[BC] Beancounters and Windows 7

[Tom Taggart]

We recently bought a new Dell computer to replace the aging
air computer on one of our stations. Now our ops mgr. is
living in Pittsburgh at the moment, where his fiance is
working, so he does most of his work from there through the
internet. (They're moving back to the area after they get
married this summer & a lease runs out on a house he owns.)

So he is busily setting up the computer, transferring music
in, etc. (from Pittsburgh, 100 miles away), when he notices
that the computer keeps shutting itself down at about 5:45
every morning. Has to call the office manager every morning
when she comes in to turn it back on. First thing he did--he
thought--was to disable the notorious "sleep" setting. 

Well, not quite. Poking around, we found a setting directing
the computer to go idle after 1080 minutes of operation
(I'll save you the math =18 hours). Seems that Windows 7 has
at least a dozen or so various settings that can cause the
computer to shut down, go idle, take an extended vacation to
the beach--all presumably added in response to corporate
bean counters looking to save a nickel on electricity. Not
something one wants on a computer that is supposed to run
24/7.