A colleague shared a story with me last night. Apparently, a new Windows
computer arrived and was issued to a high-ranking, district staff
member. The staff member, part of an elite team, was due to travel and
decided to take his new laptop along with him–without connecting it to
the District network FIRST. This prevented the system–with Active
Directory–from authenticating. Whatever the reason, the laptop was
unusable…the staff member was unable to login. When he called back
home for help, the answer was, "We’re sorry, since you didn’t
authenticate, there’s not much that can be done." He had to have web
access on the laptop to stay up to date with email, type up notes, etc.
Not being able to access the Web or login to the laptop was a real
"bummer."

Anyone who’s worked with a GNU/Linux Live CD knows that if you can boot
from that CD, you can be back in business in no time. If you like, you
can install UbuntuLinux on the
laptop–even if this means wiping all the settings on the machine–and
then when you get back home, have the techies re-image the computer.
Since it’s a new computer, it’s not like you have a lot of documents and
data to lose.

Can’t login into your brand new laptop and technical support is far away?

Follow these steps:

1. Download the LIVE
   CD from UbuntuLinux.com
2. Boot from the Ubuntu Live CD on your laptop (you may have to press a
   Function Key like F2 or F12 on your computer)
3. Check to see if wireless is working for you on your laptop running
   Ubuntu operating system. If yes, then you can just use Firefox and
   OpenOffice (alternative to MS Office) to access the web and type
   documents/spreadsheets/presentations, respectively. OR, if you feel
   adventurous and don’t mind making the techies back home re-image your
   computer, reformat the computer altogether and
4. Install UbuntuLinux on your computer…you might find
   this tutorial helpful, or rather, re-assuring.

Obviously, I’d rather nuke a locked down installation of Windows and
load UbuntuLinux on the machine because there’s more freedom. Some other
suggestions:

• Abandon computer-based applications (like Office Apps) and store your
  documents online at GoogleDocs or
  in a wiki (wikispaces.com)
• Carry a Live CD around with you so that you can boot to another world
  of possibilities at will, keeping your work and home separate…or,
  achieve the freedom you want.
• Advocate for less restrictive policies on your work computer that get
  in the way. Keep a log for a month of all the things you tried to do
  but couldn’t because Active Directory/Deep Freeze/whatever was enabled
  and share that with the appropriate folks.

If you plan ahead, maybe
go portable?

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Everything posted on Miguel Guhlin’s blogs/wikis are his personal opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of his employer(s) or its clients. Read Full Disclosure