Need help convincing IS to get me new computer

[ebmyszkow]

So, I have been trying for a year to get my work for buy me a new computer. My boss is all for it, but the IS department refuses, always coming up with reasons not to buy a new mac. I should start off by saying that the IS depertment has openly said they do not like Macs and most of them are not knowledgeable about them, and they do not care to be. I've have come up with many reasons to have a new computer. Giving them benchmarks of our computer and a new one. My boss even hired an outside company to evaluate our computers and where we should be. What I have right not is a G4 450 Mhz powermac with 1 GB of ram running OS 10.3. I put together a 40-50 page document in Quark every 2-3 weeks. The document is filled with images from both photoshop and illustrator. We print the document internally on a canon 5000 and it takes about an hour to print one copy. Part of the reason is we also have a crappy network, but it also takes a long time to process each page. When doing my everyday stuff I get the rainbow wheel a lot. Today for example, I was doing illustrations and eerytime I moved something I got that darn wheel. In Quark when I zoom in to work, it takes forever! Sometimes type looks like it is still highlighted when it isn't and I have to click on another page, then back to get a true view of the page. It's very, very annoying and frustrating. I have pleaded my case many times. Today they told us they had monitored our activity and we do not need new computers. Where can I go from here? Is there anyone out there that can help me talk to them in their own language because I do not think they understand my needs! And I know they do not understand what I am trying to accomplish on my jobs. Once when I ran out of space on the server they told me I needed to decrease the size of my photo files and they were already at 72 dpi. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

 

[quidire]

So, I have been trying for a year to get my work for buy me a new computer. My boss is all for it, but the IS department refuses, always coming up with reasons not to buy a new mac. I should start off by saying that the IS depertment has openly said they do not like Macs and most of them are not knowledgeable about them, and they do not care to be. I've have come up with many reasons to have a new computer. Giving them benchmarks of our computer and a new one. My boss even hired an outside company to evaluate our computers and where we should be. What I have right not is a G4 450 Mhz powermac with 1 GB of ram running OS 10.3. I put together a 40-50 page document in Quark every 2-3 weeks. The document is filled with images from both photoshop and illustrator. We print the document internally on a canon 5000 and it takes about an hour to print one copy. Part of the reason is we also have a crappy network, but it also takes a long time to process each page. When doing my everyday stuff I get the rainbow wheel a lot. Today for example, I was doing illustrations and eerytime I moved something I got that darn wheel. In Quark when I zoom in to work, it takes forever! Sometimes type looks like it is still highlighted when it isn't and I have to click on another page, then back to get a true view of the page. It's very, very annoying and frustrating. I have pleaded my case many times. Today they told us they had monitored our activity and we do not need new computers. Where can I go from here? Is there anyone out there that can help me talk to them in their own language because I do not think they understand my needs! And I know they do not understand what I am trying to accomplish on my jobs. Once when I ran out of space on the server they told me I needed to decrease the size of my photo files and they were already at 72 dpi. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Hi there,

Well I can't speak to your organisational structure, but it would seem that you ought to:
a) look into Adobe InDesign
b) take the external company's suggestions and your boss's recommendations to the IS supervisor, or his superior. Perhaps it would be better to have your boss do it.
c) last option; get another external contractor to do a bottom-up analysis of workflow chokepoints and get them to put together a report regarding how to improve employee productivity. I'm sure they would cite tech investment as an area of concern.

-RS

 

[Chip NoVaMac]

Not sure that you can do it, but adding more RAM might help. Check out Do I Need More Memory (a donation ware program) and see what sort of RAM you need for your tasks.

The only other suggestion is to see if they can buy a computer on the corporate credit card. OWC is now stocking 2GB RAM for the eMac.

 

[ebmyszkow]

Hi there,

Well I can't speak to your organisational structure, but it would seem that you ought to:
a) look into Adobe InDesign
b) take the external company's suggestions and your boss's recommendations to the IS supervisor, or his superior. Perhaps it would be better to have your boss do it.
c) last option; get another external contractor to do a bottom-up analysis of workflow chokepoints and get them to put together a report regarding how to improve employee productivity. I'm sure they would cite tech investment as an area of concern.

-RS

Actually, we have already taken the external company's suggestions and boss' recommendations to the IS supervisor. My boss has taken the info to them, as well as my boss' boss. Am I crazy? Is there anyone else out there that thinks I should be happy with what I have? Also, is working in InDesign actually faster than Quark? And if so, by how much?

 

[ebmyszkow]

Not sure that you can do it, but adding more RAM might help. Check out Do I Need More Memory (a donation ware program) and see what sort of RAM you need for your tasks.

The only other suggestion is to see if they can buy a computer on the corporate credit card. OWC is now stocking 2GB RAM for the eMac.

I think ram is maxxed out on b/w G4

 

[ebmyszkow]

Anyone else have any suggestions? I could really use some advice. More background is I work for a retailer. About 100-150 people work in the home office and we have stores across the country. The computer I am working on was bought about 4 years ago. It took them a year to upgrade my ram to 1 Gb, until then I was working on 256 mb. I had to ask for it. I also have an upgraded HD. We got upgraded to OS X in Nov. We had been asking for it for a while and were continuously denied until a major freelancer of ours was robbed and had to get all new equipment, with OS X on it! Then we upgraded right away. What really irks me about the whole thing is that the buyers in our company all received Blackberrys (probably about 6 people) they just can't work without them! But I was told there is no need for me to get a new computer.