News - Users lose a full working week every year due to slow computers

[HEXUS]

Also PC and laptop slowness puts a third of users in a bad mood for the day.

Read more.

[aidanjt]

Users need to stop installing every bit of useless crap imaginable on their computers, then.

[wasabi]

So do admins.

'What security applications do your PCs have?'

All of them.

[realstock]

Badly administered domains is a major factor as well. After installing a SSD in a work laptop and then convincing myself that i will no longer be a slave to the slow spinning HD, I then had the PC added to the domain and low and behold back to HDD speeds, due to logon process, mapping of drives, gpo's for this that and the other.

[KrisWragg]

Most of my time is spent waiting for a monster C++ project to compile, if it needs a full rebuild I'm looking at 30 minutes on an 8 core machine.

[kalniel]

And they can't do something else while waiting for their file to upload/download?

[th3_f15t]

I agree with the above about doing something else while waiting. I work on systems that were first installed here in the mid 90's, run a Unix system and you know what... They're actually quite quick because they do just what we want, nothing else.

We we ever learn from the past... No.

[3dcandy]

Multitasking by the users could always be improved! But then I know a vast amount who turn on pc - go and make coffee and chat for 10 mins...come back and enter password....go and chat...repeat till end of working day

[minicale]

A lot of the time having a slow pc is from having useless programs installed and every antivirus program people can find.

[wasabi]

My PC at work. Switch on - wait 15 mins for encryption, group policies, logon scripts, AV to finish. Every other day it crashes out at this point to repeat.

Once logged in ALL networking is through a VPN so slow as hell. Anything on the network crawls. Overaggressive AV kicks in every minute or so causing whole system to lock up. Never mind multitasking, single tasking doesn't work. Multiple layers of profile mismanagement software, policy maintenance crap and all sorts add to the pain.

I'm in the IT dept and it is embarrassing but I have no say on how the machines are built. And of course the Cisco Nazis who enforce this stuff all can bypass it too. They should eat their own dogfood.

[miniyazz]

Bootup is a significant cause of wasted time for me. I currently work in an environment where there are a few shared PCs in different locations but each user has their own logon details. The computers lock automatically after about 5-10mins of idle, so when you try to use them they are often locked because whoever was using it hasn't logged off but gone off somewhere else. In Microsoft's infinite wisdom, there is no log out option from the lock screen (probably because of logistical difficulties with unsaved work etc) so the computers are being hard-reset all the time, and it takes about 5 mins for them to reboot due to retrieving network data.
Also fun is where the computers are set to automatically turn off in the evenings with no way to cancel it, so even if you're in the middle of something you have to take a time-out while the stupid thing turns off and back on again!

[kalniel]

Bootup is a significant cause of wasted time for me. I currently work in an environment where there are a few shared PCs in different locations but each user has their own logon details. The computers lock automatically after about 5-10mins of idle, so when you try to use them they are often locked because whoever was using it hasn't logged off but gone off somewhere else. In Microsoft's infinite wisdom, there is no log out option from the lock screen (probably because of logistical difficulties with unsaved work etc) so the computers are being hard-reset all the time, and it takes about 5 mins for them to reboot due to retrieving network data.

Why not just switch user and keep their session logged in in the background?

[Dooms]

I'm always shocked about our builds at work... Take a brand new HP Elitebook (i7, 4GB ram) and then put our Windows 7 build on it, bitlocker, endpoint and add it to then domain = instant slow machine!

[crossy]

My PC at work. Switch on - wait 15 mins for encryption, group policies, logon scripts, AV to finish. Every other day it crashes out at this point to repeat.
Once logged in ALL networking is through a VPN so slow as hell. ... Multiple layers of profile mismanagement software, policy maintenance crap and all sorts add to the pain.
I'm in the IT dept and it is embarrassing but I have no say on how the machines are built. And of course the ----s who enforce this stuff all can bypass it too. They should eat their own dogfood.

Got whole disk encryption on our kit and it's pretty near invisible other than the need to provide a second password/phrase to unlock the disk first thing. No it's the usual Windows bugbear of an interminable wait between entering login details and actually getting a usable desktop. Heck, I hit Return on the password and press the power on button of the Ubuntu laptop next to it and the old Linux box has booted to a graphical login before the Windows box has done much more than display two task bar icons, a background and two or three desktop icons. Pathetic!
Oh, and my favourite is the Jupiter Networks software we have to use along with our (heavily encrypted) VPN - VPN gets you to the corporate network, JN stuff to the actual servers. Unfortunately 90% of the time the selfsame JN software will case a very long wait on shutdown (10-15 minutes) followed by a BSOD. Support's response? "It works for us. Service case closed".

I'm always shocked about our builds at work... Take a brand new HP Elitebook (i7, 4GB ram) and then put our Windows 7 build on it, bitlocker, endpoint and add it to then domain = instant slow machine!

Elitebook - ooh nice. i5 based Probook for me.

[Brewster0101]

Use SAP on a massive network of over 25,000 + people logged on at the same time - Very slow and horrible at times.

I totally agree with this headline

[TheAnimus]

I was working via about a dozen firms, for a bank a while back.

I was costing them about £2k per day (sadly not all to me!).

The machine they gave me cost internally £5k. It was obsolete about 5 years ago. It didn't have the RAM required to do the modelling I was there to do, it was a mission in paging.

I requested one of the server machines to use instead, but was rejected as it would have cost £5k. They would have saved it by the second day.

I think one day is an underestimation for many firms I've worked in.