Online Slacking Offends eWEEK Readers
Online time wasting topped our poll of painful office costs. Next, tell us which way your IT budget is going
What is the biggest price pain in your office? Online time wasting, according to our poll of eWEEK Europe readers.
Slacking online is the biggest price pain in your offices, beating the outrageous expense of IT supplies, and the difficult-to-control cost of tech support, in a poll on eWEEK Europe UK, designed to find the most detested cost in offices.
Stop reading this and get back to work!
Despite the fact that the results all came from people who had time to click an online poll – and obviously we ourselves are way too busy to do such a thing! – online time wasting was picked as the biggest perceived IT cost in offices by nearly 30 percent.
Of course, we think Internet timewasting is an inevitable cost, given that without the Internet it would take a lot longer to deliver messages and find information.
Still, the other costs that led the way all fell into the category of necessities. IT support, cited by nearly 16 percent, is an expense that can spin out of control – and is often provided through intermediaries.
Meanwhile, the cost of toner and other supplies was also top of the complaints list for 16 percent. Twelve percent didn’t like the cost of mobile data, and only ten percent worried about the cost of laptop repairs.
In amongst the spoilt ballots in the “other” option, we found one reader, who said his company is spending $1 million a year on mobile voice telephony. That sounds much more painful than mobile data or any of the other possible sources of agony we came up with. We hope his or her colleagues learn to shut up – or do their yacking on cheaper phone options.
Next – how much can you spend this year?
For our next poll, we want to know how your IT budget is faring. Most of you have had your budgets frozen or reduced a while back. Last year, there were signs that some people’s budgets went up, but the public sector faced more big cuts.
We want to know if that is changing. Next year, have you got an increase, or a reduction – and if your budget has changed, how much has it changed by?
As always, this is completely unscientific and you are most welcome to use the “Other” option if you have a better answer than the ones we offered you. If your budget is mega-huge, for instance, and you can’t imagine how to spend it all, we will help you drink some of it.
