The movie technology IT departments would hate

Sometimes, the movies would have you believe computers are capable of lots of things they might not, in real life, come close to achieving.

Recently, we looked at the technology that IT departments would love to have on their side. Here? It's the opposite. Those facets of computing that we see on screen that are enough to instil fear into any self-respecting IT technician...

Complicated, varying user interfaces

While there are some movies and TV shows that seem to have dropped out of the Apple factory, there's is little that production designers appear to enjoy more than bespoke user interfaces on computers. The upshot of this is every office in certain films seems to have a different way of working, and as such, an IT deparment would surely look at that and shudder.

Think of the training budget, for starters. And the help desk calls. It's bad enough trying to help people navigate around Microsoft Office. But when everything, everywhere is different? We simply shudder at the thought.

Computers that can do anything

The modern day computer is an able beast and it's more than capable of coping with the vast majority of tasks thrown in its direction. Yet never has this writer seen a movie or TV show where a computer has abjectly refused to tackle a complicated task. Granted, printing a piece of paper can sometimes become obscenely difficult, but we've never seen a spinning Windows logo or its ilk.

Instead, go by the movies, and people might believe computers can do anything. This, inevitably, would not be a good expectation for users to bring into the office.