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A comment on ‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CIO Responds. Parent comment

Re:‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CI... by MrFoof on Friday January 28, 2022 @02:51PM (#30119481)
I'm currently on an engagement at a retail bank for a project that went entirely off the rails (they brought me in to right it). All of the following are currently running simultaneously:

  * McAfee  
  * Tanium, which is constantly firing off massive Python scripts
  * Aternity  
  * Windows Defender (which is well-behaved as expected)
... wait for it ... on an SSD that has no DRAM. Yes, a cacheless SSD. Performance isn't much better than a cheap USB flash drive, which is expected when an identical SSD costs $18 on NewEgg.

The system is effectively I/O bound all the time. The quad-core (8th gen Intel core) idles at 70% utilization, constantly spiking to 100%. The commit charge for getting into the Explorer shell is 13.8GB of the 8GB of physical memory. The laptop itself appears to have a street value of about $240 on eBay. Quality unit with a 1366x768 TN display.

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The 30 day discovery period is about to end. I am not supplying an SoW for any further work. I told them the reason nothing gets done by their teams is because the hardware they give everyone is trash, and I can't solve their architectural issues when IT doesn't supply tools to get work done. I wish them the best of luck.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CI... by NikolaeVarius on Friday January 28, 2022 @04:04PM (#30120345)
Seems about right. I've done engagements will multiple financial clients and they seem to make it their job to make every engineer as unproductive as possible.
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Re:‘Fix My Computer’ Cry Echos on Social Media; Air Force CI... by geenew on Friday January 28, 2022 @10:06PM (#30123398)
Makes me think of the oft-repeated joke on MobileTechReview about bottom-of-the-line thinkpads with low-quality screens: "The laptop the IT department gets you when they hate you"
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