IT BS thread

Yeah, I've heard that a time or two. It's a backup, it can be used for other things, donate it to schools, donate it to the homeless, etc, etc. All I hear is spend endless staff time, that I already don't have enough of fixing, patching, updating, trouble shooting failures on hardware that is being replaced FOR A REASON!

 

Yeah, everyone is local for us so no big deal for one of my techs to run out and provide a loaner laptop to someone while theirs is undergoing a warranty repair.

 

I'm not involved in the logistics of our purchasing agreements. I just know what we do. With the large deals we make with the vendors, not sure where interest would even be a factor other than it's a good write off. I mean we're talking hundred of devices per month. Once we get through everybody, the cycle may start all over again as the devices we started with are getting dated and out of warranty. We're not into fixing hardware no longer under warranty.
it boils down to the size of the company and how you address the hardware cycles. Lease may be the right fit for you, whereas it's not the right fit for others.

 

Yeah, we're talking about 500 devices per year, so much less.

 

Are we talking anything good? I accept donations

(I could use some Thinkpad chargers)

 

Yeah, definitely different. We do that amount if not more in a months time frame.

 

https://youtu.be/BS6minI8_PY

 

256 colors on the screen at the same time!

Back then I was an OS/2 industry expert, got paid to speak at industry conferences touting the value of OS/2. Had a fully decked out PS2 model 70 with 120MB hard drive, 16MB RAM, 20MHz 386 with a 387 math coprocessor, connected by some nice token ring. All that for the low, low price of $10,000 ($20,000 today). Vastly superior to Windows, but even then I had my doubts. When Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 beta came out I told the bosses Microsoft was going to take over the world, but they said "we're an IBM shop." So I bailed at the first chance to work on AIX systems. Never stay with a sinking technology.

 

We had a guy who was “Novell ‘till I die.” Swore up and down that we were wrong for dropping those servers. When we shut our last Novell server off, we jokingly put him on suicide watch.

He was an MCSE 6 months later.

 

We used IBM LAN Manager, and I wanted to move the company to Novell in the worst way. Early in my career I learned a couple of hard lessons about employability and niche software. After OS/2 I swore I'd never get stuck supporting backwater software again.

 

I loved OS/2 Warp, but that marketing campaign was a complete failure. Back then the general public didn't know what an "Operating System" was, and the commercials just showed people's reactions to something on the screen, never the screen. Unless you already knew what it was, you got nothing from the commercials. But it was vastly superior to Windows, and I used it for a few years until it was obvious it wasn't going to take off.

 

https://twitter.com/gossithedog/status/1466698337701314568?s=21

Reason 2574 why my next laptop might be a Mac. Windows keeps getting shittier.

 

OS/2 still lives on as ArcaOS.

 

To say IBM was stupid and arrogant is such an epic understatement. and arrogant. The catch phrase of "runs windows better than windows" was true, but missed the point. Like you say even to this day users don't know what an operating system is, they just want to run their apps. Microsoft was giving their SDK away for free while IBM was charging thousands of dollars per seat. Windows software vendors would blame OS/2 for any problem even when it was clearly a bug in their code. With very few native apps the question became why OS/2? It was superior just like Betamax, but VHS won. The only way it could have succeeded was . . . no it was hopeless. Back in the day Bill Gates was ruthless.

lol - learned something new, and they're still working on it. But, talk about backwater software.

 

https://twitter.com/sanjazakovska/status/1352557733787152389?s=21

 

os/2 still powers our old phone system

 

I did QA on a government contract. My boss said just break the software anyway you can, and this video reminded me of doing just that. The Devs were not happy with me, "NO USER would ever do (fill in stupid thing that broke the code)!" Great fun.

 

Jesus Christ.

So the old contract for our contractors expired today, which should not have been a big deal. If the CORs had done their job back in September and updated the expiration dates. Back in September.

(cue orgy of dipshittery)

300+ domain accounts for system admins, security analysts, project managers, and support staff just went POOF this morning...and the CORs don't know why.

Bullshit.

 

Truly a day of infamy.