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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."
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 The sad part was the machines she had were never out of date they simply became bogged down because of her browsing and installing habits, but rather than ask to have it cleaned up or god forbit learn to do it herself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.
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!"
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,
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?
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
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.
That's about right. I think my company dropped $50M on a "new brand image" (that looked a lot like the old brand image), another $42M on a new "one size fits all" database that actually doesn't work for almost anything, tens of millions in golden parachutes.
"Can I get a monitor with a display resolution larger than 1400x900?" "No." "But...but...I can't even see a page of schematics at a time, and the code I'm maintaining is a hundred thousand lines split in to dozens of files!" "The budget is tight, can't do it."
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.
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.
Yeah, we have some poor Vista users.
Trolling is a art,
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"
Not me, I'm stuck on Win2K at work as well. Have to run Opera, because Firefox is too slow on this machine.
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
"Can I get a monitor with a display resolution larger than 1400x900?" "No." "But...but...I can't even see a page of schematics at a time, and the code I'm maintaining is a hundred thousand lines split in to dozens of files!" "The budget is tight, can't do it."
You're asking for the wrong reasons... With a bigger monitor you can show the new brand image more clearly, you can use the extra space to display the image of the new mission statement... You'll always be on track that way, you'll know the schematic you can't see clearly on the screen is driving customer satisfaction and global leadership and all that...
All of the developers in my area have dual 30" Dell 2560x1600 monitors, overclocked i7 985's, top-of-the-line geForce/radeon/quadro/fireGL cards, and SAS or SSD raids. It definitely shows in our productivity. However, we are a research and development software group and do computer graphics and UI development so maybe we are a bit out of the norm. But it definitely shows how increasing hardware definitely increases productivity.
-SaNo
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.
I'd be happy if I were you, Windows 2000 is the best version of Windows ever released by Microsoft.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I guess I should count myself lucky then - XP got rolled out long ago, and the transition to Windows 7 is about to happen, with XP support ending some time next year.
But on the other hand we are struck with McAfee, and the enterprise version with a paranoid configuration can bog down the faster supercomputer to a leisurely pace.
I have Windows ME installed at home, not using that crap at work, though.
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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.
Those were breaking anyways. The little ball-wheels were complete shit.
We had a series of users with them and even before the Curve came out we were receiving the ball-roller ones back in droves. Same problem in every case: it ceased to register when you tried to scroll the ball upwards. Those old roller-ball BB's were just fucking defective.
...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.
A certain video store whose US parent company (where IT decisions were made) is bankrupt is still using VAXes in some stores (but mostly Alphas).
Win2k is fairly common at banks.
At another company someone asked if they could break their printer to get a new one and I told them truthfully that no, they'd just get one that someone else had broken and had subsequently been repaired just enough to pass the tests.
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
We have 80,000 Vista SP2 users. Guess what? There isn't anything wrong with it. It works great. In fact, we are getting resistance on rolling out Windows 7 to them because what they have is "just fine" and they don't want to go through the small amount of downtime required to install a new OS, absorb any (small) training costs, etc. Thankfully we finally got rid of the last Windows XP (at least that we support - there are a few vendors with vertical apps that still "only support XP" but all supported XP installs are gone). Now, if you meant your Vista users don't have any money then maybe you should pay them more.
Why would you do endless alt+tabs when endless Ctrl+Alt+cursor can get you the window you want much faster? Possibly saving you tens of milliseconds every week. Give everyone a bunch of xterms, vi, and OLVWM, you can't go wrong with that :-)
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.
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?
But on the other hand we are struck with McAfee, and the enterprise version with a paranoid configuration can bog down the faster supercomputer to a leisurely pace.
Back when I had to run Windows at work the anti-virus was the biggest cause of performance problems on my system. It got so bad that I had to get permission from my manager to run without an anti-virus because over a couple of years it had gone from decently fast to impossibly slow solely because of the anti-virus sucking up more and more CPU cycles.
The only people who ever got viruses on their systems were in marketing, and the only thing the anti-virus did for those of us in software development was trash a few machines when it decided that some important Windows file was actually a virus and deleted it so the machine couldn't boot anymore.
But it definitely shows how increasing hardware definitely increases productivity.
And there is the fallacy hard working class individuals cling to. The PHB doesn't care how efficient or productive things are. The PHB wants to know how PROFITABLE things are. If you appeal to your PHB that adding hardware widget xyz will increase the bottom line by xxx% and only add xx% in cost then his eyes will light up and he will listen intently. Tell him how much more productive you will be and he will suddenly have a meeting to go to.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
I'm glad my place of work isn't like that.
I'm currently running three screens, one 30" screen in the center with one 20" in portrait mode on each side for a total resolution of 4960x1600.
It's always a pain when I have to work directly on the laptop.
English is not this
Repeat after me: Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending. (Brave New World)
We had a launch control board assembly fail shortly after I started my internship, and a rocket was supposed to go up the next week. No one had any idea where or how to get a replacement, then someone remembered that the old 'backup' system was moved to the Kennedy Space Center Museum. They made a call, grabbed an armed guard from the base, drove up to KSC, swapped the broken control board with the museum piece, and launched a rocket with it a week later. To the best of my knowledge, they are still launching rockets with a piece of hardware literally salvaged from a museum of history.
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.
There's nothing wrong with it. I used it from release until Win7 release and never had a single issue, and I know others who didn't have issues as well. Everyone I have ever heard reporting issues either a) was trying to cram it into a machine with 256 MB of memory or something obscene like that, or b) was hating just because everyone else was.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I had to give my boss "metrics" of how much time I saved using a second monitor. Nonetheless, I just made a bunch of tick marks that represented "I just saved 30 seconds", whether I saved 30 seconds or not (and inflated the tick marks by about 100 a day). At the end of the trial period I was able to say I saved tens of hours in productivity!
See, you just have to speak their lingo. Facts are for chumps.
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.
My first experience of Vista was trying to download a driver to a friend's laptop and having to sit there for several minnutes while it copied the downloaded 2MB file from IE's temporary directory to the download directory.
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.
The way my office computer was set up, I could install Chrome but not not Firefox ... either's better than Internet Explorer; granted, saying your web browser is better than IE is like saying your songwriter is better than Rebecca Black's. :P
P.S. :)
It's an XP box at least.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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.
just browse some shady websites if you want your old PC to go south.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
And all of them will still have personally identifiable information that was accidentally left on the hard drives.
Bark less. Wag more.
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
I believe you win.
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"
Boy, it must have been a rude shock for them when they actually had to use the Storm on an ongoing basis.
I know users who broke their Storms in order to go back to Bolds.
--srj/mmv
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
This is exactly what my company is doing. My HP Elitebook 8730w is running an XP image until everyone is satisfied that rolling out Windows 7 isn't a bad thing.
with XP support ending some time next year.
2014 actually.
http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/search/default.aspx?alpha=Windows+XP
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.
That would be great if only our companies would let us do that. Most won't, even at our own expense.
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.
People without the absolute need for it, should not have removable media drives, accessible USB ports, internet access, or the ability to add software. This is work, not playtime.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Ah, but to anyone with more than two working braincells it is obvious that an increase in productivity implies an increased efficiency. By upgrading your "developer unit" with a new high-res monitor, comfy chair that isn't constantly causing the developer unit to focus on adjusting it and other minor costs you will ensure maximum efficiency which in turn means a more reliable developer unit that more consistently meets deadlines. This of course means a marked increase of profit or reduced cost of development (depending on how your company is structured to look at development financially).
Now, to a PHB this is of course just "excuses to get new toys" (of course, should the sales team request 30" monitors and faster computers well by god, they make us money, better keep them happy!).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
sounds like you need a good union
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
The way I got authorization to upgrade the graphics and install a second monitor on a user's machine was to show that by doing so, the user didn't have to print off a 450 page document about every other week. Saving us $9 a pop an paying for itself after so many weeks.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
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.
The systems we ordered are under warranty from Boxx Technologies as overclocked systems. We did not overclock themselves; the model we ordered comes that way. Boxx systems are awesome.
-SaNo
That's a familiar story. My laptop has wider screen resolution than my old 15" monitor at work, it's kind of inconvenient when I go in to the office as I telecommute and my physical workstation has to reconfigure the windows for its limited resolution when I'm there and then I have to redo them again when I'm back home and telecommuting again.
I can believe what TFA is saying, though I've never seen it. I have a constant battle to maintain a certain Access database in 2003 though there are now later versions of Office floating around the office. We have people in the field using the runtime version of Access to use this system and frankly their laptops probably can't run the later versions, so we're kinda stuck. And since these laptops have EDGE modems, they're not cheap to replace.
When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
Running Ubuntu, but on a Pentium 4 HT with only 2 GB RAM. 3 GHz, but still just a Pentium 4. Last upgrade I got was the second GB of RAM so it could run Ubuntu.
No root access.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
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.
And NASA does not need any more money.... Dick Cheney needs to go hunting with most of the senators.... birdshot in the face might wake them up.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
WTF is a PHB?
Start reading: http://www.dilbert.com/
Accidentally means they did not mean to. 90% of the people out there don't even try to remove the information.
I never connect Apathy with accidental... They chose to be lazy and ignorant, it was on purpose.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
When I worked for the provincial government, 2 systems were run on VAXes running openVMS and they upgraded one to a new Alphaserver while I was there. Not the prettiest system, but damn they were reliable. The only thing they had with better uptime was the z-series mainframe.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I think the parent poster may have meant support in his or her enterprise. Or else maybe it was an old expiration date remembered. They have changed the end of life date a few times already.
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
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!
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?).
Not on my workstation, but I still support OS/2 and Win 3.1 machines. Also some ancient DEC systems.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
If it's beige, it needs to go.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
then here's an anecdote for you
Vista runs like a pig on my GFs machine (quad core phenom II with 8gb ram). Windows 7 runs far more acceptable
Still nothing compared to my dual core athlon 7750 with Fedora, but to be fair, that machine has an SSD in it
People, what a bunch of bastards
i'd define 'accidental' if the user deletes the information with "rm -rf /" or thows everything in the trash can, followed by an "empty trash" but the informations remains there.
fact is, most OSes don't actually wipe the data, they just remove the entry in the directory/clear the inodes. the data blocks remain intact until they're overwritten.
one more thing i miss from OS/2 warp, it had a conveniently placed "shredder" that actually wiped the data blocks.
What ? Me, worry ?
google for portable firefox, no instal needed, but you do get full blown firefox, including stuff like firebug
People, what a bunch of bastards
You are out of your mind. Vista SP2 is light-years ahead of Vista, but it's all a buggy pile of shit. Windows 7 is the first "usable" edition of windows since XP, and it's generally being migrated two not necessarily because it is more stable, but simply because the new feature benefits outweigh the loss in reliability vs. XP. The UAC issue is still a leader in irritations and annoyances with any modern windows, and while I totally agree with the premise for it (being a linux user), it is still horribly implemented.
But even in Vista SP2 I have periodic crashes to desktop, my video card driver UMDF portion periodically fails and resets itself, some USB devices cause erratic behavior (particularly on resume from S3), I've all but given up on sound drivers for Sigmatel based chips, there are lots of drivers none of them work, and it's often not the driver that is failing so much as the reworked sound system in Vista. Microsoft needs to flog each and every person involved with Vista, and then reflog each tier of management at least once per level above individual contributor.
This of course means a marked increase of profit or reduced cost of development
Does it? And are you prepared with the numbers to support that claim?
Managerial types don't ultimately care about how many lines of code per hour are produced. They care about the cost of the end product delivered. Increased productivity certainly implies increased efficiency, but that is by no means guaranteed. Does the increased output offset the cost of the new monitors (probably) or a super ergonomic office chair?
At the very least without some statistics to back up the claim, the manager isn't able to properly advocate for the change and won't be able to differentiate legitimate upgrade requests from the people that just want the new shinys.
Assuming that's true (and I have my doubts), you're doing something horribly wrong. I ran Vista on a mere Athlon 64, with 2 GB of ram, and it worked great.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
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.
I am not IT. I am a developer. I used to be IT and still get tapped as my employer is an adversting firm and IT is stretched so thin you can see through them (I am so glad to be out of IT, even if I still do the work when the office manager knocks on my door).
This is the issue the office manager had with his Windows 7 Pro laptop from a huge PC manufacturer (one of the 5 largest): When he tried to copy files from the network share to his local drive the machine locked up. It didn't lock up with file copies from the NAS but it did with copies from the Windows 2003 Server fileserver. Try to copy and the laptop froze. Locked up hard. Stopped responding to network pings. Wouldn't respond to keyboard or mouse. No blue screen, just frozen. Nothing in the system logs. Died and died hard.
The problem turned out to be that the network card was set to auto-detect the network speed. Despite the switch being 100Mbps, the gigabit card in the laptop was auto-detecting 1Gbps. Yes, we are still on 100Mbps in the office. Did I mention IT doesn't get the funding it should? I digress. Network file coping worked fine for every server but that one Windows 2003 fileserver. Browsing the share worked. You could look at any directory (sorry - it's folder for Window's isn't it). Pardon, me. You could look into any folder but the second you tried to copy a file Windows shit itself.
The fix? Manually set the network card speed to 100Mbps and "voila"! It worked. Fucking Windows. The day I no longer have to trouble-shoot the black-box, no-log-info, application-has-no-debug-mode, god-only-knows-why-it-won't-run Windows will be a day I will celibrate with wild abandon.
One last question: Why is the only video that Power Point will play without issue MPEG-1? Not WMV. Not MPEG-2. Just MPEG-1. And this is office 2007 I am talking about. Why won't it play video formats any newer than 1995? Having been paid to support Microsoft software, I have learned to hate said software with a passion normally reserved for bad drivers.
Well I'm looking at this from the perspective of someone who has not-so-fond memories of raiding the offices of other teams to scavenge parts for office chairs*. Or arguing with the helpdesk guys over whether or not a 17" CRT barely capable of pushing 1024x768@72Hz while displaying anything green as black really counts as a functional monitor (hint: they claimed it did).
So sure, if you have a decent setup to begin with then it might be understandable that management wants some estimates of just how much productivity will increase. But when you have equipment that barely works, computers that are almost ten years old with barely enough RAM to run a web browser and a monitor that is liable to either give you cancer or just explode in your face I don't think there's any question that efficiency will go up remarkably if new equipment is purchased. At that point not buying new gear is just management being cheap to the point of being stupid (or "dumsnål" as it's called in swedish).
* Despite the thieving of chair parts it still seemed like every other week someone would call in sick because of back pain caused by the ancient office chairs we were using.
Oh yeah, I'm no longer employed there and I wouldn't go back there if they offered to double my current salary.
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
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.
Well Blockbuster (I am not under a NDA) when they chose to use Alpha and VMS probably made a good decision at the time. At the time the choices were Dec, Sun, IBM, SCO, and Microsoft, Linux wasn't known to fully Enterprise ready at the time. (Blockbuster and RedHat went IPO on the same day) Sun, and IBM were quite expensive Dec and SCO were the Middle ground and MS was conidered the low end. Alphas performed better then PC's so all in all it was a good choice. Even after Digital -> Compaq -> HP There stuff seemed to work quite well. Saving the viruses and issues that plagued Microsoft in the Early 2000's
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Just this past weekend, I moved some stuff off an old Windows 98 workstation at a client. I'm pretty sure the user hadn't been performing percussive maintenance... Also upgraded the primary application software (for the first time since 2005 or so) and a few custom reports (dating back to the pre-Crystal Reports era).
I'm almost positive XP will refuse to boot in that situation because the HAL layer for a Uniprocess PC is entirely different than a multiprocessor PC. You can make a ACPI image that will run on both and will use both cores because its an using the ACPI HAL, but the older (can't remember the initials for it) HAL only supports uniprocessor anyway and simply won't work on multiprocessor machines period.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
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)-
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.
No, it'll leave scorch marks from the arcing which are equally telling.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
They DO have a good reason to replace it. They don't have the capability to maintain or repair it. They don't have an inventory of spares. It's literally a mission-critical part.
Even if they keep using it for the time being, they need to develop an alternative (or acquire spares).
What would have happened if there WASN'T a spare at the museum, or if no one remembered it was there?
Sometimes you need to replace a part that works fine because you don't have the capability to handle a situation where that part no longer works fine.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
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.
Most of the time I'd agree with the above statement, but when NOBODY knows how the damn thing works and its part of a vital system, it may be time to replace it with a system that can be maintained by the current staff.
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
Here's another good reason to replace it, those VAX systems have maintenance contracts that cost $10k each per year, and there are about 50 of them in a room running different pieces of software needed for the launch. That's $500k a year on fucking maintenance contracts for hardware that has less total processing power, storage, and memory than my cellphone, and consumes more power than a small welding shop.
Power Point? god
I can only assume because at some point during its development, some big wig manager in love with power point wandered through the office and said "MPEG-2? BUT I ONLY WANT ONE IN THERE! GET RID OF THAT EXTRA ONE!"
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
" 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
That is both the most awesome and awful thing I have ever heard
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
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.
Any employee who smashes a pc is replaced by one who's less likely to destroy company equipment.
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!
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 suppose I could take an alternate route like that; thanks for pointing it out, but I found it to be a happy accident in the sense that it made me get aorund to givign Chrome a try.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
May I suggest that at the 80,000 user level you're not seeing the issues individual users may be going through? I'm sure at that scale you probably have closely managed systems with mostly homogeneous platforms. With that kind of platform to run on, yeah even ME would probably work fine.
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
That's also what we're doing where I work. Just starting to go to Windows 7 now from XP. I'm still on XP.
Probably will upgrade a home PC (my wife uses mainly) from Vista to 7 soon. I have disliked Vista.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
Choosing Alphas in 1995-ish was a good decision... not upgrading since then is dubious.
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
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 think some of us have different definitions of great. For me "great > tolerable" is a solid rule that has never been broken, for you it seems the rule is "great >= tolerable."
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
No, "great" means "great". It doesn't mean that it ran barely tolerably, it ran great. Superbly. As well as it is possible to run.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard