Why do they do it?

Whilst down in West Wales this weekend I was talking to my sister who works for a well known voluntary organization for young people and who was doing some work with her new company HP laptop.

Proudly she told me it was 3G enabled, and ever the geek I asked her to show me and have a go myself.

First off, she connected to her company server. Ages, and ages and ages it took, ever though she had a signal. Once there, she said now I have to log in. She opened an A4 foolscap page (I kid you not) with a list of instructions about how to log in, which included various IP addresses, passwords and usernames and differening web pages she has to go through EVERY TIME she wants to connect to the system. And this is just to collect her email!

Now, in my sister's defence, although she's not the most technical person in the world, she's not a luddite or an idiot. "You have to do this every time?" I asked incredulously. "Yes" she replied, and I've spoken to out IT manager about it but he's (insert you're own word here).

Now if it was me, I'd politely take back the laptop to the IT manager, dump it on his desk and tell him "thank you very much but it's not fit for purpose" (or something like that).

Honestly, it was awful.