‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds

Post by Macha » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

projectileboy wrote: post #136

joshstrange wrote: post #72

I will never understand when a company/government entity pay people a high salary then give them crap or low-end hardware. You should be maxing out dev machines and the rest of the company should rarely see a spinner or have to wait on their tech. It's a huge waste of time that you are paying for. I once calculated how much time I wasted waiting on slow processes at a job and then multiplied it by my effective hourly…

One big problem is misaligned incentives. At most big orgs, you have an infosec dept with authority to put all kinds of virus scanning, etc etc on every computer in the org. They get rewarded if there are no incidents; they do not get penalized if they make your machine impossible to use.

Post by dylan604 » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

seiferteric wrote: post #141

_fat_santa wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't even have to be low end hardware. I just gave back a laptop to a client that I was working with in healthcare. It's a 16" MBP with an i7 and 32GB of RAM. The machine itself is really fast but gets bogged down by all the other crap it has to connect to. They had McAfee endpoint security on these things and it would prevent any unauthorized apps from running as well as hog between 50-70% of the CPU during it…

God my work machine is like this. People (rightfully) complain about power use by crypto, but I wonder how much power is wasted by McAfee et al? I wish there would be public outcry over it :)

Post by praash » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #112

praash wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not actually such "low end spec" that would cause logins and mails to take an hour to process. To me, the whole ordeal screams: software bloat, software misconfiguration, background service overload. You could snappily send mail 15 years ago, and the computational task itself hasn't grown much, besides bloated browser login windows. Try booting a 2 GB RAM machine to some RAM-preloading Linux thumbdrive and you…

Why wouldn't it? That's how long it takes to swap memory on an HDD, it doesn't surprise me, especially with how many resources today's browsers and sites consume.

Post by ehutch79 » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

joshstrange wrote: post #97

spamizbad wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of this is that IT is viewed as a cost center (well, because it is), and often "owns" the expense of issuing laptops. IT's objective is to ship you a laptop that will adequately run the software you need to perform your job duties. How efficiently you perform them becomes a problem for you and your manager.

I understand the basic reasons why but anyone who actually examines this has to come to the conclusion that it's a good idea to issue sub-par tech is penny wise and pound foolish. Heck, for developer satisfaction alone I think it's good idea to upgrade them yearly or every 2 years at most. Cycle those machines through your org or resell them. The depreciation lost in resale is tiny compared to increased efficiency an…

Post by Jtsummers » Fri, Jan 28, 2022, 5:57 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #176

It's not the hardware, it's the crap that runs on it. You want a system which is secure and usable? Time for the DoD to commission their own OS. "Nobody will know how to use it!" is an objection which can be overcome by training, which is a thing that the armed forces understand. "It won't be compatible with the COTS!" is an advantage, not a disadvantage. "It will take too long and cost too much!" means that they are…