Yes. And GIS programming which is very visual (maps). I was often hooked up to three different servers that I had to SEE and compare. IT is differnent than programming, but maybe not that much. All the IT/IS people had two and often three moniters. Yes they would take a laptop to meetings to check to see if anything blew up.
Heck, everyone in the county was moved to two monitors. When COVID struck, and I could work from home, I spent thousands on a system that I still use. And it’s mine. Many folks had the IS department set them up. I was a subset of IS (GIS), I just did my own thing and hooked into works servers. Worked great.
Have never owned a cell phone. My husband had one, so if I needed to, I could use it or take photos etc. I barely know how to make calls and take photos, some texting. It’s an iPhone 10, and doesn’t have a data plan.
I lost my husband some months ago and now it’s my phone I suppose. Kinda hate it.
He has everyone saved under phone numbers. Numbers I don’t know. And to swap it out for a newer phone, and switch the plan means going out to one of the malls. I live right in the core and don’t drive. I’ll get to it one of these days.
It’s just a big knot of confusion, annoyance and anxiety for me if I’m honest. But I need to take cabs from time to time, and it’s essential for that.
Also, I still have a landline.
I don’t quite understand the disdain for desktop computers. I do understand the reason that companies issue laptops to employees – they can not only work in the office, they can take them home and keep right on working!
But ergonomics is important to me, so I have a fairly large 24" Dell Ultrasharp IPS monitor, a good full-size keyboard, and a very well designed Logitech mouse that fits my hand perfectly, all connected to a super-quiet Dell Optiplex business desktop. I love it!
With a laptop, all those would be extra plug-in devices, so one wonders what the point of a laptop is in such circumstances except occasional portability, which isn’t important to me.
I do own three laptops, representing three different generations, but they all have special purposes and are rarely used.
But unlike my previous rant about the overuse of technology by techno-geeks, I understand that laptops are the best solution for many people. Just, in general, not for me.
I have a laptop (MacBook Pro M1 Pro), and when it’s on my desk, it’s connected to two 27” 4K monitors, a full-size keyboard and a Magic trackpad. But, when I’m on the road, I just unplug 1 cable and take it with me.
I concur, and with the right kind of docking station you don’t even need a cable at all. My point was, a laptop is all about portability. When portability isn’t an issue, a desktop is often a more practical and economical choice. But yes, laptops are an extremely useful computing form factor.
If one wants to go into NYC from the south or west one must to pay a toll to cross the Hudson River. The “No tolls” option is a 300 mile detour to Albany.
If one wants to get into Philly from S Jersey w/o paying a toll, it’s a 65 mile detour up to Trenton to get the first free bridge over the Delaware.
No tolls is sometimes not a good or realistic option.
To get from, say Philly to Lawn Guyland the cheapest way is to do is a No Tolls route to Hoboken (or Ft. Lee) & then start a separate route allowing tolls into the city. Once you’re in the city, switch to another no tolls option to get you out to Lawn Guyland to save another double-digit $ toll like the midtown tunnel .
I can get from home to Point B & from home to Point C but don’t necessarily know how to get from Point B directly to Point C
My current employer has over 8000 corporate users and except for a handful of them (<50) they are on 3-5 models of laptops, with a very locked down “image”. When the computing demands of the image start to exceed the computing power of a model, thousands of users are upgraded to a new model very seamlessly.
This is because we are not accommodating the preferences or unique requirements of 99%+ of users. Sales, Marketing, Procurement, Finance & Accounting, even almost all of IT get the same machine model and almost the same software package.
Keeps support costs down and keeps security measures much easier to maintain. So if a laptop works for 90% of people, 99% of people are going to get a laptop, docking station and one or two monitors.
And it’s not just work from home. I am using my laptop in a conference room 10-20 hours a week. I have exactly one mini usb cable plugged in at my desk. Because we do not have cubicles or offices (unless you’re in the top 1% or a lawyer) being able to take your laptop to meetings, even 1-1 meetings is critical.
My daughter’s workplace is the same way. And she is at an industry and corporate culture that is very, very different from the one I’m in.
Yeah, because you are the ultimate judge of what is appropriate and what isn’t.
If you weren’t such an AI fanboy then perhaps I could understand your point, not that I agree with you.
But you equate having smart phones with the evils of the world, and we come back to hate for people who do things differently. AI, good! Smart phones bad!
I’ve generally found that engaging with people with extreme views is a waste of both of our time so carry on by yourself.
I had a desktop at work until I was forced to get a laptop. When I did I hooked it up (via a docking station) to my two monitors, keyboard, mouse, and wired network connection. I even configured it to run with the screen closed. So it was basically a flat desktop. The rare times I worked remotely (this was after COVID) I just remoted in from my desktop at home. Most of my work was on VMs anyway.
When I travel I use my iPad – can’t do some things easily but rarely need to when on vacation.
I’m sorry that we’ve arrived at such a point of hostility. All I can say is, nice job quoting the last line of my long post and ignoring the virtual totality of my actual argument.
I’m lost here. You complained that Google Maps didn’t work without a clunky workaround if you didn’t want to take toll roads. I pointed out that you don’t need a clunky workaround, there’s a one tap option for turning off using Toll Roads. Now you’re saying that sometimes you need to take toll roads. Ok… so tap it again and turn toll roads back on. There may be some edge cases where you’re okay with some tolls and not others and need some sort of granular control but that’s what the manual routing via waypoints is for. I almost never need to use it though.
Even if you planned a route on a map and put it into Google maps, it still has the obvious benefits like informing you of turns, travel times, possible route complications like traffic or accidents, etc as you drive. So, at worst, it’s a useful companion to planning your own map route but, honestly, 98% of the time it’s also fine as a stand alone means of navigation.
One thing I hate about the trend of expecting everyone has smartphones is navigating the stupid user interfaces on unfamiliar apps and sites.
I’m returning to Japan today and Japanese customs has a site for entering your information. It then gives you a QR code to display at customs.
It’s not bad on a computer but slow on a smartphone. It is my fault for not doing it yesterday but it’s slower than what we used to do, which is fill out a form with pen.
The interface actually isn’t bad, I’ve seen worse, but I only use it a couple of times a year. Next time I’ll do it on my computer.
You’re right, it’s a huge reduction in support. Long gone are the days of an IT guy showing up at your cube with a cart and a desktop. Nowadays we ship the laptop direct to the employee, they set it up themselves, and, if there’s an issue, they walk it to the IT desk. One or two IT people can cover all of the on-site support.
This is the norm for me and I completely forgot that it wasn’t always this way. Meetings used to be mostly verbal and whiteboard and you’d bring a pad of paper to take notes. Nowadays one or more people will be presenting and everyone is on their laptop.
Because it’s hard to do those clunky workarounds on a small smartphone screen that loses details if you zoom out. I could save almost $80 roundtrip to/from LI, NY by only paying the tunnel toll, BUT I needed either local knowledge or be able to see a map larger than my phone, like in an atlas or paper map.
As for the traffic, my decision point for which route to take was 1 - 1.5 hrs before I’d get there. Any current accident, unless a fatal, would be long cleared before I got there, & as for later accidents, well they didn’t exist yet when I had to choose which way to go so the traffic routing was useless, in fact it was sometimes worse than useless as it would try to have me avoid the route with a current issue
The mention of Ticketmaster reminded me, as I recall a year or two ago some Doper started a thread complaining about how they had bought tickets to some event, and discovered too late that there is no longer any way to print the tickets or otherwise obtain a paper ticket. You were expected to have a smartphone, and this person did not have a smartphone.
IIRC this person stated that they were going to resort to printing out a screenshot of their tickets. I am curious as to how that worked out, because I just attended a Ticketmaster event last Saturday, and my ticket included a notice that explicitly stated “A screenshot won’t get you in”. So I am a little skeptical that the venue would have accepted this person’s printout.
I assume you would wind up at the Will Call window, waiting in line for someone to look up your name in the Ticketmaster log to see if you actually owned tickets and had ID showing you were you. Once upon a time, in a story not worth detailing, I sent my mom & sister the same tickets I sent to another party (I had two pairs, I just sent the same pair twice) and the confusion of four people claiming two seats was resolved with a trip to the Will Call to confirm that the tickets existed under my name and my mom sharing my last name on her ID being enough for the harried staff to get her in.
While not the same scenario as you gave, it does suggest that they have access to the master list of Ticketmaster purchasers. If you bought them second hand off some random dude, then you’d be in real trouble. Also, this was at a major venue (Chicago’s United Center, I believe) so who knows how that translates down the line.
Now? Almost certainly not. Then? Maybe with lots of doubt. 10 years ago? Sure.
As of a couple years ago access to MLB games requires you use the MLB app to buy the tickets and the MLB app to display the tickets. Which not only contain the expected bar or QR code that is the lookup into their database, but has an animated section with little moving baseballs. The ticket-takers (ticket-scanners really) are supposed to look to see the moving baseballs. Which no screenshot can have. Only then point their validator at your screen.
Although they eventually relented, possibly due to looking bad after the story went viral, the Dodgers wouldn’t even make an exception for a 50-year season ticket holder who only had a flip-phone & no home computer & therefore, needed paper tickets.
The only reason I’m finally transitioning to using a smartphone the way everyone else does is that my local landline provider (Pacific Bell, owned by AT&T) is getting out of the landline business next year.