[Liberator]

This is a short rant but anyway.

I was in one of my University's myriad computer labs located on the campus.  I was poking around the Device Manager just to see what kind of hardware we had been gifted with for using, as I am wont to do.  I was flabergasted to discover that not only had they bought(recently too) a lab full of computers equipped with:

Dual P4 3 Ghz processors and the requisite Mobo
512 DDR 333
DVD Burners
Geforce 4 MX 440 /64mb
ect.

You would think that such machines as these would be equipped with equally impressive flat panels or at least new monitors.  But no!  They had recycled the monitors they had had previously, some from further back than that.  Some were even incapable of displaying a 32 bit image or a 1024x768 image at better than 60hz or ramping up past 60 hz at all.  All this while some of the labs are still running Windows 98 using Novell software to manage the network connections.  It's an obscene misallocation of funds that a 15 year old wouldn't have made.

They could have equipped the lab with new monitors if they had sacrificed one of the P4s.

I realize I'm spoiled because the department director at my previous school was very good at keeping his labs at roughly the same level and the IT department was able to stay on top of problems by Ghosting the Hard Drives, but equiping a CS lab with such powerful machines while ingnoring the conditions of the displays is intolerable.

I'm not even going to mention the rights the Library has on their browsers.  One window indeed, it's crippled and non-functional.

I don't know whether to write the President or not.

I feel better now.

[Setekh]

I'm... glad you feel better.

As for university computer networks, I feel belittled whenever I get to uni. There are dozens of computer labs, and every single one has something like 50 high-end PCs in each. Pretty scary stuff.

[an0n]

You need a screw-driver and a balaclava.

You could gut some of those machines: Take one of the processors (plus fan etc); Replace the GFX card with a 16mb TNT; Strip 256mb RAM.

No-one would even notice.

[kasperl]

an0n: Unless the SysOp updgraded them BOFH style the moment he could.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Simple, monitors, no matter how crappy are effectively a long term, non-disposable item. They just keep on working for ages after your 386 becomes a redundant piece of hardware.

Also schools fall prey of advisors who often don't know what the school itself needs.

Schools (over here anyway) know to max out their budget on fewer items, otherwise some muppet in charge of the cash flow thinks 'Oh such and such a department got an awful lot of gear out of their budget last year, they must not need so much money. That's when you get budget cuts.

Ironically, clever spending does not pay off.
[/color]

[Stealth]

schools over here spend all the money on paying the high-end administrators.  the superintendent and his staff get $300k /year +.  our computer labs still suck, but every classroom has 3 or 4 computers in it, and those computers are always top of the line.

[an0n]

See, this is why I'm getting MS certified.

Morons pay you ****loads of cash to **** with people's accounts all day.

[vyper]

Our uni machines are upgraded every two years or so from what I gather. We're running Dell Optiplexes at the moment of varying speeds and also just had a new cluster server installed (first configuration of it's type outside the US). However let us examine the stupidity principle here:

We buy said servers n' such and then put them in a server room next to an older one that still runs the Uni extranet that's nice and cool... but then the air con kicks out... and the cluster server engages it's own "emergency exhaust port". This said emergency port then blasts all the heat now building up in the cluster onto our extranet server....

Oh for a little intelligence in CIT.

[Knight Templar]

What Stealth said.

[Flipside]

We have the opposite problem at work, lovely 17" Flatscreen non-glare monitors, running from clanky 700-1.4 Processors Personally, I'd rather have my old monitor and a computer than booted in under 15 minutes

[Fineus]

Originally posted by an0n
See, this is why I'm getting MS certified.

Morons pay you ****loads of cash to **** with people's accounts all day.

How do you go about that anyway, seems everyone reckons that an MS certified person is the dogs bollocks, and well worth paying a lot of money.

Never one to pass up a piece of the action - I might well follow suit and rape the ignorant corporations of their cash.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by Stealth
schools over here spend all the money on paying the high-end administrators.  the superintendent and his staff get $300k /year +.  our computer labs still suck, but every classroom has 3 or 4 computers in it, and those computers are always top of the line.

Dude, that's amazing. Are these private or public schools? No staffer of a public school in Australia gets paid very much at all.

[Ghostavo]

Lib, want to trade?

[rant]In my school they don't know what a computer should have, so they just pick a top of the line CPU and then it's only crappy components. Each computer has and only has 64 MB RAM!! If you want to open any Office program you need to wait at least 5 minutes!! After you open them, you have a 33.(3)% chance of making it crash! And you complain about having just those components? Gah... [/rant]

Sorry about that...