 8? I'm loathe to suggest IE for anything, but if it's a dealbreaker, IE 8 certainly sucks far less.
Finally, if the IT department is fine with you working around Altiris, disillusioned is right: just have them add an exception into Altiris to allow you to run Chrome or your browser of choice.
posted by zachlipton at 2:26 AM on November 20, 2010 [2 favorites]
Also, is there a reason your IT department can't let you use IE 8? I'm loathe to suggest IE for anything, but if it's a dealbreaker, IE 8 certainly sucks far less.
Finally, if the IT department is fine with you working around Altiris, disillusioned is right: just have them add an exception into Altiris to allow you to run Chrome or your browser of choice.
posted by zachlipton at 2:26 AM on November 20, 2010 [2 favorites]
I would suggest bringing your own laptop in running your own choice of browser. If you can't get your laptop authorized, work from home.
It's likely that you won't be allowed to do either of those things, in which case, the above technical solutions may work if you're allowed to implement them.
Face the possibility that you won't be allowed to solve this problem, regardless of what is causing it. I've worked for large organizations and they are extremely efficient and fast about stopping you from solving problems, but completely helpless about enabling you to solve them. Their infrastructure may be more important to them than the work anybody does within that infrastructure.
Therefore, I would keep trying to solve the problem and keep documenting your efforts to solve them, because if a time comes when it suits them to get rid of you, they may use your drop in performance as a reason to discredit you.
posted by tel3path at 2:47 AM on November 20, 2010
It's likely that you won't be allowed to do either of those things, in which case, the above technical solutions may work if you're allowed to implement them.
Face the possibility that you won't be allowed to solve this problem, regardless of what is causing it. I've worked for large organizations and they are extremely efficient and fast about stopping you from solving problems, but completely helpless about enabling you to solve them. Their infrastructure may be more important to them than the work anybody does within that infrastructure.
Therefore, I would keep trying to solve the problem and keep documenting your efforts to solve them, because if a time comes when it suits them to get rid of you, they may use your drop in performance as a reason to discredit you.
posted by tel3path at 2:47 AM on November 20, 2010
At my work, when I want to get around similar crap, I boot Linux from a CD or USB drive and run what I want. Here's how to get started.
posted by Menthol at 3:10 AM on November 20, 2010 [1 favorite]
posted by Menthol at 3:10 AM on November 20, 2010 [1 favorite]
Similar to what Menthol suggested - is there any possibility you can install, or get installed, VMware, VirtualPC or VirtualBox?
posted by robertc at 3:54 AM on November 20, 2010
posted by robertc at 3:54 AM on November 20, 2010
Have you tried disabling JavaScript, Java, image animations, and/or Flash? I'm not sure this would help, but it's worth a try if you haven't done so. Turning off images would be something else (more desperate) to try.
posted by amtho at 4:58 AM on November 20, 2010
posted by amtho at 4:58 AM on November 20, 2010
What zachlipton said, plus: you're a charitable organization. You live by your donations. If IT wants to block the applications that help pay their wages, I'm sure they'll be happy to look for a job elsewhere when the nonprofit goes down.
posted by scruss at 5:29 AM on November 20, 2010
posted by scruss at 5:29 AM on November 20, 2010
See if they will compromise and install IE8. It seems more stable than firefox these days. (How that compares to Chrome, I don't know.)
Or change your workflow. If I was a manager, I would hear the multiple windows and dozens of tabs complaint and think that the problem isn't the software.
posted by gjc at 6:36 AM on November 20, 2010
Or change your workflow. If I was a manager, I would hear the multiple windows and dozens of tabs complaint and think that the problem isn't the software.
posted by gjc at 6:36 AM on November 20, 2010
Google has released an IE plugin, called Chrome Frame, that allows IE to use Chrome as the rendering engine. The intended functionality seems to be for web designers to be able to include a tag in pages that lets their users use this plugin instead of IE's rendering, providing HTML5 functionality etc to older browsers.
However, it's possible to hack this plugin to run for all websites. The best directions I've found are at http://www.instantfundas.com/2010/09/force-internet-explorer-to-always-use.html (beware obnoxious ads, but the other resources I found were out-of-date for the current Google Frame version).
You'll need to install the add-in and add registry entries in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER tree; depending on your workstation security settings this may require a friendly IT tech.
I've just gotten it to work on my home PC, although I couldn't say what the effect will be as far as overall stability of IE. The two limitations I see are:
1) URLs typed in the address bar need to look like gcf:http//www.metafilter.com. Subsequent links followed from there will automatically use Chrome Frame. (You can test this by right-clicking in the page, you get the Chrome context menu).
2) gcf:http://www.google.com actually doesn't work, probably due to the epic fail of constantly updating/rerendering shit that google.com has become in recent months. (Could you please give me a goddamn full second to type rather than deciding you can divine my search intentions based on the first three characters? FFS! When MS Bing kills you in user interface, you're doing something wrong.) (Sorry for derail.)
Anyway - good luck!
posted by a young man in spats at 8:33 AM on November 20, 2010
However, it's possible to hack this plugin to run for all websites. The best directions I've found are at http://www.instantfundas.com/2010/09/force-internet-explorer-to-always-use.html (beware obnoxious ads, but the other resources I found were out-of-date for the current Google Frame version).
You'll need to install the add-in and add registry entries in the HKEY_CURRENT_USER tree; depending on your workstation security settings this may require a friendly IT tech.
I've just gotten it to work on my home PC, although I couldn't say what the effect will be as far as overall stability of IE. The two limitations I see are:
1) URLs typed in the address bar need to look like gcf:http//www.metafilter.com. Subsequent links followed from there will automatically use Chrome Frame. (You can test this by right-clicking in the page, you get the Chrome context menu).
2) gcf:http://www.google.com actually doesn't work, probably due to the epic fail of constantly updating/rerendering shit that google.com has become in recent months. (Could you please give me a goddamn full second to type rather than deciding you can divine my search intentions based on the first three characters? FFS! When MS Bing kills you in user interface, you're doing something wrong.) (Sorry for derail.)
Anyway - good luck!
posted by a young man in spats at 8:33 AM on November 20, 2010
(also...agreeing with gjc, having dozens of tabs open will jack up any browser. (Firefox, at least, more so than IE these days) You may want to consider adjusting your work process. I don't care what you're doing, you can't do 40 tabs worth of it simultaneously!)
posted by a young man in spats at 8:37 AM on November 20, 2010
posted by a young man in spats at 8:37 AM on November 20, 2010
Response by poster: Thanks guys,
zachlipton & gjc; IE8's a non-starter because there are a couple of in-house, bespoke databases that won't work with it (I don't use those as it happens so they could just install it on my machine but if they were inclined to do something like that there wouldn't be a problem in the first place)
Dr Dracator; I'm pretty sure the interface is the problem, everything seems to exist in separate 'panes' that take ages to assemble themselves. The results are almost always the first thing to show up and I'm left waiting around for the rest of the interface to appear so I can make something of them.
I'll give linux a shot but otherwise I'll just keep chipping away until one or the other of us loses the will to carry on.
Thanks again
posted by VoltairePerkins at 8:37 AM on November 20, 2010
zachlipton & gjc; IE8's a non-starter because there are a couple of in-house, bespoke databases that won't work with it (I don't use those as it happens so they could just install it on my machine but if they were inclined to do something like that there wouldn't be a problem in the first place)
Dr Dracator; I'm pretty sure the interface is the problem, everything seems to exist in separate 'panes' that take ages to assemble themselves. The results are almost always the first thing to show up and I'm left waiting around for the rest of the interface to appear so I can make something of them.
I'll give linux a shot but otherwise I'll just keep chipping away until one or the other of us loses the will to carry on.
Thanks again
posted by VoltairePerkins at 8:37 AM on November 20, 2010
the later versions of ie have a compatibility mode that breaks the rendering engine appropriately so it can run old ie apps.
posted by empath at 9:20 AM on November 20, 2010
posted by empath at 9:20 AM on November 20, 2010
At least for me, Firefox does get sluggish with lots of tabs. But on the other hand, some people I work with keep dozens open in Firefox (with the assistance of some plugins that improve the tab UI).
But I've never had chrome slow down on me for having lots of tabs open. And although I don't use Opera much, I've heard anecdotes of people being quite happy with its ability to manage scores of tabs.
I don't think there's anything wrong with your workflow for requiring lots of tabs. Memory is cheap these days, and its there to be used. The computer is there to make *you* more efficient. If its not fulfilling that purpose, it needs to be fixed, not you. (Assuming you're not doing anything actually perverse, like running non-business-related cpu/memory hogs in the background.)
posted by Hither at 9:51 AM on November 20, 2010
But I've never had chrome slow down on me for having lots of tabs open. And although I don't use Opera much, I've heard anecdotes of people being quite happy with its ability to manage scores of tabs.
I don't think there's anything wrong with your workflow for requiring lots of tabs. Memory is cheap these days, and its there to be used. The computer is there to make *you* more efficient. If its not fulfilling that purpose, it needs to be fixed, not you. (Assuming you're not doing anything actually perverse, like running non-business-related cpu/memory hogs in the background.)
posted by Hither at 9:51 AM on November 20, 2010
Honestly, I don't understand how a policy gets made that requires ie. It can't be for security.
I mean, when I worked for the government 10 years ago, I was installing firefox on every computer I touched and begging everyone to stop using ie so I would have something else to do besides removing viruses all day.
There HAS to be someone in IT that would be cluefull enough to install chrome for you. Find an intern in it or someone like that and harass them about it.
posted by empath at 10:27 AM on November 20, 2010
I mean, when I worked for the government 10 years ago, I was installing firefox on every computer I touched and begging everyone to stop using ie so I would have something else to do besides removing viruses all day.
There HAS to be someone in IT that would be cluefull enough to install chrome for you. Find an intern in it or someone like that and harass them about it.
posted by empath at 10:27 AM on November 20, 2010
A solution that others haven't suggested, but that I'd try as an experiment if I were suffering the pain: I'd consider running my own web proxy to cache static results of database hopping, rather than leaving hundreds of tabs open. This could potentially be far more efficient, but it would also be much more complicated. A similar solution would be to use one of the plugins that takes snapshots of pages, if all you need is the result that is contained on the page. It isn't necessarily easy for a database to hold dozens of half-finished queries open on your behalf. (Depends on the context, but Hither's comments don't necessarily hold for some kinds of interactive apps. The reload sluggishness might come from the database reconstituting the parts of a very complicated query to be spread across the UI.) While I'm sympathetic, I do think that workflow could be the culprit.
posted by MisterMo at 10:31 AM on November 20, 2010
posted by MisterMo at 10:31 AM on November 20, 2010
The problem may not be the browser, but the way the browser works with the proxy server. I've seen instances where every single frikkin item on a page will create a proxy call. This will slow things considerably....so you may ask why does Chrome work?Hmmn, because Chrome does not play well with proxy, and may be bypassing the proxy. And that more than anything is why IT won't let you use a different browser.
posted by Gungho at 1:32 PM on November 20, 2010
posted by Gungho at 1:32 PM on November 20, 2010
I know next to nothing about computers, but after a long, long time struggling whenever I opened more than one tab, I discovered that the problem was to do with its RAM. Whatever that means. Might be something else to explore.
posted by marmaduke_yaverland at 1:41 PM on November 20, 2010
posted by marmaduke_yaverland at 1:41 PM on November 20, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Assuming you've already gone that path, you're going to have a tough time getting around something like a policy tool like Altiris. You could run Chrome Frame, but that's just bolting on the Chrome rendering engine INTO IE, which doesn't really solve the sluggishness issue...
I would play the squeaky wheel card, and just get people to start repeating after you: this is a ten second fix that will save tons of time and has absolutely no other impact on the organization. Lather, rinse, repeat.
If they're unwilling to budge in the "approve a new browser" realm, ask them to remove Altiris from your system only. Explain that this is simply so you can use Chrome to do your job. Repeat that there is no reason this has to be difficult or layered in bureaucracy because that's sheer lunacy.
Good luck.
posted by disillusioned at 1:52 AM on November 20, 2010 [1 favorite]