Courtesy of OSWeekly.com

(Column) - The people who reside in the IT department of your company are often underappreciated, and sometimes they’re the subject of a collection of jokes that make fun of them and the way that they do things. It’s all too easy to stereotype these digital saviors, but the truth is they help to keep things running in a way that prevents you from having to worry about the technical side of things. Have a problem? Call IT. Depending on how you treat them, they may take a little longer to do what you’ve asked, but you’ll get what you need eventually.

Let me tell you, being involved in the tech support and PC repair business is not easy. When I was first getting started with making technology my job, I quickly became known as "The Tech Guy" both within and outside of my circle of friends, and you know what that leads to - phone calls... lots of phone calls. There’s never a shortage of people who are having problems ranging from calamities to minor annoyances and everything else in-between.

I liked working on my computer at home, but I quickly realized this feeling didn’t translate over to other people’s homes. Having to deal with other people’s technical problems right in front of them made me feel odd, and sometimes the questions they would ask drove me completely crazy. I can answer questions over the Internet, but I don’t want to be in someone’s house banging my head against a table while trying to troubleshoot their problems in person.

I quickly gave up that type of work, and settled in with something more suitable for my professional desires. When your daily commute involves getting out of bed and walking twenty feet to your office (or better yet, staying in bed and using a laptop), then you know that you have it made. However, some people would prefer not to work from home, so to each his own. Either way, I came away from my tech house call days with much more respect for the people that do this sort of thing each and every day.

The thing that brought this subject to my mind is the wide availability of remote desktop technologies that are available today. If you’ve ever used one of these remote desktop solutions, then you know that they’ve advanced to the point that, as an administrator, you can completely take control over a client computer.

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