For those in IT, does this sound familiar?

[SonicFlux]

I'm a member of a small IT group (8 people) that supports approximately 700 users in North America. My daily tasks include connecting remotely to workstations, servers, backup maintenance, rolling out new software and patches, heavy LAN and WAN work, etc. Now you would think that being in IT would require a fast computer. Here's what I have at my desk:

200mhz Pentium, 64meg ram, 2.1 gig HD (Xfers less then 6 megs/sec), 4meg vid, no sound, and to top it off, a whopping 14inches of glorious bubble-screenage (I think my management wants me to go blind)!

Does this sound at all familiar?

On Monday, I start working with International operations, which adds a couple thousand more users that I will be supporting. To prepare me for this, my management has graciously given me a 2nd computer to help me work more efficiently... Why, wouldn't you know it, it's an exact duplicate of my current machine with an even worse monitor!!!

Too bad I'm not one of my company's secretaries, or I would have a P3 1gig, 256meg, 21" monitor... And I would sit back, talk on the phone, and let all this raw computing power go to waste (end rant)

 

[Descartes]

For me, it's always been quite the contrary.

I work as a developer, and I've never had a monitor smaller than 21", never been w/o speakers, always a solid box w/ plenty of storage, etc..

I guess it just depends on who you are, and whether or not your company is frugal

 

[StageLeft]

Hah I know people like this in IT. I was at a small company (7 people) with financial troubles but for some unknown reason they bought everyone P3 800's, and the boss (who types emails only) got a Laptop with a 733 in it...what a waste of money. I guess there it was the other way around!

 

[Viper GTS]

P3 450 here, 128 MB, & a 17" monitor.

Viper GTS

 

[Spamela]

sounds like you work for the type of company for which you have to demonstrate that the productivity savings from a new machine
would pay for itself, i.e., create a spreadsheet using your cost to the company per hour, how many hours a day you use it, how much you can get done with it, how much you could get done with a new pc (no sitting and waiting for the hourglass), etc.

 

[JoLLyRoGer]

I actually have similar systems set up just to log repairs in. My actual workstation has a PIII @ 550 with 192 MB ram, cd-rom, cd-rw, 8MB Matrox vid card, and 9BG HDD, 19" flat screen DELL w/ trinitron tube. Only thing that sux is it's a COMPAQ.

Maybe you should submit a letter to the boss justifying why you need better machines.

Better yet rape and pillage the secretary for her workstation.. j/k

 

[gregshin]

I'm in the MIS dept. and i got a Pentium 233 w/64 RAM and a 14in monitor also

 

[Viper22]

Well here the machine i use all day is as follows:

Celeron 333C
64MB RAM (32MB my own that i brought from Home)
4GB HDD
17" Trinitron Monitor

I Normally have open at once:

Outlook 98
Vantive (Memory hogging system to take our Tech notes)
a few IE Windows to various Places

etc.
Got to love it.

Viper22

 

[kami]

I have a Tbird 800, 256MB, 19" machine here. Running Win2k.

edit: soon to be 512MB, i do lots of photoshop stuff now and with RAM so cheap...

 

[iamwiz82]

I tpye this on a 533 mhz P3 128 megs of ram, etc. Next to me are 2 866's which i am toying with right now. I like my company =].

 

[element]

Yeah but wouldn't you rather get paid more than get a nice workstation? Secretary has a gig pc but takes home a @#$% paycheck, you have a $#!@ pc and take home a (figuratively speaking) gig paycheck.

 

[mechBgon]

Heh, if I were stuck with a computer like that, I'd bring in something of my own, especially the monitor.

 

[Optimus]

I used to have a nice PIII 600 Dell machine, but they came and took it away last week....






... and replaced it with a PIII 800! Whooohoooo!

 

[ViRGE]

I work over in the state's Ag department, and get an Apple PowerBook G3: 300mhz, 192MB, 8GB HD, and a good 17" monitor to work with. It's no Titanium Powerbook, but compared to the 7300/180s and 7100/75s that a lot of the workers have, it kicks butt.

 

[UnixFreak]

I have a 486 DX2, 4 megs, with a 210 meg HD, and a 1 meg cirrus logic card,
and a 4x CDROM at work here. I love the extra speed when I need it. And windows 3.11 is the best!!

Actually, I have the same system as Viper, you can probley guess why. Its not too bad, I guess. Nice Monitor at least.

 

[DAM]

hmm, i guess then youre going to hate me :--P



on my desk (for me) i have a cel 800 and a p3 550. and another cel 800 laying around (i need to hook that up) whats great about my department is that i make all the purchases <evil grin>





dam()

 

[Daniel]

We tend to get pretty crappy computers generally, I'm the only IT person though so you can scare them with things. Once they tried to swap things around to give a accountant a better machine and give me a p133 with 32 megs of ram, I said if I tried to admin the server with that machine it would very likely crash the whole thing and they got all scared and swapped me with a p3-450, hehe, not the greatest machine in the world, but it works just fine.

 

[Tripleshot]

SonicFlux
Someone is a leader in your group. Tell that leader to grow some balls and tell management its time to upgrade the IT depts PC's.

Any desencion, look elseware for employment. The IT dept of any corporation should never suck hind tit when it comes to hardware or software.

Just my humble freaking opinion.

(That kind of crap burns me up.:|)

 

[BoberFett]

P3 450, 128 MB, 10 GB, 19&quot; monitor. Oh, and a V3 3000D (Dell branded V3)

But then I only support a small network, most of the time I'm a developer.

 

[DaveJ]

<Dave looks over at his stack of PCs>

Lessee... P3-600 (Win95), P3-600 (Win2k), P3-450 (Win95), P3-350 (WinNT)

Plus all the other crap I have lying around... got 3 laptops, 4 P166s, and 3 P3-450 machines here... I have WAY too much hardware in this office!

Dave

 

[guyver01]

Sounds familiar here... i'm in Tech Support, our department supports, at this time, 250 thousand users, and growing.

For our station, it's a P133, 4meg video, no sound, 15&quot; monitor, and a 1GB HDD... and our LAN connection must be running dialup... because it takes 20 minutes to load our internal corporate webpage.

BUT..

our webmaster just got 3 SUN SPARC stations, 4 Compaq Proliant Servers, and 2 IMAC G4s.

now go figure.

 

[fallenoncrack]

ouch, thats a harsh environment for business

 

[vi edit]

Dell P3-667, 128 RAM, int video and sound, 10 gig HD, ACS 45 speakers w/ sub, and 17&quot; Trinitron. I paid ~1100 for the system. Not bad.

I get almost identical systems for ~1000 now. Work thinks they're pretty damn cheap, and the users are happy

 

[Windogg]

Sounds like my current desktop. I submitted a request for a new PC too late and the spending freeze caught me. I do have nice IBM notebook to hold me over.

PC Specs:
HP Vectra
Pentium 166Mhz (NON-MMX)
32MB EDO RAM
2GB HDD
2MB S3 Trio
Audio
17&quot; NEC &quot;FuzzySync&quot; Monitor

Notebook
IBM ThinkPad 600X
P3 500Mhz
192MB PC100 SDRAM
10GB HDD
4MB NeoMagic Video
13.3&quot; Active Matrix Screen

Windogg

 

[SonicFlux]

Thanks for the advice guys

As a temporary work-around, I'm installing NT at home this weekend and setting up a VPN. I've got a lot of Visio work to do (mapping out our network topology), and I crigned when I tried to use Visio on my 14&quot; monitor at work. I had to scroll left-right-up-down everytime I moved the damn mouse!

So at least I can save these types of projects until I get home and turn my gaming rig (see sig) into my NT workstation... oh yeah, and I'll be able to play mp3s while I work