Driving IT Cost-Efficiency, Security and Compliance in 2010

I’ve been debating this point in my head some time now. When you've got two computer programs that do the similar basic thing, but don’t properly exchange filesinstead, they corrupt each others’ filesis that a sort of IT insecurity?

Obviously it’s not an analogous issue as being exploited or hacked, however it could have similar resultsa company loses time and cash tracking down the errors and rebuilding the documents, and may lose critical information. For me this came up when my Macbook Pro crashed, graphics card dead, and had to be rebuilt this past week.

I had all my work backed up, but because the computer itself was within the shop, i used to be working for every week on an old backup PC. It’s a 512MB laptop with a basic install of Win XP, and essentially no applications. Scaled down in order that it’s in your price range, easy to store, replaceable, but works for me in a pinchsuch as when my main machine is within the shop. However, in my daily work i exploit Microsoft Office in its advanced capabilitiesstyle sheets, templates, formatting, commenting and reviewing, track changes. Since I work remotely, much of my editing and work communication happens within the space of the comments within the Word documents I develop. With no good word processor which can read .docs, I’m lost.

So I downloaded Open Office and rejoiced a bit to discover that it looked as if it would load all my work properly, and had most features to deal with style sheets. I did a couple of brief edits, sent them to my editor, and he or she reported back the All Clear: the formatting, when converted back to Office, looks fine. Great, so I continued working. Yet a number of documents and more complex changes later, I got word that during fact, the documents were corrupted. Open Office added extra styles, tousled my current styles, and wasn’t quite handling the comments and track changes right.

Curses! So, for a number of days I did some work that’s been at the back burner, which didn’t need care in formatting. And now, my computer’s back with a brand new shiny motherboard, and that i’m revisiting the edits I had started in office.

My formatting is indeed corrupted, with the subsequent problems:

• Spacing around headers and in tables is wrong
• Fonts are off
• A bunch of additional styles are added inside the list

I suppose for the casual user these are irrelevant problems. Most writing goes to be thrown right into a graphics application or coded for the internet before publication anyway. But accordingly, it’s a disaster! I’m spending my week revisiting the documents and looking to remember where i used to be, before my work got interrupted.

So, I don’t know the way the protection professionals feel. In any case, nobody hacked my filesI’m sure the developers of Open Office meant well. But from the user perspective, that's only 1 more computer security issue threatening a worker’s time and efforts.

Next time maybe I’ll just suck it up and spring for slightly netbook or an additional Office license.