“It’s so easy just to fire up what you need, decide that time is short and you’ll deal with it next time”

Okay, I confess: just this morning, I moved my final Windows 7 installation to Windows 10. Yes, I know, this section should be called Jon is a Bad Boy, and I should have done this years ago. My only excuse, if there is one, is that this is Windows 7 in a virtual machine, it’s only fired up once a month for about five minutes and it runs a specific piece of software.

I guess you need some back story. In the lab, we have a full door control access system. This means that there’s a door tag reader on both sides of every door. You need to use an RFID token to open the door and the doors close automatically. While this is somewhat overkill in our small company, it’s what corporate and government visitors expect to see. On the outside of the front door is a PIN pad and each member of staff has their own PIN number to gain access, along with the appropriate security keys and alarm fobs.

The door controllers are embedded deep in the bowels of the lab. In simple terms, each door controller maintains a list of door tag RFID codes, along with the times and dates when they’re valid for that door. These controllers trundle along by themselves and don’t need oversight. The only time you need to talk to the door controllers is if you want to reprogramme them – add a member of staff, issue a new token, change someone’s working hours or