Just once in my life, I would like to work for a company/contract that could afford the things its people need to do their jobs. Since graduating from college, I have been placed in front of outdated hardware and told to make the best of it. In my first job, I was running a pieced together Pentium 90 while everyone else in the office had Pentium Pros. My next job had me sitting in front of a Pentium 100 that had to be rebooted every day to keep it running “reliably”. After that, I was ‘promoted’ to a Pentium II machine that Gateway had stopped supporting the previous year. Again, to build a somewhat decent machine, I was able to scrounge parts from around the office. After that, I worked as a web developer on a Pentium-Pro 200 that would spontaneously reboot itself at least once a day. Considering I wass running applications that didn’t even exist when this thing was current, it wasn’t surprising. When I asked for any upgrades, there was never any money. However, somehow there was money for new Powerbooks, an Airport basestation, new G4 Powermacs, etc…

In my current job, I have not once had a new PC. Meanwhile, we have people who are getting their second or third new PC in the 5 years I’ve been here! All I can say is screw all this crap. The next job interview I go on, when they ask if I have any questions, I’m asking how well funded they are and explaining how frustrating it is to be constantly waiting for your PC to catch up with what you’ve asked of it. By the end of today, I will have wasted about 12 hours trying to make this thing a little bit less pig-ish. Right now, the cheap integrated graphics card is crapping out on me and I can’t bring up any display.

I don’t spend much money on my PCs at home. Yes, I have 5 of them, but all were built from scratch or gotten at a massive discount (one was free). Plus, I have never spent money on cutting edge features. Just once, I would like to have a work machine that at least matches my slowest personal machine in performance.

There’s so much more I could say, but I think my point is made. GIVE ME A DAMN DECENT PC!!!