Is IT crap at all SME's or just mine?

[TeaNoSugar]

Just a general question really. I've worked for 4 small/medium sized companies in my career to date (all within the ballpark of turnover £2m to £8m) and they've all been idiosynchratic in different ways, however one recurring thread I've noticed is utterly dreadful IT at all of them.

It's almost too embarassing to talk about but working for what is supposed to be a forward-thinking, dynamic firm, yet we work on 10yr old PCs (running on 2004 pentium 4 processors with 1GB RAM!!!)on 10yr old servers we seem to lurch from one IT crash to the next, just with a make-do-and-mend attitude, never really addressing the root cause. I just wonder if my place is unusually crap or not? I did read an article on BBC some time ago suggesting that investment in IT in the UK lags miles behind similar sized companies in other developed countries.

anyone else in the same boat?

[TeaNoSugar]

Interesting replies. Reassuring, amusing, and at the same time slightly depressing to note it's not just my place then. I forgot to mention that when I was temping for a while years ago (early 2002), I did a short placement at Birmingham City Councils social services dept. (as a general temp/skivvy). The workstations they had there were running Windows 3.1 (or whatever came before windows '95) on these grimy 20-odd yr old beige coloured PCs with 12in CRT monitors with a background image burned onto the screen so you could always see the outline of it, whatever was on screen at the time!

I'm replying whilst I wait for my laptop to open a 55kb PDF document (should be done by now). Best get some work done...