Thursday, July 13, 2006

Digital cholesterol

That's my new term for the performance-clogging stuff that big-enterprise IT departments automatically install to user desktops via the enterprise network. Every week, a bit more gets piped in without my foreknowledge or consent, gradually crippling my machine.

I do my serious work on my Ubuntu laptop, which is barred from my workplace's network; I download software from home and transfer my finished products to work by USB drive. At first that seemed like an unfortunate price I had to pay; now it's looking more like a blessing. My Ubuntu laptop sizzles along as fast as the day I first booted it, while my plugged-in Windows machine creaks and groans and is slowly becoming unusable.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Catherine:
Users ask for this in an indirect way. This is the price of sophistication and security. Everyone wants to do good work in less time so now, machines are slow but users have more tools at hand and opportunity to easily do a quality job. If we run applications of many years ago in the current machines, these will fly, people will work fastly but, to get the quality of today, they will spend more time. It is the same thing.

Anonymous said...

Amen to this! I also use Ubuntu at work and find it sizzles. I made the switch after my work laptop started going terminal AGAIN on windows. Now I run Windows in a virtual machine on the laptop so I can throw it away when it gets cranky. In addition I keep the laptop pretty lean with just the tools I need and not all the overhead of pre-fab installs, images and push-downs.

Anonymous said...

I just installed Dapper on my old 2001-era Dell laptop and it absolutely flies.

I also got wireless networking going. The key here is to not waste your time getting your card to work, but to track down one with a good reputation for Linux compatibility.