Phlogiston Blue - Stress and the Single Computer

Stress and the Single Computer

I can remember a time when getting a new computer was like Christmas and birthday all rolled into one. All the extra power and new, cool applications that you could now run made the whole thing very exciting. You copied the applications on your old machine across to the new one and you were off.

Nowadays, getting a new computer has become nearly as stressful as moving house. Microsoft operating systems have become steadily less stable and less usable since Windows 95, and most of the newer applications have become more bloated and run slower, in spite of the increase in raw computing power.

The crucial change was actually the introduction of Windows. The key problem is that you now have to ‘install’ applications, instead of just being able to copy them over. Of course, a substantial number of programs that you have on your old machine will be small utilities that you no longer have the source for.

Then there is the way the machines themselves (assuming that they come with the operating system you wanted) are not set up the way you want, and the set up utilities are completely different from the ones on the old machine.

Finally, installation of products is becoming so complex that you have to be an expert just to get a reasonably complex program installed. A lot of companies now have people whose only job is to get new packages running on their employees’ machines! What a waste of money.

The net result of all this is a massive drop in productivity for anyone changing to a new machine.

Companies often compound this drop in productivity by imposing a corporate ‘one size fits all’ mentality. ‘There will be’, so the memo goes, ‘a single computer model used by everyone in the corporation. This will allow the MIS department to significantly enhance its support profile.’

The net result is that a lot of people get massively over specified computers. Someone who just needs to send internal email and look at the company’s intranet web site gets a machine fully capable of clogging up the company’s Internet link with massive porn downloads and the opportunity to fill their hard drive full of all the latest viruses.

At the other end of the spectrum, the people who really need computing power end up with a woefully under-specified machine which seriously damages their productivity. They spend most of their paid time waiting for the computer to finish processing their spreadsheet or whatever.

In the middle is the single person who dreamed up the idea, who has a machine that exactly meets his (yes, it is usually a male) needs.

Alan Lenton

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