I’m in a weird unicorn org where we were issued MacBooks, but some of the people on my team have been there >20 years. The broader org issues Thinkpads, my dept picked MacBooks because apparently that’s what developers use and we didn’t want to deal with corporate’s locked-down images.
I’ve been there about 4 years now, which is almost as long as my dept has existed (we started w/ a contractor group for 1-2 years before I got hired on).
I hate macOS, but I really like the dept. We’ll see what happens.
We get macbooks at my work because we develop for linux servers but IT don’t want to have to deal with linux clients on their network.
The corporate surveillance infrastructure is there for MacOS and it’s nix enough for the development we need to do.
We had them complaining a few years ago that all these macbooks were too expensive (which they are) and we said to them “We’re happy to take good quality Linux laptops…”
IT were like “Nah”
My first laptop with this company was a £3000+ MBP with an I9 which got too hot to touch. TBH since they replaced it with an M3 one i’ve actually enjoyed using it. i can spend all day in bed on a single charge
Are you British me? That’s pretty much exactly how things went down for us as well. As we’ve been upgrading from the crappy Intel Macs, the complaints have gone down as well.
Yeah i’m london based (although almost exclusively work from home). the company is a huge multinational though, offices all over the world
Siemens PG: forget about making a resume ever again.
Finally! Something I can relate to, I had one of these in my last workplace. Was older than my manager and it was only used to fix those 20 year old machines we had lying around.
To anyone wondering, this is a industrial PC which is meant to withstand the hardest of environments. The handle is a boon when you have to run around the factory and your hands are full.
Finally! Something I can relate to, I had one of these in my last workplace. Was older than my manager and it was only used to fix those 20 year old machines we had lying around.
To anyone wondering, this is a industrial PC which is meant to withstand the hardest of environments. The handle is a boon when you have to run around the factory and your hands are full.
Had to look it up, the version with a handle killed me
It has an RS232 port, that’s hilarious.
I use that port more than my usb ports at work, no kidding. You don’t know how many things still use that port to communicate even today.
Oh, I’m aware, I work on fire alarm systems.
There was a point where I really wanted a decent laptop with one to run STAR C3. Never bought the laptop nor the kit but never knew if I’ll need it again. I don’t own a Benz anymore but it could literally change on a whim because I do still love them lol
You can get USB to RS232 cables for very little, so any laptop should work.
People have reported those not working very well with STAR / DAS I believe. You can usually buy the kit with a laptop included, I just figured I’d wanna try if it runs on something made less than 23 years ago.
And how cool would you look carrying your laptop like an attache case, with dongles and wires hanging off it? No thank you. If I need to interface with cold war era serial hardware, this is the way I’m going to do it.
You do realise there is equipment being manufactured today that uses RS232?
We have brand new machines that use RS232 and RS485. We just did some configurating on one of them last week.
It’s actually pretty useful when you have to move around with it in your workplace. Tbh, I am so used to the handle that I’d miss it if my next computer didn’t have it.
Now i wanna make this my daily driver
I had an old cf-27 toughbook with a handle. Handles on laptops are wicked handy!
In case you need to play spider solitaire in the middle of a hurricane, or knock the head off a T-800.
Unironically love that. There’s a CD drive but what is that next to it? Is it a Zip drive?
The SSD slot. You can easily swap the ssd without having to open the computer. It takes a couple of minutes.
Oh, that’s actually kind of cool. Is that for the primary drive or for swapping additional ones in and out?
For the primary. It is really useful when your ssd dies (happens more often than you’d think) and you need to keep working because you are operating in a situation where you can’t afford to lose the time that would be required to swap disks opening the laptop. We have at least one spare ssd in my office always ready to be swapped in case of emergency.
There are also a lot of cool features on them:
They come with 4 usb ports, 2 ethernet ports + wifi, 1 dvi port, 1 dp, 1 serial port, 1 mpi/profibus port, pcie expansion, dvd unit and bluetooth (which is a given). They also, as per manufacturer warranty, can stand a fall from 1-1.5m without suffering damage.
If it’s the primary, do you keep those drives with OS pre-installed on them, or is there like… some sort of bios-like built in to hold the ummm… OS image…? And what about the programs and files and stuff? All vpn/network accessed?
Hopefully you can sort out what that is asking… I know just enough about computers to fix Linux problems… if other people have posted about them… usually… with significant effort.
In our case, we keep them with preinstalled OS (and all the apps we need running) so we can swap and go in a moment.
Finally! Something I can relate to, I had one of these in my last workplace. Was older than my manager and it was only used to fix those 20 year old machines we had lying around.
To anyone wondering, this is a industrial PC which is meant to withstand the hardest of environments. The handle is a boon when you have to run around the factory and your hands are full.
Finally! Something I can relate to, I had one of these in my last workplace. Was older than my manager and it was only used to fix those 20 year old machines we had lying around.
To anyone wondering, this is a industrial PC which is meant to withstand the hardest of environments. The handle is a boon when you have to run around the factory and your hands are full.
Finally! Something I can relate to, I had one of these in my last workplace. Was older than my manager and it was only used to fix those 20 year old machines we had lying around.
To anyone wondering, this is a industrial PC which is meant to withstand the hardest of environments. The handle is a boon when you have to run around the factory and your hands are full.
Finally! Something I can relate to, I had one of these in my last workplace. Was older than my manager and it was only used to fix those 20 year old machines we had lying around.
To anyone wondering, this is a industrial PC which is meant to withstand the hardest of environments. The handle is a boon when you have to run around the factory and your hands are full.
Finally! Something I can relate to, I had one of these in my last workplace. Was older than my manager and it was only used to fix those 20 year old machines we had lying around.
To anyone wondering, this is a industrial PC which is meant to withstand the hardest of environments. The handle is a boon when you have to run around the factory and your hands are full.
Union.
HP but it switches with Dell every 5 years.
My peers have been there 20+ years. No one’s dumb enough to get fired. I only got this job because someone retired.
The people are awesome. I hope to God I can work here another decade.
Special rule:
Thinkpad but with 1600x900 resolution on the 24" screen and full hd on a 22" screen in the office.
That buys you only around 2 years from personal experience.
That job ain’t right.
I would instinctively start to strangle anyone who gives me a 900p screen that isn’t a CRT.
900p on an any LCD monitor at any point in history was always very wrong, something that should not be. Even 1080p is torture for office-ish work.
It was crappy monitors too so everyone was dealing with it differently like cardboard cutouts against incoming light or special glasses etc.
I worked in the office only 1 day per week but even that was too much. Christ.
I was able to choose my own Lenovo. Twice. 14+ years at the same place.
Oh, hey, 15+ and on my second Lenovo here too 👋
Albeit I had a desktop at first. Don’t remember which brand.
Seems like you chose wisely! I kind of want you to choose a dell for science next time, but it would definitely be against your best interests according to the laws of physics that mysteriously underly this phenomenon.
The laws of thermal- and accoustic physics are surely warped within Dell hardware. Otherwise, I have no explanation why it acts so much worse than other laptops with similar specs.
Used to have a ThinkPad decades back. Still remember Howard comfortable the typing was.
Howard Comfortable:
Always comfortable that fucking Howard
It’s a whole new level of comfortable.
Fucking Howard is someone different but I can’t post a picture of him here.
Is he Hide the Pain Harold’s more fortunate brother?
Where’s the thinkpad?
On the other side of his chair, lying open on its side while Gentoo compiles.
Decapitated. Whole big thing . We had a funeral for a bird.
We got lenovo’s in my last job. I did support software tools for internal usage. Pay was low but work was not overbearing and I could have spent my whole life there. Current job, I got a MinisForum mini PC, what does that mean?
You will never receive any acknowledgement or raises.
You guys are getting tech jobs?
Not all laptop users work in tech.
Do all tech workers work in tech?
Some of them are in theatre.
What about a Microsoft Surface?
From a sample size of one other commenter, you will be employed for 1 year until they can’t find enough for you to do and have to let you go.
HP laptop: please remember to log out of your laptop in case someone else needs to use it.
Always “a” dildo, or “the” dildo, never “your” dildo…
Can confirm. Currently on year eight, always with Lenovo.
Year 12. Started issuing Microsoft Surfaces at some point. I got an exception made for me.
I’ve had so many Dell Laptops…
So what if all the desks are set up with thin or zero clients.
Layoffs will be a regular occurrence. Think you’re safe because you have a lot of seniority? My wife was laid off by Chase just a couple weeks before her 20 year anniversary. Funnily enough, they had just switched everyone to thin clients a year or two before.
It was a sign they were trying to cut long term costs over user convenience long term when they switched to thing clients. Budget cuts are never a good sign in business that are “supposed” to be growing
Lol I got a layoff notice last Thursday at another financial institute. Our whole environment is Lenovo. I noticed at the end of last year that 2025s upcoming EOL refresh was going to be all thin laptop conversions.
But don’t worry guys, I can apply for 10 dollars less an hour to the new contractor they are bring on to delay the inevitable.
Your boss is constantly micromanaging you, but you can’t get anything done because thin clients suck.
HP laptop: your company has no idea what it’s doing for it’s entire technology department
My last 3 jobs all used HP… No major issues.
Boot up from external device and watch it wipe non-windows boot entries (yes, even with secure boot off) and then not automatically find any other EFI files so you have to navigate to them manually. Oh, and the only way to add them back is efibootmgr tool, or if you want GUI, Bootice in Hiren’s boot (yes that’s still a thing).
At least that was experience with HP 255 G7.As for another one, a mini PC, the UEFI setup seems to have limited HID driver support. Basic cheap keyboard seems to be a must. DO NOT DISABLE SECURE BOOT IF JUST THE MOUSE WORKS!!! Upon reboot, it will ask you to confirm disabling secure boot by TYPING in something. Every time. Even if you reset UEFI with the motherboard pins.
At least that was experience with HP ProDesk 400 G3 mini.But hey, I also had issues with Dell, I think Optiplex 7020. It was unable to boot via internal DVD drive. I tried 2 of them, both fared the same, no problem reading and burning discs in OS. I tried a USB DVD drive, that magically worked. What?
Yeah but a random (non IT especially) probably wouldn’t need to boot from an external device, would they? As for the UEFI changes, a random employee shouldn’t be in the BIOS either I would think.
I’m really curious on those, I don’t do that sort of thing these days so sort of wondering how impactful it could be. Outside of the random person who thinks they should change them but that’s got to be pretty minimal and IT should lock it down anyways.
Worst thing that happened with my HP work laptop is somebody knocked my water over onto it and it died. That was 2 hours after I got it and spend 2 hours installing everything onto it.
Accurate
I work on a GPD Win Max 2, so what does that mean? 😃
…probably gonna get fired when my employer catches me playing Cyberpunk.
I had a Thinkpad L390 Yoga before. Constant overheating, the logo sticker just came off one day and stuck to my hand and the battery barely lasted through a meeting. Absolute garbage, never again. The Thinkpad brand is dead to me.
Now I have eight cores, 64GB RAM, a GPU with raytracing support and a 2K IPS display…all in 10 inches with 8-10 hours of battery life. GPD is insane and those specs would cost me an arm and a leg if I stuck with IBM.
