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Help me convince IT I need something better...
1ddqd
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok guys, here's my dilemma. IT won't upgrade my work PC without proper reason. My boss won't give me the recommendation to them I need unless I can provide a write up outlining the benefits. SO. Let me lay out what I do on a daily basis, the programs, the workflow, etc.
Most importantly, system specs:
System Information
Time of this report: 5/28/2009, 13:43:23
Machine name: F3X5461
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.080814-1233)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Computer Corporation
System Model: OptiPlex GX270
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A07
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 696MB used, 1764MB available
So I do a lot of reporting, across all manners of departments. The programs I have open at any one time are:
- Firefox
- Lotus Notes (our email client...bleh)
- Access 2007
- Excel 2007
- Internet Explorer (client for program we use)
- Seagate Crystal
I work with tables that have over 100k records, so I end up dealing with a lot of waiting - for Crystals to refresh, for Access to import, for Excel to filter, etc.
My main goal is to get at LEAST a dual core system - these exist in the building, as I've seen them, so I know it's possible for these to be requested. Multi-core benefits are so obivous, and yet, I have a hard time explaining this. I have an article printed from THG that explains things pretty well, with graphics, so I might use some excerpts from this.
Most importantly, system specs:
System Information
Time of this report: 5/28/2009, 13:43:23
Machine name: F3X5461
Operating System: Windows XP Professional (5.1, Build 2600) Service Pack 2 (2600.xpsp_sp2_gdr.080814-1233)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: Dell Computer Corporation
System Model: OptiPlex GX270
BIOS: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A07
Processor: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.80GHz
Memory: 1022MB RAM
Page File: 696MB used, 1764MB available
So I do a lot of reporting, across all manners of departments. The programs I have open at any one time are:
- Firefox
- Lotus Notes (our email client...bleh)
- Access 2007
- Excel 2007
- Internet Explorer (client for program we use)
- Seagate Crystal
I work with tables that have over 100k records, so I end up dealing with a lot of waiting - for Crystals to refresh, for Access to import, for Excel to filter, etc.
My main goal is to get at LEAST a dual core system - these exist in the building, as I've seen them, so I know it's possible for these to be requested. Multi-core benefits are so obivous, and yet, I have a hard time explaining this. I have an article printed from THG that explains things pretty well, with graphics, so I might use some excerpts from this.
1ddqd on
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My real issue is that those apps are open all at once and simultaneously working - if it was just sitting there open, more RAM would help, sure. I'll use those monitors Monday when I get in and track the usage. Monday is Book day (where I compile a month's worth of data for them to analyze).
Also, don't knock it until you've been exposed to Outlook.
Finally, I do more with less. The only possible issue there is the RAM usage, but I don't think you're gonna see huge improvements.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Dude, no. I've used Outlook 2007 (the whole 2007 suite works together in such a flawless way...) and whatever iteration of Notes this is (a really really old ass looking version, most likely. This version is horrible - CPU/MEM leaks all over the place, poor custom integration of tracking systems... I could go on, but basically, if I could offload that POS to a core, everything else would run awesome on the second core.
That being said just using Firefox will suck up memory especially if you're running it along side those other programs. You should talk about performance, that PC has to lock up every little while for a minute or two.
Sure dual cores are nice, but its not like suddenly your work is changed or anything. Unless your workplace has a really thin IT budget, because the 270 is such an older PC, you maybe closer to an upgrade than you think. The thing is more than likely off warranty unless your work got something longer than the 3 year we usually get. I just know that if someone in our workplace were complaining about their 270, we'd just tell them to hang in there are plans to get rid of them in the near future. We know they're old and slow, but we also have 500+ users so it just takes time to get to everyone. We also remind our users that "The last computer is the best computer"
We also use Office 2K7 and Lotus Notes (Notes used to be our email client, but we have since switched to Outlook, however we still have many databases that haven't been ported off Notes)
Now correct me if I'm wrong, but you only get the benefit of dual cores if the app is written to take advantage of it. Now I know 2K7 is dual core aware. Dunno about Crystal though
We only give Firefox to our developers and IT. Despite our efforts to try and educate users that you don't need to have EVERY app open simultaneously they tend to open a dozen browser windows and every app they have, claming they need to be open all the time which is BS, but their management won't listen to us. So I shudder to think how slow their computers would be if we gave them Firefox.
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Generally speaking there is no such thing as "dual core aware" software. The application needs to be written using threads or subprocesses and the operating system takes care of the rest, and most applications make use of threads at some level. Whether or not the developers used threading on tasks that can be executed in parallel or not is a different issue altogether, but that's not unique to taking advantage of multiple cores.
In any event the P4 was a terrible processor compared to AMD's offerings at the time, and any Phenom or Core 2 processor is capable of running circles around the older Athlons and P4s. Even if they used a single core.
A basic phenom multi-core and basic motherboard would do - all under $100. I'd be happy with that. Cheap case & memory and swap in the hard drive. I have admin privleges, so I could reinstall/repair drivers if needed. Damn, that's tempting....
That's not appealing to IT guys who would prefer to support a limited set of different machines, ideally with a warranty from the manufacturer. Odds are you'd get a machine identical to the ones you've seen around the office even if it was several times more expensive.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
How does the total, or debatably, peak commit charge compare with the amount of RAM in your system? If you divide the two and the result is near 0.6 or 0.7, you might have a case for a memory upgrade.
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You have obviously never managed a large scale network. Just dealing with a 25 PC network was total hell with a mix of older & newer PCs all of which had different drivers & software requirements. Add into the mix that most with Intel with a few AMDs mixed in. When I did this we did not have internet access either, for security reasons. I had to keep a stack of burned CDs containing all the drivers, chipset, & mobo software.
Frankly I'm surprised the op even has as much memory as he does. Let alone having Firefox, which I'm sorry but isn't business friendly at all.
For truth. When I first started my job, my coworkers did everything by hand one by one and they didn't even bother to install motherboard drivers. Add to that, they wouldn't help users at all adjust to their new PC. These were state employees and this is when we were changing from 3.1 to 95. The Help Desk phone, answered by me, was ringing constantly from poor users who had no clue how to use their PC, and thus couldn't get any work done. Needless to say, when they had me start building PCs, I put a stop to it and started using things like sysprep and spent time with the users, helping them get used to the changes.
Also for truth. Some of our techie-wannabe users bug me to install Firefox on their machines all the time. I won't do it. Sure I use it, but they only want it because they hear that's what techies use and they want to be cool. They aren't aware of the pros and cons of Firefox. Quite frankly, I've been tempted to go back to IE because it seems to suck less these days.
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IE8 is actually a very good browser. IE8's tab management system is the best. I've gotten so used to the Accelerators that it's hard for me to use other browsers now. This is coming from a long time Opera fan. My only complain is havnig to install IE7 pro add-on to get a spell checker and a few other features that are not so important to me.
I'm actually starting to hate Firefox. Mainly because of it's users followed by it's memory issues and lastly having to install several plug-ins to get some higher end functionality. I've had many "discussions" on browser use ending with people just cursing me out of this. Apparently people don't like having it pointed out to them that IE is not nearly as bad as they make out and other mainstream browsers are actually better than default firefox.
Agreed, with over 800 people in our main office we have to cut down on models. gx280 is our loaner, for end users it's 620, 745, 755. Keeping everything the same is more important then anything. If you are end user, you keep that model PC till it's rotated into loaner equipment. If you want/need something faster, you or your department must buy it and then it is not supported. In many cases, ie it's not a dell or it's a laptop you take home, you don't even get the network client on it.
When one of our models is being killed off at dell, we buy a crap ton of it, rather then move forward to the newer model.
We also "let" people install FF, but it's not supported at all. And if you DL and install anything, we just image the PC rather then mess with it.
We had a guy with a 1.6ghz Pentium-M and 1G of RAM using Lotus Notes and Access heavily. He had, in particular, an extremely large database that took 2-3 minutes to run his most common queries.
Upgrading him to 2G of RAM improved Notes performance noticeably, but not running Access queries. However, moving him to a Core 2 Duo dropped his query time down to an average of 10 seconds.
Notes is a RAM hog and the aforementioned employer not long after the described incident upgraded everybody in the firm to 2G RAM. But RAM isn't going to help Access queries much, and I'd be surprised if it helped Crystal Reports. CPU is a bottleneck (though not the only one) in both cases.
What you need to do, 1ddqd, is start with Krikee's suggestion. Run an Access query with Notes open; run a report with Notes open, and watch your Performance Monitor. See if your CPU or RAM pegs. (My expectation is that you'll see close to 100% utilization on both.
Once you do that, calculate how many of these queries you run in a week and how much time you spend watching progress meters. Multiply that by your salary and add 15% for overhead. If clients or customers have to wait while you do this, even better (for you, anyway).
In short: You need to state your case in terms of dollars. How much money does it cost the company every day or every week to let you suffer on a slow computer?
IT people hear "my computer's too slow" all the goddamn time and half the time it's because somebody doesn't want to wait two seconds after launching Outlook or Notes. And what everybody's been saying here is correct: no IT department wants to handle upgraded models. It's just too much of a pain. Not only do we have to worry about it during image deployments and software compatibility assessments, but I guarantee that if IT buys you an upgraded model, your neighbor will want one, then your other neighbor will want one, then your boss will want one, then your intern will want one... and then, if you quit in six months, then you leave a one-off computer that we now have to figure out what the hell to do with it.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Limed so hard. You spend a lot of money on a fast home computer, then you come into work and use a much slower, work-centric computer and viola, instant disgruntled employee. You give a user a faster computer, and actually very little changes. Sure it's faster, but rarely does it revolutionize your work. But give someone a slower computer. Bitch Bitch Bitch.
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Let me explain further. I have 2 PCs. They are the same exact configuration. I use one for other tasks while the other is completely entrenched in refreshing Crystals or running queries in Access or copying 100k rows of 50 columns at once. My PC is nigh unusable when I'm working here. That's why I have 2 PCs. I use a simple KVM to switch between the two.
Open the Run window and start "perfmon.msc" like I originally said and rejoice in the data logging capabilities built into Windows that will help you on your quest for more gigahertz.
Also, Outlook 2007 is incredible.
Outlook 2003 is an abomination.
Toss it in storage or throw it away :P
Faster computers make things worse in my experience. People take more free range to install really stupid shit, and it takes longer to bog down the pile of crap, but then when the shit hit's the fan it's harder to fix. It's the same with "I need more hard drive space". You "should" be saving all your work related crap on the network, you do not need an HDD any larger then it takes to install windows and your basic productivity files. And when said user screws up, and the more they bitch for a better PC the faster they seem to destroy it, and you have to image them the more bitching there is about file loss because blamo, 250 gigs worth of junk is gone!
As to the OP. As an IT person, I can say you stand a greater chance of making your case for moar ram plz, or whatever the latest model your company supports if you uninstall everything that the computer didn't come to you with before they show up. Standard practice for us is if you installed anything else, upgrade denied period. Image the PC back to stock, run the same querries and if the time is faster (and it will be) denied instantly.
I love it when people constantly complain about corporate equipment. The IT organization where I works takes a no-bullshit approach to it: you get what you get and that's it. Don't like it? There's the door. In fact, there's a rumor out there that one particular woman really pushed her luck, and talked to the CIO, and when he cited policy, she went to the CFO and President.
She doesn't have a computer anymore; they gave her a TI-83 and told her to hand-write everything. Now, I don't know if this is true, but I have seen written/scanned reports floating around...
CPU speed is definitely a bottleneck querying Access, don't jump to conclusions.
The OP really, really, really needs to run performance monitor as Krikee said and get those logs.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Especially Firefox.
Let me tell you something else IT people see all the time. User installs Firefox, then three weeks later complains that their computer is slow. We come over, they don't have any apps running, and the computer runs fine. The user makes a joke that the computer never breaks when the fix-it guy's around. Then one day we stroll on by on the way to the coffee pot, and we see that person bouncing between four Firefox windows, each with a million fucking tabs open. No shit your computer's slow, because Firefox runs like a dog when you push it that hard.
Consequently, a lot of IT people I've met will react to a slow computer by saying, "oh, it's just Firefox," remove Firefox, tell you to use MSIE, and call it day.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Or for a real boost, uninstall all anti-virus and firewall crap (We use the whole enchilada from McAfee, which totally stopped the last virus outbreak. Except for the part where it didn't. I was "unprotected", yet strangely "unaffected"). Also the application deployment stuff. I'm betting it's about as smart as the stuff we have which recently decided acrobat 9 wasn't enough, I also needed version 7... So I uninstalled both and use foxit.
I ended up ditching all the excess and people are constantly amazed that I don't suffer the same chronic slowness and lock ups they deal with on the same hardware.
Because I'm sure the IT staff will take kindly to someone going vigilante on their installed software. Yeah...
At some companies, removal of security software would be considered tampering and you could get written up for that.
At my old company, our asset management software would have automatically reinstalled via group policy, which means you would have had a lovely two minute wait the next time you booted up, followed immediately by said software sending an alert straight to IT central helpdesk that your antivirus software is missing, who would have forwarded it to your local IT person, who would have walked over and commandered your computer, handed you a loaner, and gone and restored your computer back to the standard image.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Some companies will dismiss you outright.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
Not on any modern CPU with an Access 97 compatible DB it isn't. File size on the entire DB is limited to 1 GB.
Even pulling a cartesian product on two massive, massive tables that fill up half of that limit each, you're basically really limited by the huge load it places on RAM. Thrashing back and forth between the hard drive and RAM is what slows you down, especially when you're running multiple apps with large RAM and page file footprints, because it means Windows is forced to work around all of that.
Any time you hit the page file you're in for some serious pain, if you can get enough RAM that either Access can avoid the page file, or you can at least keep the OTHER applications out of the page file so that Access can quickly read/write to a very large, very empty space instead of stepping around data, you'll see an improvement. A faster hard drive with a larger buffer wouldn't hurt either.
CUZ THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE MIDDLE AND IT'S GIVING ME A RASH
All I know is that I've seen a lot of Access 2000 MDBs with queries that will push CPU utilization over 50%, and in the case I described above, the user in question upgraded from 1G to 2G of RAM and saw only a marginal performance improvement running queries, while an upgrade from a Pentium-M to a Core 2 Duo helped dramatically.
Did 1ddqd specify that the db version is 97? I must have missed that.
Either way, the only way to really settle it is to run performance monitor and get some hard numbers. Otherwise, it's all speculation.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
We've been trying to downgrade user security from power user to user for a while now and I catch a lot of flak from it, even from my own IT coworkers. To be fair, we still run a fair number of legacy apps that don't run well, or at all, unless you're power user or higher. But usually all you have to do is grant modify rights to some folder or edit an ini file and you can make those apps run just fine as a regular user.
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Aspect? We just switched over to that and it's been a "fun" experience.
Hah. Our Avaya system admins were not prepared for it...
...and we found out we were sold the older version of the software, not the latest. We're upgrading to 6-something.
Uninstalling security software would be instant beheading.
We had the bulging capacitor problem with our 280s. That was fun getting the motherboards replaced on them. Our 270s have been solid for the most part. Just old.
Our current standard desktop is the 760. Fine machine, so far anyway.
But fact of the matter is, if IT replaced a computer every time they got a complaint from the user that it's slow. You'd go bankrupt buying so many computers. Only in a few cases does a slow computer mean not being able to do one's work and getting the job done. If the OP is getting resistance in their efforts to get a new machine. That could very well mean that the higher ups are currently satisfied with the OP's work output. As myself and others have mentioned, the 270 is old and is nearing, or at, the end of it's usefulness so they OP may be due for a new computer in the near future anyway so there is no reason to get them one right away. IT could just be busy with other projects or other users getting new computers and the OP will get his in due time.
We just don't know all the facts here and sometimes you just have to gut it out with an older computer in the meantime.
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In our department, we've got this one division that has their own, separate, IT crew. We lock our computers down so users can't install software, but this division's IT has allowed their users to be full admins of their computers.
It's kinda nuts, they've installed so much junk software, installed their own service packs and patches, etc and their computers are always glitching up and running slow, multiple browser toolbars. It's just a complete clusterfuck IMO and the IT guy is coming to us all the time for advice on his latest error message. It's getting to a point where we can't give him much advice anymore because we just don't have the problems he has. I'm not claiming we run an ultra tight ship or anything, but at least we TRY to standardize things and lock the users out of some stuff, so sure we still have plenty of things we have to troubleshoot, but nothing like the stuff he has to fix.
less is more sometimes.
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