Does your Office-issued Laptop Suck?

[Neil4Speed]

Trying to find some company in my misery. For a while I had a 3 year issued I5, 16gb laptop issued by my work, and I found it to be so insufferable to use that I finagled myself into an 'early upgrade'. It was brutal, Opening PDF's would take 30-40 secconds, constant lag in switching tabs etc.

I would say that I am a bit of a heavy user as I have a few ongoing tasks so have Chrome open with 15+ tabs, Email with probably 20 open items, maybe 8 excel files of sizes up to 5mb each - and keep me honest if my expectations are unreasonable, but I want to be able to switch applications, or multi task (i.e. use my chrome to look up information on Sharepoint while in a teams meeting) without significant lag.

What I am finding though is even with this 'early upgrade' I5-1145G7/8GB, which is really just a loaner I can keep until my new PC comes, I am still struggling with huge amounts of lag. My desktop is an AMD 3600X and I have none of these issues and can multi-task to my hearts content without any issue.

I am wondering if all of the constant background items on my laptop (ie. VPN, Carbon Black Security, Onedrive etc), mean that these days it is impossible to have a smooth working experience. I'll be honest, it has got so bad, it makes me want to find a new job, or maybe become a consultant where I can use my own hardware.

[killramos]

I mean my surface is useless. Glorified note taker.

Any real work I remote into my workstation which is pretty capable.

They tried to give me an accountants computer as an “upgrade” once, that lasted about 90 minutes.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

Chrome and Excel are both heavy memory users. Especially when you're using something like sharepoint, so I'm not surprised a PC meant to be portable is struggling with something like that kind of multitasking. I think you need to close anything you're not using, and stop having so much stuff opened at once. I don't know if the laptop has an SSD, but you could be hitting I/O issues as well.

Working at a tech startup, I have an intel macbook, and this thing flies. i7/16GB, and I use it to basically build and test docker images, mostly node/ruby stuff. Even has discrete AMD graphics. Lots of chrome tabs open as well.

[ExtraSlow]

The cheap think pads work for me, but then again I basically use nothing more demanding than teams.

Have had issues with microphone hardware, but I mostly use external conference room mic or headphone mic anyway.

[killramos]

Unless you routinely work somewhere with non existent or really really bad internet.

Seriously consider the serious workstation in the office that you can remote into in a pinch.

It works massively better for a very large number of reasons.

[suntan]

Getting a high end computer right now is nigh impossible.

[firebane]

Most laptops that companies bring in are for general consumer use.

Once you throw on all the background shit they require for monitoring and such it doesn't leave much for the system to work.

Start doing heavy loads and it drags the poor thing down.

Also i5s should never be given to power users.. i7s or i9s only

[rage2]

I'm in marketing now, and really my day consists of zoom calls and tons of safari and chrome tabs, with a bunch of corporate security shit running in background. Not very power user. Last 3 years I've been on an i5 16gb MBP which was slow as balls. Borderline unusable, fan on the entire day like a jet engine, and if I have a couple of heavy tabs open with pivots, it'll start stalling and affecting my video and audio.

Just got upgraded to a base 14" MBP Pro with M1, and it's night and day. I don't think I've crested 50% CPU, which is when the screensaver kicks in over 3 screens when I'm AFK. My old laptop, I'd be averaging 80% CPU all day, and 100% with screen saver kicking in running at 5fps lol. I have yet to hear the fan kick in, my home office feels so silent now.

I know lots of you aren't Mac users, but fuck Intel chips haha. Guess that doesn't help my FS thread for my old i5 MBP.

edit - I think a lot of the problems with Intel cpus on laptops is throttling. Once the fan kicks in, and it starts throttling, you're losing 30% performance and it just snowballs from there.

edit 2 - talking to some of my engineering coworkers who use enough VMs to be stuck on Intel CPUs, their top of the like i9 Intel CPUs suffer from he same issues when it gets hot.

[killramos]

I just remote into my workstation from my MBP

[suntan]

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I'm in marketing now, and really my day consists of zoom calls and tons of safari and chrome tabs, with a bunch of corporate security shit running in background. Not very power user. Last 3 years I've been on an i5 16gb MBP which was slow as balls. Borderline unusable, fan on the entire day like a jet engine, and if I have a couple of heavy tabs open with pivots, it'll start stalling and affecting my video and audio.

Just got upgraded to a base 14" MBP Pro with M1, and it's night and day. I don't think I've crested 50% CPU, which is when the screensaver kicks in over 3 screens when I'm AFK. My old laptop, I'd be averaging 80% CPU all day, and 100% with screen saver kicking in running at 5fps lol. I have yet to hear the fan kick in, my home office feels so silent now.

I know lots of you aren't Mac users, but fuck Intel chips haha. Guess that doesn't help my FS thread for my old i5 MBP.

edit - I think a lot of the problems with Intel cpus on laptops is throttling. Once the fan kicks in, and it starts throttling, you're losing 30% performance and it just snowballs from there.

edit 2 - talking to some of my engineering coworkers who use enough VMs to be stuck on Intel CPUs, their top of the like i9 Intel CPUs suffer from he same issues when it gets hot.

Power users basically can't use Intel laptops due to the throttling and bandwidth limitations.

Teams is a major CPU/memory hog due it its Electron platform usage. A horrible decision by MS.

[cet]

Mine is a couple years old and probably needs upgrading but seems ok for now. Xenon processor @2.8 and 64GB ram. Only seems to lag when I'm working with programs that take a lot of resources.

[suntan]

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Mine is a couple years old and probably needs upgrading but seems ok for now. Xenon processor @2.8 and 64GB ram. Only seems to lag when I'm working with programs that take a lot of resources.

Not much that's better right now, if anything.

[ZeroGravity]

My company issued laptop is now 11 years old which I only use to update my password.

I use my own laptop to remote into a 3 year old workstation (dual processor 40 threads) for development work. One of the main reason I use my own laptop is because the company issued one can't support my monitor's resolution. Plus trying to run Teams on it just makes a lot of noise and heat... and doesn't work with my bluetooth headphones.

[LilDrunkenSmurf]

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I'm in marketing now, and really my day consists of zoom calls and tons of safari and chrome tabs, with a bunch of corporate security shit running in background. Not very power user. Last 3 years I've been on an i5 16gb MBP which was slow as balls. Borderline unusable, fan on the entire day like a jet engine, and if I have a couple of heavy tabs open with pivots, it'll start stalling and affecting my video and audio.

Just got upgraded to a base 14" MBP Pro with M1, and it's night and day. I don't think I've crested 50% CPU, which is when the screensaver kicks in over 3 screens when I'm AFK. My old laptop, I'd be averaging 80% CPU all day, and 100% with screen saver kicking in running at 5fps lol. I have yet to hear the fan kick in, my home office feels so silent now.

I know lots of you aren't Mac users, but fuck Intel chips haha. Guess that doesn't help my FS thread for my old i5 MBP.

edit - I think a lot of the problems with Intel cpus on laptops is throttling. Once the fan kicks in, and it starts throttling, you're losing 30% performance and it just snowballs from there.

edit 2 - talking to some of my engineering coworkers who use enough VMs to be stuck on Intel CPUs, their top of the like i9 Intel CPUs suffer from he same issues when it gets hot.

My personal is an M1 mac, and I love it, but I need the intel for work right now, since all our docker images are x86/x64 based, and it's already a pain trying to teach the devs how to get their M1s to run em instead of the ARM64 images. Also, I run triple 2k monitors off of it, and it handles it just fine. I don't know which Mx macs can do that now.
But yes, Google meet lights my fans up more than anything else I do on this laptop.

[SJW]

I run solidworks on mine so it's super badass.

[INITIALD]

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Any real work I remote into my workstation which is pretty capable.

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Seriously consider the serious workstation in the office that you can remote into in a pinch.

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I just remote into my workstation from my MBP

Dude, we get it - you like to remote in.

[gpomp]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to INITIALD again.

[suntan]

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Dude, we get it - you like to remote in.

That's what she said!

[rage2]

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My personal is an M1 mac, and I love it, but I need the intel for work right now, since all our docker images are x86/x64 based, and it's already a pain trying to teach the devs how to get their M1s to run em instead of the ARM64 images. Also, I run triple 2k monitors off of it, and it handles it just fine. I don't know which Mx macs can do that now.
But yes, Google meet lights my fans up more than anything else I do on this laptop.

M1 Pro does 2 external, m1 max does 3.

I’m so glad I don’t have to use teams or meets regularly, only with some vendors. They chugged the i5 and ruins my day. Haven’t tried on m1 yet.

Zoom native m1 version uses almost no cpu or battery. I’ve done 12 hrs of zoom over 2 days on my mba on a single charge.

[suntan]

M series processors are a revelation. Fuck Intel.