Workers Will Smash Their PCs To Get an Upgrade 533
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."
Never underestimate the power of liquids (Score:5, Interesting)
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 The sad part was the machines she had were never out of date they simply became bogged down because of her browsing and installing habits, but rather than ask to have it cleaned up or god forbit learn to do it herself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".
Re:smash (Score:3)
Is no one going to mention destruction of company property = firing?
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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.
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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.
Re:smash (Score:5, Funny)
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The parent you responded to did.
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"...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.
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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!
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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.
Something to be learned from the spiller (Score:3)
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.
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Do you have children? You never, EVER reward bad behavior - any point she may have had was erased by her wanton destruction of company assets for her own ego gratification...
Where I work we instruct users to never keep anything on their laptop/desktop hard drive - everything on the server, then, when they have a problem, we can re-image/replace the desktop inside of 20 minutes.
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"Unfortunately, where I work they have a policy specifically never to replace PC's unless they have no choice."
Hey boss, yeah, my PC is on fire.... what should I do? I tried pressing Ctl-Alt-Del but I cant find a "fire.exe" process to kill and it's really starting to stink and fill the room with smoke.
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Windows 7 (Pro and above) is licensed for a VM install of XP Pro. Microsoft even offers a pre-configured one for this purpose. Then you can have the app run like a normal one on 7, but its actually running in XP.
Re:Something to be learned from the spiller (Score:5, Funny)
Verified in the real world. (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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You give your users admin rights? No wonder things are screwed up. We used to do that with our investigator laptops (I work for a government agency which deals with enforcement).
When we did our equipment replacement, we removed their admin rights. Amazingly we have had zero problems since that time. Correlation = causation in this case.
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that's the real trick, if Windows had and enforced proper user/system separation then companies could lock down the systems that would limit that crap.
Windows and it's applications assume you have full admin rights all the time. UAC while bad was a good step MSFT should have just pressed harder program developers to code properly, and forced all XP programs into a hard lock down mode.
breaking easy backward compatiblity in the name of security isn't a bad thing.
Novell Netware (Score:2)
Re:Never underestimate the power of liquids (Score:4, Insightful)
that's the real trick, if Windows had and enforced proper user/system separation then companies could lock down the systems that would limit that crap. Windows and it's applications assume you have full admin rights all the time. UAC while bad was a good step MSFT should have just pressed harder program developers to code properly, and forced all XP programs into a hard lock down mode.
Are you from 1999? Software developers stopped assuming users have admin access a few years after XP hit the scene. It's only rare medical of scientific control software that's written that stupidly anymore. And guess what? There is specialty scientific software for Linux out there that assumes you're root.
And windows is easy to segregate admin access on desktops either manually or via GPO. You can even list admin users additively or destructively(replacing the current list, preventing admins from adding someone else as an admin).
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Are you from 1999? Software developers stopped assuming users have admin access a few years after XP hit the scene.
Bullshit - unless you mean "sometime after right now" when you say "a few years after XP". There are still a lot of new programs which do not work properly w/o Admin rights.
Hell, even MS Dynamics 2008 required Administrator rights to run (can't recall if it was local or domain , at the moment, but I do recall that allowing everyone access to run the program didn't do the trick).
Re:Never underestimate the power of liquids (Score:4, Insightful)
It has had for nearly twenty years. Fifteen if you only want to start counting from NT4. The problem isn't the lack of OS capability.
Apparently it is. Just look at the negative commentary in Slashdot about UAC, from people who should know better.
Re:Never underestimate the power of liquids (Score:5, Insightful)
Try working in most actual business environments.
The argument always goes back and forth like this:
IT Side - we have the following reasons that normal users shouldn't be installing programs themselves.
- Security risk of adware/malware/bundleware
- Number of incidents where machines have been compromised.
- Number of incidents where complaints of "my machine is slow" turn out to be the result of user filling drive up with crap
User side -
- "But it takes more than 5 minutes for them to come down and install (program X that's actually work related) for me." Nevermind that these installs happen maybe once per year and if they would bother SCHEDULING with us...
- "But I want to try out (program y) to see if we can use it in the business..."
- User happens to be the PHB's son or is fucking the PHB on the side.
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!"
- One month later: "Megan's machine got infected again. Why the hell aren't you IT guys stopping this from happening? Do whatever it takes to stop this from happening again!"
- One more month later: "Megan's complaining you took away her install rights! I need her to be working as best as possible, give them back to her! She can't possibly cause problems with that!"
Now add in that you might be working in an EDUCATION environment - where every tenured faculty member is also a brain-dead PHB.
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Apparently working for an organization with over $1 billion in sales (we work both sides of the equation) and 3K users isn't considered a real business environment.
We've heard all the above excuses and the answer has been: Tough. You have to justify why you need something installed and if it is approved we will work with them to arrange a time for the installation.
Users don't ask to have things installed because they already have everything th
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Fighting for PC user rights (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Here is another side. Short of any vertical applications that are specialized a large company could switch to an all linux environment and gain additional advantages. OO.o is 100% useable in a company environment. Oracle runs under linux well so most of the accounting department will not notice a difference. The whiners that hate change will whine for about 2 weeks.
Problem is most large companies get a sweet deal from Microsoft to ensure they dont do this. Microsoft sales guys for fortune 500 compan
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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. [...]
This ruse doesn't work on ThinkPads. Co-worker spilled an entire litre of water directly onto the keyboard of a company owned running laptop. Hell to pay if laptop ruined. Unplug, pull out battery, pull disk drive, dry face-down on cookie rack for 24 hours. Reassemble, reboot. Laptop worked for another 18 months. IT department never knew.
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My dad "accidentally" dropped his phone into a cup of coffee, because it kept disconnecting calls and turning itself off without reason. IT looked at it a few times for him, but they couldn't replace it because "it was still working"
After this he got a shiny new one, with worked perfectly.
blame the cheap PHB that run stuff into the ground (Score:2)
blame the cheap PHB that run stuff into the ground this is the same attitude that led to the I-35 bridge collapse.
You mean monitors? (Score:5, Insightful)
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!"
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It's funny how many people point to their monitor and call it their computer.
I use an iMac at work and some people are confused when I do this :-(
Obligatory (Score:4, Funny)
It's Not The Hardware... (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason most office workers are unproductive has nothing to do with their hardware.
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Grandpa always said: "A good carpenter never blames his tools"
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Yes? I am a developer at Oracle. I worked for 5 years on my original computer. After that I went through a lot of hassle, it took me about 6 hours of my time in total over few days to get a new computer. I've got 3 years old refurbished one. They kept in place my old CRT monitor, because it was "working". Now another 5 years passed, I've still got that now 8 years old computer and that 10 years old CRT monitor. There was no way I would go through the Oracle Procurement again. I bought myself an iMac some 4
SSDs to the rescue? (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
Only if you're continually accessing the disk. I put an SSD in my netbook because we often boot it up, do a bit of web browsing and shut down, and that dramatically reduced boot times but has no effect on anything that isn't disk intensive.
Re:Same old bottleneck (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Solution (Score:2)
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.
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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.
I see you that have never worked in a big IT company.
If you did, you would know that supporting cheap randomized $500 PC is very time consuming and will end up with you having a huge stockpile of semi-working PC.
No, in a big IT environment you need standardized PC, which means buying old over-priced PC just to have identical parts.
but don't get me wrong I do understand the user frustration, if it was for me, at least the monitors (dual, triple ...), keyboard and mouse would be top quality. For the
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Ugh, I worked at a place that was still running P4s, that should have set off alarm bells in my head.
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What a bunch of dummies (Score:5, Funny)
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...
Re:What a bunch of dummies (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a bunch of dummies (Score:4, Insightful)
Their "slow" computer is thousands of times faster and is available to them nearly all day! Only a poor worker blames his tools. Now if the computer just plain didn't work, that would be a different story...
Says the person who has never used a serious CAD or GIS application on non-cutting edge workstation.
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Ever tried running full-featured CAD software on a 500 MHz with 256 MB RAM? I did that for a good while, and it wasn't more than a few years ago.
Even our 'new' computers are barely adequate Celerons with 1 GB RAM. Yeah, I can get by, but it's an exercise in pain/anger management any time I have to do anything more than a basic drawing.
Damn. I'm running a Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz with 4 GB of RAM & it still chokes on the CAD & GIS stuff I'm working on right now. I quite literally couldn't even use you machine.
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Unless you're at a tiny company (single digits) where the "IT guy" is the "CTO", he almost certainly doesn't set the budget, he just makes do with what he has.
As someone who got saddled with desktop support in addition to real work, please: if your hardware is inadequate and preventing you from doing your job, bitch to your boss, NOT your IT guy. I sympathize, but I can't do anything about it and it's getting more than a little tired.
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So what you are saying is that the old school programers worked for a few hours and waited for the rest of the day to see if they have an error.
^_^ I would say we are more productive than that even WITH those "lazy and dumb" practices of ours.
Besides, most projects I cover tend to be linear in nature. In fact, the output of one script may negate the whole purpose of a second script or tool.
I would also suggest to you that most unproductive workers are workers who lack good communication with the clients. Ma
I hope you also realize though... (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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If programmers could write complex programs in the 50s and 60s using punched cards and waiting overnight for the output of their runs, a smart and diligent worker could figure out how to queue up work so they could be productive even with a "slow" computer.
I recently came across the user manual from a computer of that era, the STANTEC ZEBRA[1]. It had two instruction sets, the full set and one called 'simple code' (which was actually pretty complex). One of the limitations of simple code was that programs could be at most 150 instructions. This, the manual notes, is not an important limitation, because no one could feasibly write a working program that complex.
I also came across some exercise books from people who programmed these machines, showing the
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bean counters hate computer upgrades? (Score:3)
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.
Re:bean counters hate computer upgrades? (Score:5, Insightful)
we try to show business owners that 10 year old computers really are a problem, even when they still work.
If they still perform the task for which they were intended 10 years ago, why are they a problem?
The real problem isn't old computers, it's new software. New software comes out which doesn't really do anything better than your old software. But people you do business with upgraded, so now you have to upgrade your software to interoperate with them. But the new software runs more slowly, and now you need new hardware to do the same task you were doing just fine 6 months ago.
For a stand-alone application, there's nothing wrong with 10 year old computers. Or 20 year old computers, for that matter. DOS still works as well as it ever did.
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Might be true some places but certainly not everywhere. Computers don't get slower with age. Something changes, the question is should something be chanting? If your employee workstations are just getting slower, then your IT department is doing a PISS POOR job managing those workstations, and something needs to be done about the IT department not the workstations.
There are lots of cases where five plus year old PCs should be just fine. Its not as if keying orders and inventory movements into SAP is goi
Easy cure (Score:5, Interesting)
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Any smashed PC is replaced by the oldest in stock. new replacements for those which reach the budgeted life intact.
More of a symptomatic treatment than a cure, though. Those old machines are gonna "wear out" faster than a new one. Either that, or your people start building Wally-style computer catapults. There's always an engineering solution.
Work smarter not harder (Score:3)
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I have a 3 year old laptop on which I have to run a software suite which is woefully inefficient.
Copying 3-4 sheets of function block logic from one controlle to another (control system stuff) generates anywhere from 3 to 10 gigabytes of disk traffic due to the insanity of no caching for ANY sort of query or check in the application.
The vendor wont fix it as they consider the product "too old" to fix, but this product runs the control system on at least 20 oil/gas installations in Norway and over 400 indust
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Railroad workers did the same thing 100 years ago (Score:5, Interesting)
Could be worse... (Score:2)
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.
Why not DIY? (Score:2)
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 wor
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The real problem... (Score:2)
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 c
self upgrades (Score:2)
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
As a Manager (Score:2)
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 se
Just because they say it, doesn't mean they do it. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Standards (Score:2)
BYOC is the way to go (Score:2)
I am aware that some employers even give out a stipend f
I think the biggest question is... (Score:2)
...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?
What is the problem with the hardware? (Score:2)
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.
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Software usually gets updated, and the newer versions are often bigger and slower.
Wow companies provide computers?? (Score:2)
Feature Creep sucks (Score:2)
That really happened on a job I worked (Score:2)
The coming end of the enterprise desktop (Score:2)
Re:Spend money to save money... (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
Re:Spend money to save money... (Score:5, Insightful)
"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...
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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.
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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.
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Re:Maybe I should try this (Score:4, Funny)
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Not me, I'm stuck on Win2K at work as well. Have to run Opera, because Firefox is too slow on this machine.
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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.
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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
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Re:Maybe I should try this (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Maybe I should try this (Score:4, Funny)
That is both the most awesome and awful thing I have ever heard
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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
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But it isn't your place to decide when your employer should spend money on your equipment. If you think your employer doesn't notice the issue, bring it to their attention. If they refuse the upgrade, you've learned about the company's priorities, and where you are in them - sounds like it's time to make a career decision...
Re:The Best Way (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. What a horrible idea. Never, ever, donate money to your employer. And even if you take it with you when you quit, you have donated money to your employer.
As a manager, it is MY job to give you the tools to make you more productive. If I am not making the right trade-offs, then I am not doing my job. And if I am not doing my job, you shouldn't make me look good by donating from your own pocket.
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Done right, this shows initiative.
Done wrong, you could really cause a shit-storm in an office area ("Why does he have two monitors?", "Why can't I have two monitors?")
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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.