Comments on: Why I gave up on Spiceworks

By: Chris Watson

Chris Watson — Wed, 09 May 2012 12:45:10 +0000

There is now an agent. Version 6 fully supports home agents and remote site agents reporting back. They now can show visuals of switches and even tell you which port a workstation or server is plugged into on a switch. I realize there can be a lot involved in getting it secured, but in the end, its well worth it. We currently use Kaseya VSA and its garbage ONLY because there is a HUGE lack of support. Level Platforms was a pretty good solution. I agree with what your point is on cost effectiveness at a certain point, but Spiceworks is FAR from a bad product. Standard business concept – Time IS money.

By: ErikV

ErikV — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:33:22 +0000

I am a bit surprised to hear about UAC and Vista from people having business environments… the first thing I did when 7 got out is get rid of my few computers I had made the mistake of installing Vista on, to test. That OS have no reason to be installed on business computers.

SpiceWorks get better every day. For a free product, it is quite impressive. If I compare it to a few paid products I’ve seen,there is not much more difference and yes a client “agent” to gather more info than Spiceworks actually do would be nice (clients reporting over the internet, too, for all mobile users.) That would be SO great, as I have about 30 remote and on the road users (they connect through VPN but when they don’t, I want to see them anyway).

Yes, in 2008 Spiceworks really sucked. there was TONS of bugs and flaws and features not working. Today, it’s quite stable. If you take into consideration the price, then I say it is totally amazing and do a great job for smaller businesses!

By: Vinnie

Vinnie — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 18:43:31 +0000

Use LANSweeper for active network monitoring. Free version will do what you need. For another $300 you can get some really cool functionality in a Windows environment.

I used to run Altiris but it is really pricey and some of those guys are jerks. We paid a consultant $10000 a week to come and make it work, and still had chronic issues. Spiceworks is a good product for the price, and has a lot of things that LANsweeper does not have, but LANsweeper is the bomb for active network monitoring.

By: Jake V.

Jake V. — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 19:18:32 +0000

Once again trolls folks, trolls.

This guys is not a moron and frankly I think he hit the mark. Spiceworks has some issues whether you spice-heads like it or not.

Their biggest issue is their users (ahhh hummmm) doing crap like this. Some of the people in their forums don’t care about anything but points and popularity.

A real IT person wants to fix his network, not run his mouth about how cool he is and how bad ass he is while having nothing to show for it but Spiceworks posts.

All of you so called professionals who posted anything derogatory on here need to get your act together and mature a bit eh? Your attitude displays your clear lack of professionalism and ignorance.

Telling someone they don’t belong in a profession because you don’t agree with their opinions displays your lack of empathy and ability to think (at all) outside of the box.

Spice works does quite a few things HALF ASSED, regardless of what you folks think. Its really value, if you can stand the pompous asses who reside within, are the forums. Quite a few folks on their are not the D-bags i just called out.

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 00:38:50 +0000

I would agree with author,
1. A responsible IT administrator should never turn off UAC. That should not be a prerequisite. I hve workstations – windows XP, vista and 7 which are starring me in the face and saying HA Ha HA, YOU CAN’T CONNECT TO ME! i’ve opened ports, checked and rechecked WMI and turned off firewalls. Tha’ts not acceptable.
2 I don’t think it would be that hard to make a client app that would do the trick. It would be a really really great product if they would do that. It could even be optional. But they don’t say why they are opposed to doing that.
Hmmmm

By: Martin Ekelmans

Martin Ekelmans — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 08:23:58 +0000

Man,
get alive… Spiceworks is the best.
Please remove your shit and get alive!

You freaking suckhead!

By: Bruce Michaels

Bruce Michaels — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 20:30:52 +0000

I have used SpiceWorks for over a year now and never had those issues you speak of. Anyway, I feel it’s a really good product and the forums are great *IF* you know how to search and what you’re searching for.

By: Nerd

Nerd — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 17:51:51 +0000

Hey Accipitor. We actually just shut off our Spiceworks box in favor of a Dell Kbox. Spiceworks is fine when you are a startup company with no budget. Spiceworks has no place in an established business. There is still no client. It still will not function in an environment locked down to meet FIPS 140-2 standards, SOX, HITECH, FDCC, USGCB etc. Spiceworks is a good helpdesk for free, but a really shitty inventory/management tool. We never got it to see more than about %40 of our computers.

You can get a Dell Kbox on a 3 year lease for less than $350 a month. It does everything spiceworks does better. It also does a lot more than spiceworks. Surprise surpise, it has a client agent. It communicates all its data over SSL. I’ll do a review on it after I get everything working. But right now it is saving us about an FTE worth of salary. We are currently running automated application patches, dell drivers, firmware, bios, vulnerability scans, helpdesk, license metering, asset tracking, and have all the details from our Mac and Windows computers that we could ever want. A lot more than what just WMI gathers.

I tried to tell the CEO of Spiceworks about how important the client was at the first Spiceworld and stopped by a year later to tell them again. I had a lot of conference calls with upper management there, I have a very large collection of tshirts, stickers, posters etc because of my attempts to influence them early on. No dice. We put our money where our mouth is and moved. If you have Dells I recommend Kace. Otherwise, keep Spiceworks for a good helpdesk, use something else for talking to your computers to gather inventory. Save up for a box like Kbox, costs less than a decent printer/copier on lease.

By: Accipitor

Accipitor — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:26:12 +0000

After comming back to spiceworks after 2yr break, they have managed and stopped most crashes, granted this is a 2yr post, but thought I’d share. back then I completely agree with everything…

The reason for me posting is to ask if there is a spiceworks client yet? or a simple “script” to run from the client to talk to the server and enable/disable only what it needs?

Thought I’d ask… thanks

By: Nerd

Nerd — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 03:58:50 +0000

Yanick you are a little late to the party. 2 years and 4 months, also just a few versions of spiceworks have gone by. BTW, scanning a network still sucks, and you have to open your network to all kinds of nasty bits to get it to work right. Google the scripts people have running to unsecure their machines so that spiceworks can scan. Hideous. But i still love the helpdesk and the community.