Actually Tiger~ I have worked with these sorts of environments for the past 5 years or so. You get moans from pondlife who cannot load their game software, bugger around with things in general and so on. Then there's the executives who want this and that which is non-standard.........OH the glum little faces more fun than beating them with a rubber high pressure hose............

We estimated that going for a locked down PC environment actually saved £300 ($550) per annum in support costs, per desk top.

On the sites with Citrix and servers/dumb terminals the savings were even greater, as the updates and roll-outs took hours, rather than days or weeks, because you only have to update the servers. On the sites with locked down PCs you know that what works on the reference machine will work on all of the clients so you can do unattended remote installations/updates, with a minimal failure rate.

Where you once had local support teams on each site, you can now have a centralised call centre in an inexpensive location. Much easier to plan staffing levels and time management.

Users get a better service from the help centre as well, because the operative knows that they have an identical system in front of them. Hey we see that every day on this site? the number of questions that you have to ask before you can suggest a solution.

OK I have had the bad times as well............the "conglomerate", a corporation formed by acquisition, so all the divisions have totally different systems.............but that is another story