We’ll start this one by first defining what "ancient crappy PC" means.

Concerning the hardware, it is any PC over 5 years old. Any PC in the workplace over 5 years old is obviously owned by the company as no OEM would dare lease computer boxes for over that length of time, due to the fact the liability is too great.

Concerning the software, it is any OS that is not supported directly by the OEM any longer, with the keyword being directly. It also counts for any apps/programs used that are no longer supported.

When you put the above two together, you’ve got yourself an ancient crappy PC. This is the computer that literally takes 5 minutes or longer to boot due not only to the crappiness of the PC itself but also the network it connects to. Doing anything on this computer is an exercise in patience, and a whole lot of patience at that.

Many who have to deal with computers like this in the workplace often wonder, "Doesn’t this slow down productivity by having to wait for the stupid computer to do things all the time? Wouldn’t it be worth the cost to at least upgrade the PCs being they’re so cheap these days?"

These are legitimate valid concerns. But there are reasons why these oh-so craptastic computer boxes stay around:

1. Nobody is complaining.

When nobody complains as to how slow the computers are, upper management thinks everything is A-OK and that nothing needs to be done.

Why is it more people don’t complain? The answer is simple: They don’t want to lose their jobs by being labeled as a complainer.

2. The department (supposedly) has no budget for new computers.

You will notice certain departments (usually Finance, Sales and, of course, Marketing) always seem to get nice fast newer computers while you’re left to suffer with junk. This is because the department has no money for PCs, either for real or fabricated reasons.

If you’re wondering what a fabricated reason is for "we have no money for new computers," all you have to do is look around your department to see if there are any new/shiny things around that serve no legitimate business purpose for what your dept. does – such as your boss outfitting his or her office with all brand-new expensive furniture that absolutely wasn’t needed. Now you know where the money went.

3. It’s a "home grown" app made by somebody who doesn’t work there anymore.

You may have this specific program at work that makes you grit your teeth every time you have to use it. Is it so old that you’re surprised your computer doesn’t gag and wheeze every time you run it. This app crashes constantly and no matter how often you complain, nobody is able to fix it.

"Home grown" programs you use made by employees of the company who coded it in-house (meaning in-company) originally. But those employees are long gone. They either quit or retired long ago and there is nobody left to support these dinosaurs any longer. Not only that, but nobody wants to put the time, effort, or spend the money to convert these dinosaurs over to newer, more efficient and moreover supported systems.

On top of all that, this is also part of the reason the company refuses to upgrade anybody’s desktop OS because they have absolutely no clue whether that home grown app will work on XP, never mind Windows 7!

There is unfortunately nothing you can do about this except hope for a major system crash server-side that forces the company to fix it.

4. Prevention of in-office political bickering.

This is when departments refuse to upgrade anything just to keep people from yelling at each other.

"Well, John got a new computer. Why can’t I?"

You can see how this would turn into a bicker-fest in short order. If John gets a new PC, then Bob has to get one. When Debbie see that, she wants one. And so does Alice. And Tom. And so on.

There are times more often than not when upgrades don’t happen just to keep the peace. Personally I think this is a rather stupid thing to do, because there’s no excuse considering how utterly cheap new boxes are these days. Yes, it does cost time to set them up and "vanilla" them, but c’mon.. just get new boxes and be done with it already.

5. Slowness of computers allows those in charge to be lazy.

There are department heads who are very happy to keep things just as they are, slowness and all – even if they do have the budget for new PCs. This is so they can take two-hour lunches and simply not worry about it since there’s no way anybody would be finished with whatever it is they’re doing by the time he or she comes back.

See, the deal is that a boss really doesn’t want to hear how you could be more productive with a new computer. But if a new computer allowed the boss to do less work and be even more lazy, then you’ll probably have a new PC on your desk next week! Sad but true.

Do you have slow crappy computers in your school or office?

I’m betting you do. Tell us your tales of woe.

This may offer a bit of comfort to some with slower broadband connections. For US internet users, your tax dollars have now proven that the speed of broadband is 50% slower than what it’s claimed to be.

For those that would say, "Did we need to spend a bunch of tax money to figure something out everybody already knew?" In fact, yes. The problem needed to be identified in absolute fashion so plans can be made to actually do something about it. Saying something is slow and proving it as such are two different things. And now it’s proven.

A few other things have been proven as well.

First, what ISPs claim to be "fast" really doesn’t sound believable anymore due to the fact more and more US customers are saying, "I paid for ‘fast’ internet and I’m not getting it." When you download web pages, files and so on at the same speed you did with your "slow" broadband, you feel cheated. And you are being cheated. Fast should be legitimately fast, and it isn’t.

Second, internet today is no longer a luxury. For many it’s increasingly becoming a necessity. While it’s true you can go through daily life without it, it is becoming more difficult to do so and in the long run can cost you.

A simple example of this is paying bills online instead of mailing them out. The current cost of a US stamp is 44¢, and this doesn’t include the cost of envelopes. If you mail out 10 letters a month, that costs you $4.40 each time. Sending out bill payments online is completely free, and for payments that you cannot pay electronically, the bank will cover the cost of the postage and mail it for you.

This is just a single example as there are obviously many more.

The US is grossly behind the times when it comes to our broadband speed. The last time I wrote about this, the US ranked 15th in the world, with an extremely poor last-mile average download rate of 2.3mbps.

Thank the FCC for at least identifying our slow broadband as a legitimate problem. Plans to improve the network in the US will start soon in 2010. This is very late to the party concerning other countries are beating the pants off us right now in the broadband dept., but at least the problem has been identified and steps will be taken to resolve it, hopefully in short order.

Does your ISP make "fast" claims that they can’t deliver?

You pay good money for speed concerning your internet connectivity. Are you getting it? Post a comment and let people know.

An anonymous reader on Slashdot wrote that based on exhaustive benchmark testing, the upcoming v8.10 of Ubuntu Linux is noticeably slower in some areas compared to previous releases (namely v7.04).

"Linux" and "Slower" never fall within the same sentence, but they do now.

To calm the masses out there, no, Ubuntu 8.10 will not be a crawling nightmare of computer slowness. Not by a long shot. It’s still going to be quite speedy in its operation overall, not to worry.

But it has been proven to be slower to its predecessors and therein lies the concern.

~ ~ ~

Reading the article about the benchmark testing just goes to prove that the other shoe has finally dropped, so to speak.

Windows Vista is slower compared to XP. Mac OS X Leopard wasn’t exactly stellar in its performance over Tiger. And now the arguably most popular Linux distribution Ubuntu is showing early on that slowness with new releases can’t even escape the mighty Linux.

Linux zealots would scream loudly that "UBUNTU ISN’T THE ONLY DISTRO, YA KNOW.." Yes, I know this. There are 300+ distros in existence presently – but Ubuntu is the one people pay attention to the most. So go back to your Slackware – I already know that’s fast.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel to all this.

Newer releases of operating systems – no matter whom it comes from – will be lighter in the future. All OSes at this stage in the game are at their fattest and that’s simply not where computing is going.

It’s probably safe to say that Linux and Microsoft will be cutting the fat first, followed shortly afterwards by Apple.

On the Microsoft side it’s already been reported with Windows 7 that it will not be bundled with specific apps to trim it down to get to what matters (and be able to release it quicker).

Linux already has super-light distros. As a matter of fact you can go super-light with Fluxbuntu. (I’ve used fluxbox before and yeah, it’s tough to find a GUI faster than that.)

However, it would be nice if a very well known distro like Ubuntu had an official (as in from Canonical) Desktop Edition release like "Desktop Ubuntu Light" or something similar. I’m referring to an ISO people could download that has basically only the bare essentials without having to download an alternative distro or "build" it yourself, so to speak. And I’m referring to a true light Desktop Edition, not a Server Edition pretending to be Desktop.

People in the Linux know understand this wouldn’t be difficult to create or distribute at all because you’re just cutting the fat out of the distro.

Apple is also getting into the game of going lighter. Their own OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard page states "Taking a break from adding new features" and "Snow Leopard dramatically reduces the footprint of Mac OS X" which strongly indicates the OS doesn’t need anything new, rather it needs to cut the fat out and optimize rather than stuff it up with stuff nobody will use.

~ ~ ~

We’re going lighter, people. All the desktop OS offerings are heading that direction. It won’t happen this year but it may in late 2009 or early 2010.

We will go back to operating systems (no matter which you choose to use) that prioritize speed and efficiency first for a better computing experience.

Thankfully, the three major OS offerings will all be doing this. Even though they’re all too fattened up at the moment, sit tight because better stuff will be coming along.

Until then we’ll have to plod thru the slowness..

..even if you use Ubuntu.

It’s most likely true that your computer at home runs circles around the computer in the office or in the classroom. You sit at the computer assigned to you and reel in agony due to the slowness. Doing things as simple as loading google.com take up to 20 seconds whereas at home the page is loaded less than a second after you press the enter key.

The box itself you use is old. Really old. In some cases, as old as a Dell Optiplex running a 1.6GHz Pentium 4 processor with only 256MB RAM on board. In addition, the network crawls whenever you try (keyword there) to do some work.

Questions enter the mind such as: "Do people here purposely want me to do my work slower? Why does everyone have to use these crappy boxes? Why is the network so frickin’ SLOW? What’s the deal here?"

Here’s the 101 on how computers are deployed in the office, and why the network is so unbelievably slow:

The purchasing process

The way in which computers are purchased on an enterprise level is, said honestly, stupid.

Corporations and educational institutions by nature are cheap. As such they will only purchase computers for their employees that are "adequate". Not good and certainly not great. What this means is that any brand new computer that is placed in the office environment is already slow on delivery.

That brand new computer is part of a lot. Could be 50 PCs or 100 or more. Each PC in that lot is configured the exact same way, meaning all of them equally crappy.

Your company/institution made a deal (most likely with Dell) on purchase to have extended warranty service on all these boxes for five years.

On paper this looks lovely. The company just saved a ton of money by getting extended service and doesn’t have to purchase a new set of boxes for five years. Three cheers, right?

Wrong.

All those boxes are woefully obsolete after the 2nd year. If the company had purchased good machines they would have at least stayed somewhat current until the fourth year. But no, the bottom line is all that matters. So you’re stuck with an ancient piece of crap that the company absolutely will not upgrade or replace "until the refresh". And yes this means three years of using an agonizingly slow PC until that "refresh" happens.

Remember: That crappy box you use is crappy because the company who bought it configured it as such. If that same box had a better processor and double the RAM it would actually be tolerable to use.

The network

Corporate networks are slow for three primary reasons:

1. Security
2. Filtering
3. Lack of network resources

Concerning security:

Security on a corporate network is required but the way in which it’s deployed is usually bungled beyond belief. What normally happens is that a network security system was purchased by the company several years ago that absolutely cannot be removed from the system because it’s tethered to something "important". But then something else is introduced into the network that isn’t compatible with the old system. So now you have two logins that you have to remember. Do you have to connect to a mainframe also? Make that 3.

All these different systems have to somehow work with each other but rarely do and do nothing but slow down the network.

You’ve probably thought "Why doesn’t the company just get one system that works with everything?" Easier said than done. You’ve got the Exchange server that doesn’t "talk" to the AS/400. The AS/400 doesn’t "talk" to the SAP system. And then there’s that idiot who no longer works for the company that has a Microsoft Access database that no one’s been able to figure out how to migrate somewhere else, HAS to exist and resides on a network share.

Concerning filtering:

Your company/institution hates internet. They hate everything about it and deem it an evil thing that should be banned like asbestos. The only reason they use it at all is because it is in fact one of the most cost effective ways to conduct business. Were it not for that fact, internet wouldn’t even exist in the office.

What your office does is put a "nanny" filter on the network like this one. Every time you want to go to anywhere on the internet from work, the filter kicks in and slows everything down. Combine that with the fact your Internet Explorer is "secured" so much that you’re lucky you can even type in a web address and you’ve got a bottleneck both locally and on the network each time you use it.

Concerning lack of network resources:

The network room at your company/institution is set up the same way PC boxes are deployed – only to be "adequate" at best. The routers are old and ancient. The wiring looks like spaghetti-tangled multi-colored mess. When something goes down it takes at least a half-hour to fix it.

Where networks fail the most is in the lack of space. Do you have an Exchange account that’s only limited to 80MB? I wouldn’t be surprised if you did. You might think "Since hard drives are so cheap.. why is it such a bother to upgrade?" Good question. The answer is that it’s not in the budget. Yes, it’s true – the IT Manager is fully aware he could pop in a few server-grade hard drives for less than $500 that would relieve just about all of the space issues, but the CIO says "No can do – not in the budget."

What will happen in the future? Will these dopey issues ever be resolved?

Yes. The future resides in cloud-based computing. Some larger corporations have already taken to this but small-to-medium sized ones have a few years before they realize that the cloud is the way to go.

The cloud will allow for a near-infinite scalable network architecture. What does this mean to you, the guy or girl who works in the office? It means that the brunt of the speed issues will be handled by the cloud itself rather than from your crappy box or a "boxed" network.

Until then, wait for your "refresh" and hope your company or school puts some actual cash into decent PCs for a change.

One would think since the USA created internet (yes we did) we’d be top dog as far as adoption of broadband is concerned.

We’re not. In fact, we’re in 15th place. On average, the fastest download last-mile speed is 2.3mbps.

Just to give you an indication of how slow our connectivity speed is, Japan (who always kicks everyone’s ass in tech) has an average download speed of 63mbps. To us that’s nothing but a pipe dream. We think 20mbps is a godsend. Bear in mind the 63 is an average download rate in Japan – not the fastest speed.

Can you imagine the stuff you could download at an average 63mbps rate?

A very sobering thought.

In the US, the state with the best median download speed in Rhode Island at 6.8mbps. The worst is Alaska at 0.8mbps.

At the present time there is a an Act on the books the government is looking to pass called the Broadband Data Improvement Act so we can at least get enough capacity to have nationwide 10mbps download and 1mbps upload by 2010.

Unfortunately that’s the best we can look forward to – but at least it’s an improvement should the Act be put into effect (which it should).

[Source: ChannelWeb]