My problem is I’m too soft and eager to please.

So when our church buildings administrator said she wanted a new (work) laptop because hers was four years old, slow, and had the battery life of a thing with no batteries, I said “sure, I’ll order one”.

Like a rube.

Laptop set up taking place

And that meant installing the necessary software. We’ll skip over the fact that activating Microsoft 365 produced a jaunty “try again later” message (it worked the second time, but if Microsoft can’t be bothered to make this stuff work first try, who can?). And we’ll cut directly to the two more esoteric software packages that needed to go on. Both have been mentioned here before.

First up, Innotech’s MaxMon/Con and iComm software for managing our old heating controller. Despite some scary notices about it all being discontinued, their website still has the download links for the installers, and they work.

Naturally, since the software is of very limited relevance unless you have the hardware, there’s no real need to lock it away or make it hard to get.

This exact same principle applies to the Net2 software used to work with Paxton door controllers and fob readers, but Paxton’s route of choice is to make it impossible to get the installer for Net2 unless you’re an authorized installer of their kit.

Our authorized installer was given a USB drive with it on which turned out to be corrupt, and had to jump through a lot of hoops while on site with us to get an actually usable copy of the installer. Thankfully he did leave that with us, but faffing about copying it between computers really made my teeth itch (“turn on file sharing” anyone? How very 1995).

Seriously, Paxton, just put it on the damn website. It’s worthless unless I buy some of your hardware, so what have you got to lose?

Maybe, maybe they’re worried about the kidz getting a copy of it and breaking into the door access system at their school, but a bit of basic network segregation - or at the very least, some sensible passwords - ought to be well within reach of anyone operating this kind of kit, so why make all our lives harder?