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Workers Will Smash Their PCs To Get an Upgrade
An anonymous reader writes "One in four office workers reckon that the best way to get a new work computer is to smash up the one they have — either that or to take it down to the junk shop themselves. Some 40 per cent of office workers complain that their aging workplace PC hurts their productivity and many are tempted to resort to extreme measures to get an upgrade, including taking a hammer to the aging beast on the desktop. Some ten per cent of UK workers said they'd even resort to buying new parts for their work devices themselves to perform their own upgrade; particularly those who work in smaller organizations."
Running Windows 2000 at the moment. Anyone got me beat?
there will be towers of old crappy laptops like the garbage in Wall-e.
I worked in a office where about once a year one of the employees would "spill" coffee on her laptop..usually a week or so after she noticed a deployment of new laptops in some other department. It worked until she moved to a floor with security camera's and was caught...after that her replacement was the one that recieved a shiny new one. The sad part was the machines she had were never out of date they simply became bogged down because of her browsing and installing habits, but rather than ask to have it cleaned up or god forbit learn to do it herself she would just have an "accident".
blame the cheap PHB that run stuff into the ground this is the same attitude that led to the I-35 bridge collapse.
Employers are so penny-wise and pound-foolish. An 80 quid ssd would add up to hours every week of not waiting around while builds happen. A second monitor would make endless alt-tabs whenever I'm debugging a thing of the past. The productivity gains would pay for themselves within a couple of weeks. Instead, let's drop a six-figure sum on a new logo, brand, or mission statement... or pay consultants an obscene amount to streamline our processes...
It's funny how many people point to their monitor and call it their computer. I can imagine a lot of people smash up their monitor expecting that it will result in their getting a new computer.
What I'd really like to know is how many people do that; get a replacement monitor; and say, "Wow, this new computer is so much faster!"
When the Blackberry Storm was announced, almost all of our sales people's older Blackberrys broke.
In a big bureaucracy, people who genuinely need a machine are prioritized. People who have a horribly slow machine aren't considered part of the group. This is the logical way to jump the queue. I've thought about it myself, but not seriously.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Is no one going to mention destruction of company property = firing?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Michael Bolton approves.
The reason most office workers are unproductive has nothing to do with their hardware.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Obviously the 5 year old computers in TFA could use an upgrade, but I've found that for my aging workstations, a simple storage upgrade to an SSD would probably be more than enough to increase my productivity. Storage is the new bottleneck, not processing power.
Spending $500 on a cheap dual core with 4GB of ram should be high on the priority of any company with aging office workstations. Huge money saver when your employee doesn't have to wait on that old P4 to open a window anymore.
There might be something to be learned from the spiller. Rather than wasting anyone's time to "clean up" a "bogged down" desktop, it sounds like at least one of your users would have been perfectly happy with an annual drive wipe. There might be more like her.
Slow computers means taking lots of breaks and going out for a snack. I don't want to be more 'productive'. I want to relax, and a slow machine helps me do just that.
"What the hell is taking you so long?"
I just shrug and point to the screen...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
really? who'd have thought? TYCO
I work at a computer retail store (and yes we have a biased opinion on the matter) but we try to show business owners that 10 year old computers really are a problem, even when they still work. It's amazing how hard it is to get some people to replace an old computer with a new one, when the old one still (sort of) works. It's so hard to explain productivity loss due to antiquated tools to the people holding the checkbook.
Numerous times we've had people bring in ancient computers that have died and must now be replaced, and have to treat them to the bad news that their combination of very old hardware and very old software is going to be an extremely unpleasant and expensive experience now, as they have to buy all new computer, all new peripherals (seen a peripheral cost 10k once), all new software (can you say "pagemager", "creative suite" and "quark" for 10 computers?) and all your documents are going to have to go through a painful migration of format. Generally leaves the office in chaos for the next month too. I really feel sorry for those staff.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Any smashed PC is replaced by the oldest in stock. new replacements for those which reach the budgeted life intact.
Not PCs but SGI machines...
We had an old SGI Challenge machine, size of a refrigerator. It owed us nothing but there was user inertia keeping the thing running and in use.
I moved all the data to another box then actually took apart the old Challenge one weekend. Removed all the boards, 7 or 8 iirc, destroyed the hard disks and moved the machine to the shipping docks.
The various ~40cm x ~40cm boards are around the building in various geeks' offices (I have 4 here). It was a well made machine and would probably still have people on it had I not killed it off.
Trolling is a art,
I'm going to assume she was unsackably married to someone.
New computers are great but work habits can increase the productivity of a tool also. I keep seeing people complain about the speed of email then go over and see 100 email windows open. Or someone will have movies running in the background and complain that Excel is slow. So do you throw more hardware at the problem, close unneeded programs or learn better work habits?
Some people take their job much too seriously. So you have a slow computer, so you might get less work done. So what? It's not your problem, it's your employer's.
All I'm saying is a little bit of Aluminimium Foil can work wonders for getting a new computer...
Over 100 years ago, many railroads were tightwads and wouldn't issue new lanterns to conductors and brakemen to replace their aging ones. They finally would ditch their lanterns over a river bridge as they approached the yard limits, then report the lanterns as missing to the yardmaster who would issue them a new lantern.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Sad but true. Six-month old company-issue laptop poor quality, slow and heavy. $300 netbook I bought outperforms it and is now machine of choice for everything but timecards and billing. Goes into the bag with the airport express for travel.
I suspect often times a bit of extra memory, or a software cleanup would be the solution, and a bit of proactivity on the part of the employer would help. Still, could be worse, I recall my Dad, a journalist, telling me that when he started work in the 60s his typewriter was supplied by the newspaper up front, but he had to pay it off in weekly instalments from his salary. Of course, it was decades rather than months/years before it was obsolete.
It's a Unix system - I know this.
I assumed that "after that her replacement was the one that recieved a shiny new one" implied that she was fired and somebody else was hired in her stead. Maybe I read too much into it.
I've upgraded the CPU from a Celeron to a Dual Core and the RAM from 2GB to 4GB with my own money because I was fed up with having a slow machine. At the end of the day, I get rewarded for productivity, so I just viewed this as a slight reduction in my bonus. Rather spend it on the PC I use > 8 hours a day than the one at home that gets used 4 hours a week.
You apparently failed to notice the the phrase 'her replacement'.
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Personally, there's nothing I hate more than a slow computer. But, basic upgrades that make the typical dust bunny filled corporate Dell shit-box are pretty easy. The darn thing probably needs more RAM and an SSD. Most of the time, you can swap those out without the IT weenies even noticing. Just clone the hard drive over and swap sticks for the memory. Yeah, you might lose the parts you bought in a year or two when the IT boys come to collect your machine without asking, but a few hundred bucks is worth it when it saves hours of aggravation.
The best way to get what you need is to buy it yourself. I'd rather buy monitors than try to explain / convince people why more screen real estate makes me more productive.
I've thought about smashing mine in a fit of blinding rage many times, but fortunately I know that the hardware in my laptop is actually pretty good. The reason the machine doesn't work so well is that it is bogged down with a host of security and asset management products that leave the laptop constantly IO-bound. I'm sure I will end up buying my own hard drive online and swapping it out so I can have my own operating system.
Why would I want another laptop setup by the outsourced techno-goons that only care about providing the bare minimum service to satisfy the contract and conspire to lock us in?
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Frankly, I'm surprised that it's only 25%. I've had colleagues who have taped over the exhaust ports on their laptops to cause overheating issues.
"...after that her replacement was the one that received a shiny new one", ie she was fired and whoever got taken on to replace her got the new machine.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
The parent you responded to did.
Ken
At an old job I did a number of upgrades to office equipment. Some of the office equipment was so old I took parts I retired from my home system and put them into the work ones. I've added memory, replaced hard drives, added a NIC so I could do testing on an isolated segment that I controlled, even added an internal fan to help cool off a system that was always overheating. I rescued systems that were to be tossed because "they are too old to run the operating system" (they thought Linux was an application) for test DNS, NTP and other servers. Sometimes its just easier to bring stuff in from home than trying to fight through the procurement process.
In my organization the "receptionist" class of employe have knowingly installed malware on their machines so they can be sent home for the afternoon.
I am an IT Manager. It is important to me that our users are productive and making sure that they are not fighting their means of prodcution is critical in this.
If someone's PC truly is the problem, it is replaced. When I first started at this company, folks had one monitor, had outdated equipment and there were a lot of legitimate problems that we prioritized and took care of.
Then you get the whiners. "I need a wireless mouse to be productive". "My coworker has 4GB of RAM and I only have 3GB" (Yeah... I see you playing solitaire two hours a day... I doubt the RAM is your productivity bottleneck). Part of my job is to be the asshole and say no to things. Usually, I win... sometimes I lose :)
So if a worker has to smash a PC to get a legitimate upgrade, there is an IT problem (that may stem from an Accounting problem). But in many cases, it is a whiny worker who needs to be dealt with.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
All IT people have heard the joke, "Well, if I take a hammer to it..." But that doesn't mean they do it. From the article, the headline reads as though users are causing deliberate damage to their computers in order to receive an upgrade. Read the actual text however, and while users are saying that, there isn't anything presented to show there are widespread acts of vandalism happening. The only real takeaway from this article is that some UK offices are using significantly outdated equipment. The headline is just sensationalism. I hate to say it, but I think /. fell for this one.
mr.nobody
--Don't you wanna go where nobody knows your name?
In a previous life, we utilized a PC rotation standard. The policy was such that no one would have a PC more than 5 years old. The intent was at the time to keep the harware fresh and to utilize service and support from the vendor. The Servers were treated much the same way. This had great benefit from the end user to the network admins (me++). I would gather it might be harder to implement these days...
I have long been a proponent of bring your own computer plans. I've been using my own machines at work for years now. My employer's cool with it. I get the machine i want. I upgrade it when i want. I get to file a tax deduction because i need it for work. Financially it seems to make sense both for me and my employer. The way i see it, some jobs require a closet full of $2000 + suits, mine just requires that i buy a nice machine every 1.5 - 2 years.
I am aware that some employers even give out a stipend for computers (and clothes).
I understand there are implications for IT. It's easier to support a homogenous locked down network, etc. But, i think people also take better care of the machines when they own them.
I'm a programmer, so i'm what i would consider a competent user. I know what i need. I know how to service my stuff. We do have sales people and project managers who do the same thing though. It's worked well for them.
...do they need it?
If your job is mostly using word processing, do you really need a Windows 7 Quad-core with 4GB of RAM? Or do you just want it because its shiny?
A development company I worked with was moving its PCs to Windows 7, and souping them up with a ton of RAM and that sort of thing. But its because we needed that sort of power. But the way I see most offices working.. if your software still works and you can do your job, what's the complaining about?
an aging computer, should perform as it did when bought. Unless it's actually failing and not just aging. Computers generally either work or don't work, and rarely do they half work, or generally slow down.
If software is changing and being run on machines which aren't beefy enough to support it, that's one thing, if workers are just clogging up their machines with bonzai buddy and the like that's a different thing.
The last three I worked for told me I had to provide my own desktop system. It was part of there cost savings plan, Everyone brings in there personal laptop or desktop to work on. Saved the companies millions of $ in hardware and upgrade costs.
I remember even back working in fast food the owner of the company did his tour of the restaurants and came to ours. One of our managers casually mentioned the worthless state our 80's cash registers were in and requested new ones several times but to no avail. The owner's response? "Spray it."
Always have to work where corporations take the reactive approach to IT rather than preventive. It only seems like the upper echelons of the IT department harbor any reliability through security and other various upgrade paths. The typical employee notices this and will try to bring a bit of incentive by forcing the company to react based on their upgrade methodology.
I'm glad that I'm working in a position now that allows me to implement a more accommodating method for upgrades to the research division I work for by being able to work directly with the boss to fund improvements I purchase for them. They're happy that they don't have to wait forever for an upgrade, and I'm happy that I don't have to upgrade because I'm in a condition where I am forced to do so.
I'm still amazed AD can't match the features Netware had 20 years ago.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
He would put IE6 and Blackberry users in the shower.
Is no one going to mention destruction of company property = firing?
Someone did (implicitly):
...her replacement...
The Bean counters look at the specs and software you're running, never mind the fact that the last 10 patches have tripled the memory footprint and quadrupled CPU usage.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
More than 10 years ago I worked for a US office of a multinational, but foreign company. One of the testers in our department was complaining that the PCs he was given for testing were too underpowered and old to be of any use. Our manager agreed but since the PCs were still working, they couldn't be replaced. However, if they, oh I don't know, suddenly developed severe hardware problems that prevented them from booting, then they could be replaced (wink wink, nudge nudge). I still remember seeing the tester working in a back test lab room to short out the motherboards of some PCs so they could be replaced. When the tester reported that his test PCs wouldn't boot, our manager did approve buying replacements. Bureaucracy sometimes requires creative solutions.
Apparently the admin smashed the server too in order to get a new one...
: (
With the increasing computing and communication power of consumer devices that everyone carries with them every day, we may eventually see the end of enterprise computers for the end user. Especially for smaller organizations, rather than trying to maintain a couple dozen computers across the organization, it may be more productive to take the same money and divide it among the employees as a stipend to maintain their own personal devices -- laptop, smartphone, whatever they need to be productive. In today's workplace, workers are often expected to be productive and stay connected throughout the day and on weekends. People are generally more productive with devices they own, understand and maintain themselves. Secure connections can be established between the end-user device and sensitive corporate applications and data, and strict data retention policies can be enforced. People are bringing their consumer device to work anyway -- why not leverage those instead of maintaining enterprise-wide desktops?
Repeat after me: Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending. (Brave New World)
I installed Nt 4 on a 75 mHz desktop, thinking I might go MSCE or something. If something was reading the hard disk, I could watch every control get painted. Erase, draw the outline, put the letters on, do a checkbox. Start task manager to see what is taking up the CPU, 20 minutes for that to load. Then I see CPU usage is only about 50%. Why? Windows 98 on the same machine did not have the same problem, so it wasn't the hardware.
I wish I knew. I get the same thing on Vista with a dual-core 2.5 gHz processor. Outlook refuses to show me meeting info. It's not responding, then slowly responding, then paints the reminder window. Can't see the dial-in number, waiting for it to paint. Get 3 instant messages - are you joining? Yeah, paste me the number and i'll be right there.
PC backup, antivirus, update scans, hard drive maintenance - any prolonged disk activity brings the computer to a halt. It's not just me - yesterday we had a chief architect say "Id bring that up but my backup just started" and everyone said "oh, yeah we know."
Simple version: my notebook is slower than my previous XP one, and I just tolerate it until we get the OK to move to Windows 7, and hope it's slightly faster because the processor is faster. It won't be, because it will have a 4 million GB drive at 5400 RPM.
With Windows NT, storage has always been the bottleneck. At least until you throw enough memory at it that it can hold all your apps plus an ample disk cache. Backup, antivirus, etc. tasks use a lot of non-cached data, and there goes your advantage.
So that's why that sentence didn't parse... I kept thinking about what that "shiny new one" was and where did they "replace" it for her.
Only about a decade ago,
in a midsize ICT organization somewhere on this planet there existed a policy, that a new employee had to have his PC approved by no less than the Chairman of the Board. It is likely not too much to ask in terms of imagination, that a given Board might have had more important things on the agenda than a single PC purchase approval.
Hence, this approval was being postponed week after week, month after month....
I recall someone actually going out and buying a PC with his own money, after being sufficiently bored with nothing to do.
I am constantly amazed at the utter stupidity mankind is capable of. Meaning both the policy, and the guy who coughed up his own dough.
When in fact, they're tools; and, tools eventually wear out or become obsolete. You wouldn't expect a chef to never sharpen his knife, how can anybody expect that computers will continue to "stay sharp" as the day they were installed? We've got over 30 years of evidence that this is not the case. As the OS accumulates service packs and additional add-ons (read: Enterprise malware) eventually everything slows down and makes the machine clunky and awkward. The hardware doesn't change, but the software loads continue to become more demanding; factor in all the new idiot security policies most IT departments dream up, (full disk virus scans in the middle of the workday, password changes every 30 days, emails older than 90 days are deleted, no personal flashdrives, firewall monitoring, 180-day new software approval processes, requiring a "code" to use the color printer, etc.) ---The end result: Frustration, annoyance, anger... like road-rage; we feel that the computer, (like a slow guy blocking the fast lane) is holding us up, and keeping us from accomplishing our goals, and that leads to "keyboard rage." If people are breaking their machines to get upgrades, that's a sure-sign that the organization is failing to provide a suitable IT environment.
Sadly you usually can't because the ones that think they can get away with this are usually someone's buddy/GF/wife/cousin/etc.
True story, I get called into this little 10 man SMB because the secretary had seen one of those newscasts where someone recommends "strong passwords to protect you from hackers" along with giving them the usual capitals/numbers/symbols bit, so she marched right into work and set some crazy password...which she promptly forgot and couldn't get back in when she returned from lunch. Since all the payroll and invoicing (since she was also the "QB girl" which for some reason is ALWAYS a girl, you'd think they have a union or something) ran through this machine they were shut down. Since this was like the fourth time in as many weeks I had to come fix one of her doozies, out of earshot of her I asked the boss "Since she breaks so much stuff, why don't you fire her?" and he got this wistful look on his face and said "Lord I'd love to but my son would never speak to me again if I fired his wife"
So working SMBs for damned near 20 years now I'd say it is a classic case of SNAFU, where the one that always causes the most hell is usually somebody's kinfolk or SO and that puts a screeching halt to firing them no matter what they break. I talked the owner into making her the full time "accounts admin" and set her up in a corner with a secondary machine that backed up daily with a KVM so that when she broke something she could just "clicky clicky" and keep working until they could bring the machine around the shop. Now that she is limited in the damage she can do they only have to drop a box off every three months or so, better for them and less hassle for me.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
"Yeah, we have some poor Vista users."
Well, if they're poor users, updgrading the machines will only help so much.
You have been given a dual core Intel box on which to work, but they've installed it from an image taken of a single core server, and so your XP installation only uses the one core.
Multiply that wasted potential by several hundred PC's just on one floor of our office...
Basically, we 3 sides here.
-"It's hard to work when the computer stops responding every 5 minutes";
-"It's your fault that you're unproductive, the computer being slow has nothing to do with it";
-"The computers are still doing the same jobs (just as slowly) as it did x years ago, what's the problem?".
Guess which ones are bullshit.
Wasn't this already covered this season on The Office?
What I do not get.
Why corporate who leases computers on a 4 year lease, would cheap out, buying a 1000$ workstation (if you can even call it that) for an employee who makes 80k a YEAR working in GIS and IT, when buying a 2000$ workstation would greatly increase productivity over the length of the lease (particularly near the end, if they want an upgrade path that long). I mean the difference is 250$ DOLLARS a year VS 500$ bucks on an employee getting paid 160 times that.
It makes zero sense.
You can also lump not providing proper licenses that may be expensive at say 250-500$, but enable that employee to do that particular work 20 times faster. Again something trivial in the grand scheme of things.
As someone that actually lives right near the Twin Cities, I can safely say the I-35W bridge collapse had nothing to do with cheap PHBs that run stuff into the ground - it was a combination of de-icing solution corriding the gusset plates and extreme road construction activity on the bridge deck.
If you're unfamiliar with that section of I-35W (which, by naming it the "I-35 bridge" in your post pretty much screams non-Minnesotan), that bridge spans the Mississippi River just north of downtown Minneapolis, at which point the river is running northwest to southeast. Cold wind comes howling down over the frozen river underneath it in the winter, and if there is any water on that bridge at all when the temperature is below freezing the bridge deck turns into a skating rink without the de-icer. Given how corrosive the de-icer is, it's a miracle the bridge lasted as long as it did.
Yea, companies like that are all sorts of fun. I worked at place onces where pretty much everyone there was f**king someone else there, and/or was the product of everyone f**king someone else there. It lead to all sorts trouble, so glad I left.
just browse some shady websites if you want your old PC to go south.
Table-ized A.I.
If your employer wants you to have a newer/faster/better PC, he will get you one. If he does not, he won't. It's that simple. Why spend your own money to help out your employer? Do you think your employer would spend his own funds to, say, buy you a better car so that you can get to work faster?
I used to work second tier customer service for a catalog based retailer. I had pretty much always worked second shift, which was a 2-11 time slot. Our IT department insisted on having all virus scans (network base) run at the same time during the day, which meant it was scheduled to run after 5 pm (so the sales department wasn't affected), during the busiest part of my shift. It got to the point where I would have to do a hard shutdown on my machine (yeah, bad form), but it was the only solution I had to stop it from running (it wouldn't restart when I powered back up). My PHB saw me sitting idly at my desk looking at a blank screen and asked what I was doing, and after explaining this over a two week period, the IT guys eventually rescheduled my scan to run in the morning.
Compiling
Very similar process, but I had in a previous live simply booted to x86 compatibility mode - 6 MHz - and Windows 2000 took about an hour to boot.
I got a new machine in a few hours.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Or maybe you just read.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
My machine is quite good what kills it is the fucking McAfee and landesk software. They won't let me have Linux either despite the fact I develop software that runs on linux and it would easily make life ten times easier. It pretty much comes down to help desk nazis even if I was ok with keeping the windows partition and if anything was cocked up on Linux then I couldn't sit there and claim I can't work until they fix it.
I know its true, and I almost might do the same but... I don't have to. This laptop is so old and used, and has enough issues now on its own, I could have it replaced easily. The "|" only works sometimes, the left and right arrow keys are dead. The CDROM stopped working a long time ago, have to use the docking station because the power cord doesn't work, and I have tried replacements to no avail (actually one works, it looks like HPs new model power cords that are said to work on this laptop don't fit quite right)
Plus I think its just old enough that by policy they will replace it....
but I have it on a doc, sometimes I get mad and even hook up an external keyboard and mouse.... why?
Because I hate the idea of waiting weeks, being without my laptop, and then having to rebuild it when it gets here because I use a linux desktop and they don't support that.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
The reason most office workers want an upgrade has nothing to do with productivity.
That's only the excuse, of course. What they REALLY want is something new and shiny to make themselves feel like they're above everybody else. It's almost comical. I've even seen them go out of their way to fabricate a case for purchasing new equipment for THEMSELVES because somebody ELSE legitimately needs an upgrade -- and (of course) the person needing the upgrade somehow won't get as much use out of the new shiny toy as the fabricator. Give me a break.
Really, that's all there is to it. There's a reason why every office employee in my workplace needs their own printer -- and (surprise) it's not because they need their own printer.
A place I worked the VPs and upper management each got a new PC every 6 month. Each with the latest and greatest everything - typically running about $10,000 each. Being we ran security audits and tracked all software run we notice they needed this hardware to run.... word and email.
Mean while the office people down stairs did not have an upgrade in 10 years. The newest version of the software needed to do their job required so much power that after each process they save and restarted the machine. They could process 2-4 files in one day. I routed hardware out of the VPs PCs and into theirs - total of $500 in hardware costs Amazingly their productive increased dramatically to 10-20 files process in one day. The VPs productivity must have increase some how too with less spectacular PCs and of the 8 VPs they let one permanently go (although his 'new' PC sat in an empty top floor office with a great view for years). The office people down stairs loved me and had enough free time for coffee breaks and lunch and even bought for me once and awhile.
My previous work computer was a 1.5 GHz P4 with 512MB of Rambus. We didn't get it replaced until summer '07, and for a time before that I brought in my just-retired Socket-A system and stuck a few work-owned parts in there to modernize it. Made it a lot more bearable to do my job.
Heh. One of the reasons I did that was because the old klunker wouldn't run Vista and I had to be familiar with it. The Socket-A board wouldn't without an add-on SATA controller because there were no Nforce2 drivers for Vista, so we had to buy a Promise PCI card. Ran pretty decently after that, though, especially with a 74GB Raptor that I scrounged, which couldn't be used productively because the previous user had damaged the data connector - the end had broken off in the cable, so you could only use it with that one cable.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I once worked as a developer at a company like this. New machines for developers were the cheapest they could buy. Slowest processors, least memory, smallest drives etc. By the time I got the development environment installed and code pulled down from perforce for the tip and my personal branch, the drive was nearly full. I could only hold the objects for one build configuration for one branch. If I needed to build a release build, then I had to delete the debug objects before I could do it. If I needed to build the tip revision, then I had to delete the object from my personal branch to do it. Builds took about an hour. The particular project I was assigned required frequent modifications to the header files.
Replacement schedule was officially 5 years, but there were guys with desktop machines that were 8 yrs old that had never gotten an upgrade. Laptops tended to be younger since you could plausibly "trip" with them. Needless to say I didn't stay there long.
I have done exactly this to one of the clients I had.
It was a small business, with about 10PC's around the office for the agents to use as needed. One of the agents kept whining that this certain computer was 'old' and therefore to slow for him to work on. It was keeping him from getting as much done as he thought he could.... or that was what he kept saying.
So, we talked with the owner of the company before rolling out our change; A brand new... case. Thats it, new case. Same guts, same hardware, same everything... but the case.
Suddenly, this was the 'fastest' computer in the office(yes, all the computers were exactly the same hardware), and the complaining stopped(for awhile)
As was expected, this did NOT increase this persons productivity. As was explained to the owner before the upgrade, this person was using every excuse in the book to get away with doing as little work as possible. It was always some external factor that was the problem. This happens a lot with people who do nothing more than what we lked to call 'play office'. They sit in the required space, show their face, but don't actually contribute anything meaningful but body heat in the winter time.
By definition, stupid people are EASY to manipulate. Use them to your advantage, or suffer the fools forever.
I hope you also realize though, that the programs we do today are also much more complex than you could do on punched cards back then. Even small-ish programs can have a million lines of code or more. (Larger ones, more. Windows XP was some 35 million lines, Vista over 50 million, and that's not counting such stuff as C libraries and whatnot.)
Even at 1 gram per card, and each card being a line of code, a 1 million line program would weigh literally a metric ton. Did you see many people carrying their program to the computer with a small truck?
Even the kind of internal complexity that went into programs those days was actually a lot lower. E.g., you didn't need to optimize access to shared data for 1000 web sessions at the same time, when the program is run as a sequential batch. (Yes, concurrent stuff did come around too, but later, but not in the days of paper cards.)
Most such batch programs I've seen actually are just doing some fairly simple calculation in a loop, that nowadays you wouldn't even write a program for. It's stuff that the PHB would do directly in Excel.
In other words, yeah, I love reading such posts that tell me that someone is too fucking stupid to even understand the difference between programs these days and most programs that were done on punched cards. And probably the 50's-60's and punched cards were the last time they were competent. I really love that kinda PHB, who thinks that because he once did some piss-poor two-level loop on punch cards back then, it means he's qualified to judge modern programs and deadlines. No, really.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I've seen everything from coffee, tea, soda, run over by a car, "stolen", or my favorite: cat bed. However, the company I work for gets a 3 year extended warranty on all laptops. It's always telling when some smug SOB thinks they're going to get a new laptop and I call them back to let them know their laptop has been repaired and will be back in their hands tomorrow. The people that complain the most about slow performance are the same people that will hold the power button down to force their computer off and reboot if it takes more than 3 seconds for Outlook to open. Heaven forbid if Outlook needs to scan their .pst files for errors.
Sounds like Microsoft :)
You worked there too?
I've been fortunate enough not to have to deal with someone's SO, but I have had the joy of a completely incompetent person who pulled a race card and now cannot be fired for any reason.
Check out my lame java blog at www.javachopshop.com
http://www.tburke.net/fun_stuff/pictures/computers/ethernetkiller.htm
Also works for USB, VGA/DVI and more...
Here let's flip that around a bit, just as another example.
IT Side - we made up the following reasons that normal users shouldn't be installing programs themselves.
- Microsoft gave us a document that says we should configure it like this so we did just that.
- We are too lazy or overworked or underpaid to think too hard about our user's needs
- We never bothered to ask what user's requirements were, we just assumed it.
- IT person happens to be PHB's son or fucking PHB on the side.
User side -
- I have to be able to do work that my boss has required me to do which is core to the business making money!
- I need to be able to test certain situations in order to come up with a new means to be more productive and save the company money!
- Arbitrary restrictions are stifling users for the sake of making IT look good.
Brain-dead PHB of IT side-
- "We have a policy and we stick too it and we can't change it."
- One month later: "We have a policy and we stick to it and we can't change it."
- One more month later: PHB is out of the office playing golf with someone while you fume over missing yet another deadline.
Now add in that you might be working in a software development environment, where every IT rep treats you like an office temp and tries to give you access to MS office and internet explorer and nothing else and does absolutely nothing to understand how your own company's software works nor tries to understand what it takes to create, test, and support said software when your own customers have admin rights to their own machine and, funny, you don't, so you can't possibly figure out what their problem is!
This is just a counter example to your stereotype. People in general are idiots, sometimes they are in IT, sometimes they are in the user base, and sometimes it's both. You can't paint one side with a broad brush and completely blame things like this on them.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
I'd blame the voters for that. They don't want to have a gas tax high enough to pay to maintain the infrastructure and they don't want to use funds from other budgets to pay for it either. The politicians are more than happy to oblige and then blame somebody else when it inevitably goes wrong.
Brain-dead PHB side
- "My employees are complaining that you IT guys are getting in the way of their work! Fix it so they can install things!"
IT response:
- "Please fill in your department's account number here and sign here for billing and reporting purposes:"
Create an official looking form for the PHB to sign that acknowledges that allowing a worker to install will expose corporate property (employee computer, company servers, other employee computers) to malware and security breaches. Furthermore indicate that any IT time required to cleanup malware and resolve security breaches will be billed to his department and noted in IT's periodic reports.
WTF is a PHB?
Start reading: http://www.dilbert.com/
OR the fact that IT was so incompetent that her browsing habits and allowing the users to install software should have had the IT managers sacked as well?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Less hassle? I love the $95.00 trip charge I add on to every location call. Make it so they can drop it off and I make a lot less? not a chance in hell. If you make it really cheap and easy for the customer, they get careless and start doing things they were told not to.... hey you're cheap now, let's click on every popup in IE!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
At a place I used to work at, there was one particular computer that was older than the rest. Specifically, it didn't have enough memory to do the job. It wasn't doing anything fancy, just running XP and then some in-house software for collecting data, but once everything was loaded it was left with no free physical memory so it was constantly going to the swap file whenever you wanted to use it for anything.
I explained all of this to the IT department. They could have doubled the memory for less than $20, but apparently that just wasn't feasible. They thought it made more sense to have people sit there in front of it and wait a few minutes a dozen times a day when it was used.
Fortunately, soon after that, the hard drive crashed mysteriously and they swapped out the box with a better one.
~Warning!~ The above is encrypted using rot676!
How about a single, loose staple falling into the cooling vent? One shorted out the fuzzy, brown-hued 1991 CRT that I had at work last year. Damned shame. :)
I used to have mild pain in my wrists when I'd type a lot...and I do type a lot. I always have an ergonomic keyboard and mouse, marked as my personal property, with the receipt taped to the bottom of the keyboard in case there's any question. However, not all workplaces suck. My current job has replaced my keyboard and mouse with an ergonomic unit of my choice whenever it needs it. I haven't had pain in my wrists for years, and I owe most of it to the keyboard and mouse, proper placement of my monitor/chair, and taking frequent breaks to stretch out.
But, yeah...it stinks when you have a crappy mouse/keyboard/computer and have no way of upgrading, replacing or fixing deficiencies. If your computer at work sucks that hard that you want to break it, perhaps it's time to search for a new job?
All of the developers in my area have ... overclocked i7 985's ... increasing hardware definitely increases productivity?
How does increasing the number of crashes that have to be debugged increase productivity, crashes that are overclocking related and not the result of an actual flaw in the software?
Your IT guys do realize that overclocking related errors are:
- not necessarily obvious, sometimes they are simply incorrect answers (2+2=5)
- not necessarily testable, errors can require an unpredictable string of instructions or data that vary from machine to machine
Overclocking induced errors represent a range of failures, starting with the very subtle slightly incorrect answer at some amount of overclocking and progressing to the catastrophic crash inducing error at a greater level of overclocking. Where the subtle range appears and how wide it is can't be predicted, nor is it necessarily fixed (does your office ambient temperature vary over the year?).
For most office automation applications, the technology peaked at about Pentium 4. Almost nothing is multithreaded, so all those extra (and slower) cores do damn little or nothing at all. Better Graphics cards, faster storage, but most of all, NETWORK improvements are what is needed to increase the user perception of "my computer is runing faster now". OS bloat (come on, 2.3 GB TSR for Win 7 64 bit!) eating up RAM, and all those totally parasitic web frills and animations and corporate spyware really eats up the memory, leaving precious little for actual work files.
I am fortunate, we have 1 GB to the desktop and 10GB from the closets, and my company refreshes desktop and network hardware every three years when the service runs out, and offers the old systems to an employee raffle. My nephews have 3-4 year old engineering workstations that kick ass for schoolwork running XP-64 or Vista and they run like champoins when you strip all the crap out of the builds. Our engineers need admin, they check it out with ERPM, and a select class of "certified users" (actually trained in admin'ing an OS) can get it if they actually have a need. Joe User or Susie Secretary gets no admin, and we don't have malicious install or unlicensed software issues. Of course all our applications must be vended and packaged for install with the correct rights, but you either do the work up front or you do the work later.
For others in less fortunate circumstances, I suggest a UZI 100KV pen sized stungun run across all the I/O jacks in the back of the computer. ESD (electro-static discharge) damage leaves no telltale hammer marks or fingerprints, and can be concealed from the security cameras in the palm of your hand. I won't admit to using this technique on the job, but there have been days when the only thing that is going to shut a bitchy user up is a new computer, and what can't be fixed has to be replaced.
Because some uk office workers are dumb. If they have two printers in a room they will allways log a support call because it's printing out on the wrong one. What you expect me a clerical worker by profession to go into windows and change the default printer ? Thats IT's job!
That depends on how high the floor was and whether the CFO had the skills to wipe camera footage.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I guess as economic changes take place this is what it could come down too...but at what point is it really a need fro the employee vs a "keeping up with the Joneses" type of thing??
Joe Investor
Some ten per cent of UK workers said they'd even resort to buying new parts for their work devices themselves to perform their own upgrade; particularly those who work in smaller organizations
I work for one of the worlds largest software companies but I've resorted to working at home half the time with my own hardware to stay productive.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I hate to say it, but I think /. fell for this one
Why do you hate to say it, /. has been feeding misreported tabloid junk for several years now
I wish I could find a better tech site these days but they all seem to suffer from the same disease
Bugger.....
My work laptop is sitting in a locked filing cabinet collecting dust. I use my personal computer because they would not approve the specs I require to properly work.
I am a power user and very familiar with keeping my system up to date and working properly. I have a home computer 8 years old still running happily. It is way faster then the crap laptop they gave to me (wireless doesn't work, battery holds no charge, disk failures abound, RAM issues cause blue screens at least twice weekly). Example of the pain involved with this machine it took 2.5 hours to slice a psd file on my machine and i wasn't able to even complete it in the time required. So I went home used my old laptop, the only machine I have with Photoshop installed, and sliced the entire image in 10 minutes. When I asked for a replacement they offered to get me a 3 year old piece of crap with worse specs then my current machine (slower processor, less RAM, smaller slower hard drive, integrated video). Needless to say I was not impressed.
So I decided, why not and brought in my new laptop (core i7 16 GB's of RAM dedicated 1GB video yes I know it is overkill). However, since I have to work at nights a lot of time, this saves me from having to transfer files and other annoying issues. Other then Office and Photoshop all other work related items are saved on my external eSATA drive separating company code from my own personal data. I find the real problem is you have to spend a lot of time justifying a new purchase. When you do not even have enough time everyday to complete the scheduled work how am I to find the time.
Now I am more productive and able to meet more unreasonable deadlines by only working 1-2 hours longer rather then 4-5 extra hours a day. Giving me more time to relax and do things I want to do. Relieving stress and further increasing my productivity. My only problem is I have to hide this fact from the IT department.
If the bridge is that fragile due to that combination, why was it not set for replacement earlier?
Back to the PHBs again.
If it's beige, it needs to go.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
MOD UP!
She's been using my old 166 MHz MMX (overclocked to WHOLE 200 MHz), with ENTIRE 64 MB of RAM running Windows '98.
She had no computer at work and she got tired of asking other people to use theirs each time she had to type a memo - so she took the one she was using at home to work.
Until something finally gave up in it the other day.
Since it's a bit of a ride to her workplace, and I've been rather busy lately I don't know what exactly is wrong with it - I'm guessing either motherboard or graphic card from the symptoms she described.
Best part is she absolutely refuses any fixing that would involve spending money - though we could buy a refurbished one that would be at least 8 years younger and at least 10 times faster that her old machine for about $100 or less, with 12 month warranty.
Which would, at the moment, be cheaper than trying to replace any part in that computer - save perhaps the floppy drive.
Thing is... that old MMX machine was just fine for her.
All she needed it for was some Microsoft Word and Excel from time to time.
And she's a bit pissed off at her superiors for having to bring her own computer in the first place, plus since she's a step away from retirements she figures - fuck it.
They want her to do something on a computer, let them get her one. She's not donating another dime to the company, thank you very much.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The size of and number of computer monitors you have is an indicator of your prestige. People don't demand extra monitors because it'll make them more productive. Sure, they'll make excuses -- "This way I can have my email AND Excel open at the same time" -- but really it's just the tech variant of wanting the corner office. I don't think the politics of workstations are as dramatic as those of monitors -- Monitors are showier -- but deep down I'm sure it's pretty similar.
I once had to shame my IT department into replacing my whining hard drive by offering to buy it myself. They made me put up with the whine of a clearly dying drive for a couple months over what was at the time a $130 part.
See, there's this thing called "preferences." And in windows, especially w/ MSOffice, they are stuck all over the place - registry, ProgramFiles/Office/some_sub_folder, and various invisible folders in the user's home directory.
The whole *point* of good software (not that I'm saying Office is any good) is that the user customizes the interface to maximize useability and speed.
Then IT re-images, and my toolbars, macros, templates, etc. are gone. Dare I say "WTF!" ? Reimaging should be a last resort after IT (or someone) has done a diligent job of actually trying to fix the actual problem.
PS: one more reason I use OSX whenever I can. Back up those Library/Prefs files, and in 10 minutes any brand-new install or computer can be used exactly like the old one. And, no, Windows' "transfer User prefs/environment" tools do not do the job right.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
XP, and Office 2007 does what we need it to. However, we will be upgrading to Windows 7, due to new minimum desktop specs put out by our Overlord State Agency. I am pushing to hold off on new hardware, and just install W7, with some extra ram on our current PCs.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
My job gave us these computers to work on. When they quit working, IT would just rip the corresponding part out of one from an adjacent desk.
No, I think you read it right.
Before I read your comment, I was actually thinking she got someone else's old machine and that person got a brand new one, but your interpretation makes more sense.
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
Because providing solid evidence of your destructive behavior to your employer's property in a public article would be a great way to develop your career. I see the article more as an opinion piece than a scholarly piece of sociology research. It seems adequate for that interpretation, though.
I have actually known this to happen once -- a co-worker accidentally ran over his laptop with his car (not kidding) and got a new one.
I've never destroyed company equipment, but I do buy a lot of my own stuff. Our IT guy knows what he's doing, but he's overworked and doesn't have much of a budget, so eventually I just bought what I needed -- new box, extra monitor, a bunch of other stuff -- and I maintain it myself. Before you ask, no, of course the company will never reimburse me for it, and the money I spent will not lead to me being directly rewarded by the company for it, but so what. I like my job and this lets me do it better.
I'm told this is unusually bad in the health industry: some med student friends claim that every small practice always seems to have 2 or 3 "pity jobs", people who don't actually do anything useful and only get makework who are invariably related to someone senior or married to someone.
Some ten per cent of UK workers said they'd even resort to buying new parts for their work devices themselves to perform their own upgrade; particularly those who work in smaller organizations."
I don't work in the UK (I am in the US), but I can relate to this. When the company I work for suspended the planned round of desktop upgrades a couple of years ago, I started buying and bringing in my own parts from home. At this point the only piece of my original Pentium 4 desktop left is one of the data drives... and I'm still waiting for my "official" upgrade. People who started working here after me (I've been here since this office opened a number of years ago) generally haven't had to resort to this sort of thing, since their desktops were purchased more recently and are generally less out-of-date.
Amusingly, the company also has a rule against storing company data on personal equipment. So just to make sure I'm in compliance with the letter of the law, any files I'm working on which could be considered proprietary in nature are kept either on a network share, or on that one hard drive that still belongs to the company!
name something that isn't unusually bad in the health care industry...
Cheap storage VM.
At my company they have a policy in place that prevents this. They will fix your machine no matter how badly your destroy it. The only way you get an upgrade is when they have determined that the machine has reached it's lifecycle time (generally 3-4 years after it becomes completely unusable for it's intended task). If you do manage to find a way to break it beyond any repair at all (which I think would require either it being run over by a tank, or in the middle of a large explosion) They will replace it with an identical model from spares stock. You will also have to work without a computer for close to a week.
On a previous laptop I went through 3 screens, 2 power supplies, 2 hard drives, 3 mother boards, and 2 wireless cards over the life of the computer. Fixing any one of those issues probably cost as much as the whole machine (especially if you consider my lost productivity of trying to do my job for a week without a computer each time)
It seems to me the larger the organization, the more difficult it is to get upgrades and the more likely that people will take matters into their own hands.
There used to be a formula for this back in the early days of corporate IT. The less responsive the official organization, the more likely that unofficial services will spring up like little fiefdoms in the company.
I've worked for a company that had an unofficial "parts guy"; someone who would stock many common PC components and offer them for sale out of his cube. Did a brisk business.
What it comes down to is being able to get your work done, and the time you spend fighting with IT is time wasted.
This can be especially challenging after a corporate outsourcing. The helpdesk overseas is trained to avoid cutting a ticket for PC service, because that requires they pull in someone local and that adds to overhead.
Recently I came in Monday and found that I had been the victim of a "drive by upgrade", and my video was not displaying correctly. The usual adjustments weren't helping, so, gritting my teeth, I called the helpdesk in an overseas country that will not be named.
"Hello, my PC video is not displaying correctly. I see that patches were applied over the weekend and I suspect a corrupt..."
"I think I can be helping you. Please take your mouse pointer and put it in a part of the desktop where there is no window, and click the right mouse button."
"I've already tried this, but ok..."
"Please be clicking on the settings tab."
"Ok."
"Move the Screen resolution slider to 1024 by 768 and click Apply."
"Ok."
"Do you see your desktop?"
"Yes, but..."
"Your computer is fixed. Thank you for calling..."
"My computer is NOT fixed! The resolution of this monitor is 1680X1050. Last Friday the PC would display in that resolu..."
"If you can see your desktop, your computer is fixed. I will close the ticket. Have a pleasant day."
It took two days of bitter complaints and trying to make do with a low resolution desktop that was stretched realllly wide, before someone higher up in the organization took notice and arm-twisted the outsource company to send over a PC tech, who had to replace hardware to get it working correctly.
The thing is, if it had failed completely (or if I had said "the monitor is black" and let it go at that) things would have gone a lot more smoothly. If there's any way an admission can be forced from you that the PC is working, then no effort or expense is necessary.
The way support is set up in some companies, I can understand the temptation to accidentally put your foot on the motherboard. "I'm sorry, I don't know how that happened." Don't drop the computer, though, because you will want PC support to restore your data, and do you really think they're backing up PCs? Effectively, I mean?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
OK here's an idea. How about tossing in the guts of the old computer into a new shiny case (complete with LED casefans and everything). Hell, do a complete format of the drive while you're at it and restore everything back to the way it was before all that bloatware the person in question installed. Or not and see if they think their "new computer" is faster. IMO it's all about perception.
I ran over a dell d830[1] with my car. Other than a cracked screen and a dead hdd, the thing still worked
Very fucking impressive. 5 Stars. Will buy again.
[1] Fair enough, it was inside its software carry-bag, and the carry bag was filled with legal writs ... but still, very fucking impressive indeed (neatly stacked paper does not compress much).
I know this is Slashdot, but most "office workers" should be able to work fine with older hardware. My wife is sitting behind me playing Farmville while instant messaging with her sister AND "doing online banking" at the same time all on a 7 year old computer that is running Suse 11.2.
If that's not productivity then I don't what it is.
I trained well as a certified BOFH. I get what I want without having to deal with lusers. I lock down boxes, and I get flak when person X can't install something. What really happens is they complain that they need something legitimate, use the "it takes more than 5 min" excuse, and get their rights elevated so they can really install Yahoo Messenger.
.dll files, etc. I then get humorous support calls about "problems" with the machine. Of course, they can't tell me what the problem is, but will repeat, "things just keep crashing". At which point I pull up their remote desktop and ask them to demonstrate the problem, "Well, it works now, but it wasn't a minute ago."
I then plan a game of Whack-A-Mole remotely killing the process, deleting necessary
After about a week, they give up. Should they revert to their old ways, my network manager will notify me upon new software installs, and I get to play again.
The ironic thing is this: They can't complain to the boss, because if they ask me, I suggest a new PC. Haha, "Just do the best you can," they tell the luser. They're not buying new PCs! EVER! And I love it!
I8-D
I've noticed a lot of "dropped my blackberry down the elevator shaft" syndrome where I work. The iPhones are just so damn shiny. I should know, my blackberry was eaten by a mountain lion right outside my house. True story
Send from my corporate iPhone
" Some 40 per cent of office workers complain that their aging workplace PC hurts their productivity"
And a vast majority of those users are wrong. It's a perception issue. Worst case is a rebuild of the HD.
Unless their tools have changed and have higher requirements, then they don't need new hardware.
Here we started just rebuild systems installations. Takes 30 minutes, and the unneeded cruft has removed.
The PC is faster.
We have people doing their job they same as ever with 'ancient' 1 gig XP boxes. The only reason we are upgrading is because somene got it into there head that since XP is falling out os support we should upgrade. Too which I say "What does support mean for us? Have we EVER called MS and had them fix something just for us?" No, of course not.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
In a large company we run in to a different problem. Internal cost centres. Every manager I've ever met would rather waste thousands of dollars of company money, than have to spend $5 out of his own cost centre. I've taken business cases to them to show that a $200 tool would save the company over $1000 worth of my time every week (and the tool would last for years), and been denied because it's "too expensive". Buying tools comes from the manager's cost centre, but employee paycheques don't.
Interestingly, repairing (and up to replacing a destroyed computer) also doesn't come from their cost centre, but a requested replacement would, leading many managers to suggest the destruction route so that the cost comes from the IT budget for repairs instead of the manager's cost centre.
The profits! ba-dum-bump
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
Where I work, we have have ADMINS that cannot keep their machines in working order.
It's not what you know.
It's who likes you.
Except that the "accident" can be blamed on something else and IT can magically repair all "damage" done.
And when a computer crashes, no one dies. Or is injured and collects disability for the rest of his/her life.
It's ironic that this report is from Mozy which is owned by EMC. A company notorious for sending out field personnel with 5+ year old laptops to work on customer equipment!
not necesserity, i for example managed to lose my work laptop on a work trip to beijing. while i was drunk no less. + a vey important item losing which might have potentially caused great monetary damage to company via contract breach fines and loss of customerbase. think of possible damages on the scale of hundreds of laptops. the worst case scenario didnt happen but it sure could have happened. anyway. the point is, i still have my job, the whole thing pretty much culminated with getting called on the carpet to the ceo(bosses bosses bosses boss). unless an accident is intentional or the employer is of low value to the company people usually dont get fired for once in a lifetime cockup. as long as keeping the employer is of more risk than firing him from the company point of view it makes sense to keep the employer, the next time you dont give the guy a payraise you can just say "remember that night in beijing? "
Any employee who smashes a pc is replaced by one who's less likely to destroy company equipment.
On the TV series M*A*S*H, season 8 episode 12, "Dear Uncle Abdul" Major Margaret Houlihan has a defective foot locker. The Army will not replace it as it is still sort of functional. Major Houlihan shoots the foot locker, claims it perished in the line of duty, and demands a new one.
At a company that I worked for, one user had a laptop with 64 Meg of Ram and Windows 2000 on it. The problem was that it was so slow that he simply couldn't use the machine. It was costing the company a fortune in man-hours while he waited for the software to load and run. I was asked what could be done about the problem. I took the laptop out to a back room and, on the way, I tripped. The machine went flying and the display broke. Fortunately, no one seemed to mind my clumsiness and the user got a new machine. His productivity increased ten-fold.
*** Don't be dull.***
Hear, hear!
On my last job, I wanted a 20 Euro head-set, so I can work better when on phone with my customers. The cost of the time spent on that... Insane!
I'm surprised I haven't seen these here yet:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1999-09-03/
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1998-04-08/
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1998-09-06/
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-05-08/
A friend went on vacation for a week. The office nutjob infected her own machine for the eighth time so far this year. When IT confiscated her machine, our boss had her use friend's computer since the desk was vacant. Needless to say, the friend's computer was also in IT's possession when she returned from vacation. I can't install updates to Java on my machine, but Virus Queen can infect her computer all the live long day. Cool.
I upgraded my 80 GB work laptop with a 160 one a year ago. ... ...
I'll probably upgrade it to 500GB when i update to the latest version of Linux in a few weeks.
If I did not do it, I'd still be on a Windows XP 80GB machine
it does not cost anything to the company, and I'm happy with the machine, so
The only successful way to get a new, working, replacement computer is to find someone in IT, offer them a barrel of cookies, a slab of beer, and $100, and mention how convenient it would be if your ancient PC suddenly developed a fault and had to be replaced.
Guaranteed to work even when there are security cameras in the workplace. There's nothing like a security video showing a PC innocently sitting overnight on a test bench which totally does not have a degaussing coil strapped underneath it, or a switchable, over-voltable power socket close to hand.
I haven't yet seen one comment that actually resolves to solve the problem in a civil matter, like spending the time that computer is actually not allowing you to be productive to write up a proposal with solid facts that show how better hardware will make a more productive wheel cog out of you. It worked for me several times in the past. Now that I own my own company I realize that sometimes a less productive worker is not less productive for the business.
Monitor on my 6 year old machine died, got nice widescreen monitor, XP wouldn't drive it, installed a driver called Ubuntu 10.10. Wow! New computer!
Antivirus is really the killer. A windows computer with a top of the line SSD, with antivirus, is about as snappy accessing the disk as a windows computer without an ssd and without antivirus, which is pretty sad if that ssd is 20 to 100 times faster than the rotating hard drive at various workloads (my experience with an intel g2 160gb ssd).
The other thing is IO scheduling. Process / thread scheduling has come a long way, but IO scheduling not so much... it's not even really fully addressed in linux, they're still working on different strategies for charging different groups of processes for the IO they caused, and strategies for allocating or prioritising IO... there's some stuff linux can do about it now, but you would only bother to set it up and tweak it if you were managing google's servers or something...
I've had a user "accidentally" spill a full cup of coffee on a fairly new machine (1,5 years) less than a week after it had been revealed to him/her that this person would not receive a new machine for another year, something the user ardently opposed.
Draw your own conclusions.
My Desktop was state of the art around 2001, running Redhat and Kde. To be sure most of my work is database and web pages at the same time on servers. But my desktop gets me there well.
When I go out to the web I have to turn off JavaScript, since so many web sights do useless things that eat my CPU alive with JavaScript. As for Slashdot I have managed to get rid of all the CSS and Slashdot is 1000% better for it.