How to convince boss for new computer?

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: Dedpuhl
heh. I'm having that same battle right now. I have a p3 500 w/ 128MB RAM and a crap PCI vid card.

I'm expected to quickly sort/use: a 150K entry access database, new GIS/GPS software, a mainframe database, Microstation, an online database, and another mapping program. I'm supposed to use several of those at the same time.

Heck, it takes 2 minutes just for lotus notes 6 to load.

Where do you work at?

 

[Kntx]

You're talking like that 20-30 minutes of waiting for your computer is a bad thing. That's 30 minutes where you can grab a cup of coffee, chat up the coworkers, or my personal favorite.. zone out. Just last year I worked on a p233 doing development. Those 3 hour complies were the best part of my day!

 

[Dedpuhl]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: Dedpuhl
heh. I'm having that same battle right now. I have a p3 500 w/ 128MB RAM and a crap PCI vid card.

I'm expected to quickly sort/use: a 150K entry access database, new GIS/GPS software, a mainframe database, Microstation, an online database, and another mapping program. I'm supposed to use several of those at the same time.

Heck, it takes 2 minutes just for lotus notes 6 to load.

Where do you work at?

Dept. of Transportation

 

[Dufman]

Tell him you waste 1/2 hour a day just waiting. Then do the calculation. 1/2hr * 5 * your hourly wage = ?
Then tell him with the new computer you will waste 5 mins a day. 5mins * 5 * hourly wage = ?
Then figure out how long it will take for the computer to pay for itself in man hours.
Its simple

 

[techfuzz]

Originally posted by: Dufman
Tell him you waste 1/2 hour a day just waiting. Then do the calculation. 1/2hr * 5 * your hourly wage = ?
Then tell him with the new computer you will waste 5 mins a day. 5mins * 5 * hourly wage = ?
Then figure out how long it will take for the computer to pay for itself in man hours.
Its simple

I already have those calculations down, I was hoping there were more that I couldn't think of. I guess I'll go to him with the numbers that I have.

techfuzz

 

[Lonyo]

Don't go to him alone. Wait for a meeting, put it on the agenda, hope it's last, and make sure you delay the meeting so by the time you get to a new computer, everyone wants to go home, so they just OK it without even looking 🙂

 

[techfuzz]

Originally posted by: Lonyo
Don't go to him alone. Wait for a meeting, put it on the agenda, hope it's last, and make sure you delay the meeting so by the time you get to a new computer, everyone wants to go home, so they just OK it without even looking 🙂

I never have meetings with my boss. He's always out of town traveling. I'm lucky if I see him once a week. I think I had 2 meetings with him all last year.

techfuzz

 

[tkdkid]

What are you doing with your machine that's so cpu intensive? I used a 600MHz machine for years as a software developer and never had the slightest problem with it, it flew through everything I needed to do. I have a 1GHz machine now and it's a lot slower because this company forces us to use antivirus software that scans every single file in real time. Unless you're doing rendering or really intensive computations all day, you just don't need a faster machine. I would say that for most people, it's very difficult to justify more than P3-500 if you're only using the computer to do your actual work. Maybe RAM is the problem as others have suggested, just open all your programs and view your memory usage.

Now if the machine performs slowly because it isn't properly maintained, well that's a different issue.