Boss: I need to demo our product but it looks smaller on my laptop.
Me: That is because you have a 1920x1080 monitor and your laptop is 1280x800
Boss: Is that something you can fix?
Me: No you will need a new laptop, but the company has a sales laptop with that resolution.
Boss: No just get the company credit card and buy me one today!
*Bosses son hears*
Bosses Son: Here take the sales laptop
Boss: Will that be quick enough
Bosses Son: It has a 8 core i7 Processor, 16GB ram and a dedicated GPU
Boss: *looks at me confused*
Me: Your demoing a web browser, that will be more then ok. But were using chrome so 16GB of ram will be pushing it.
*me and bosses son laughs*
Boss: Can we upgrade it?

Well here's how I see things going:

Intel and AMD ditch their assembly architectures for Scratch, because drag and drop is very popular lately.

The Boolean is renamed to the biggot by SJW leaders for only supporting binary views.

You must first ask consent to add an item to a linked list, because forcing two items together promotes rape culture.

Apple removes the "h" and "7" keys on all laptop models and gives no reason for their actions.

Linus Torvalds grows an extra middle finger, and it still isn't enough.

Nintendo makes Mario gay and Luigi black to be more inclusive.

LG makes a curved monitor that curves away from you rather than towards you. People buy it in confusion.

Everyone makes the same ad revenue on YouTube, and it is rebranded to OurTube. Luckily, they were able to keep the color scheme.

People finally realize that machine learning is just math, and stop using it everywhere. (Just kidding lol)

AMD and Gucci merge. Nobody understands why.

Me: *hours of coding, develops a feature*
Code: I'm working..
Me: Oh good.. will monitor you for sometime.
Code: Ok, I'm done. I'll stop working now.
Me: WTF

Me: *sits for hours to solve bugs*
And when almost done,
VPN: Someone's having a good day, I'll disconnect you now.
Me: WTF

Me: *tries switching on/off VPN couple of times..*
When it starts to connect,
WIFI: Oh wait!! It's my turn to bid goodbye now. Have a nice day sir
Me: Of course !! The wifi

Me: *restarts router/ troubleshoot etc*
When wifi says connected...
Battery: Good job with wifi.. I'm down now..what you gonna do?
Me: Are you fucking kidding me???

Me: *connects charger, wait for laptop to switch on*
Windows: Updating....
Me: *jumps out window*

First day at my first workplace as a dev. waiting for my laptop to load up, nothing happens, black screen. waiting sitting patiently and silently for approx. 20 minutes.

the monitor was off.

TL;DR: Don't ever interrupt me while taking a shit.

>be me taking a shit comfortably in the bathroom, not bothering anyone
>hear my cousin outside calling his gf
>nofsgiven.jpg
>suddenly stuff comes flying through the window and hear her gf laughing in his phone speaker
>stupid asshat was trying to make his gf laugh by bothering me while in the debug room
>scream from the top of my lungs for him to stop interrupting my defecation process
>stuff keeps coming from the window
>my brown creation comes back inside like a scared turtle
>pull up pantaloons
>get out of thinking room
>open up laptop, start ubuntu
>sudo apt-get install aircrack-ng
>enable monitor mode, get phone, ap mac addresses
>vim shittyvengeance.sh
>write small script that deauths his phone and then waits some seconds and then starts over again so he doesn't think it's me
>:wq and make script executable
>sleep 180; cowsay ding dong ur vengeance has arrived; sudo ./shittyvengeance.sh
>tuck into bed and close laptop before sleep time ends
>his call suddenly drops
>"Matt are you messing up with my WiFi again?"
>"Nah man. Not working for me either. Must be localcompany's problem."
>mfw he can't talk with his gf for more than 15 seconds before losing connection
>omgitworks.jpg
>figure that it was the most useful thing I had made in a pc in these two years at uni
>be proud of me for making a stupid script
>think about going back to my pearl white throne
>no longer wanting to drop my supplies
>go to sleep
>mfw forgot to wipe ass

My first story in devRant! Was lurking for quite a while and finally felt like sharing something 🙃

Does anyone else have that one guy or gal you work with that's ALWAYS the one to find the weirdest, inexplicable bugs possible? Yup. That's me. Here's some fun examples.

*Unplugs monitor from laptop, causing kernel panic*
*Mouse moves in reverse when inside canvas*
*Program fails to compile, yet compiler blames a syntax error that doesn't exist*
*malloc on the first line of a program causes a segfault*

And for how the conversation usually goes

Me: "[coworker], mind taking a look at this?"
Coworker: "Sure.This better not be another one of 'your bugs'. ... ... ... Well, if you need me I'll be at my desk."
Me: "So you know what's causing it?"
Coworker: "Nope. I've accepted that you're cursed and you should do the same."

A life without dual monitors is not a life worth living.

New setup is nearly finished 😍

Six active monitors right now ran by one laptop (three monitors including the laptop screen), one computer (also used as a server, two monitors) and one real rack server (one monitor).

Also bought a new switch and getting led strips tomorrow.

I already am in love with this baby 😍❤

I was in a public place on my laptop, and my laptop went into hibernation to save battery. I switched it back on and then the laptops BIOS came up saying that the battery was critically low, nothing bad here.

Instead of clicking continue, I decided to press "Diagnostics" instead. The diagnostics immediately began to run in the BIOS.

The screen began to show different coloured bars and patterns, obviously a screen test. Then a prompt appeared asking me if coloured bars were displayed. The options were yes and no, and a button saying "Exit" in the top right. Me, not wanting to do a full diagnostics on such a low battery, pressed exit.

The screen turned black, and then flashed red. The beeper on the motherboard began to beep at an ear-piercing volume. It sounded as if it was a bomb about to go off. Everyone around me stared and some people began to even panic. I tried switching it off by holding the power button but nothing was happening. People were just staring all around me.

After about 10 seconds, the beeping stopped and the screen displayed an error message similar to this:
"CRITICAL ERROR: Monitor test FAILED.
No user input was provided."

Moral of the story: Make your program account for all possible options.

Moved out a few months ago. Love my setup. Dual monitor at desk and a big ass TV + laptop for when I want the couch. Coffee to top it off.

My laptop had a full meltdown and wouldn't turn on. It tried to start up then the screen went blank. It's happened before so I lost hope pretty quick.

Just spent the whole evening trying to fix it reinstalling windows and now I spot the problem. The HDMI is plugged in to a monitor that was off. My laptop was fine the whole time. Fml

Been using this monitor layout lately, like it a lot better than side by side when using a laptop

yesterday my boss called me to his office.
(him) - Please close the door
(me thinking) - My God, this is gonna be serious. He never closes his doors
(him) - It's a common practice here that we buy a new laptop for new colleges. What kind of laptop do you have?
(me relieved and excited) - Well it's 4 years old shit, 8 Gb of RAM, slow
(him) - Great we'll buy you this i7, big SSD, 32 Gb of RAM + new monitor, mouse and keyboard.

I was excited as fuck.

Until he sent me what he bought. It's much worse laptop than that I have 😑 Only thing that is better is it has 16 Gb of RAM.
I guess I'll just take that RAM off it and put it in my machine (if it is DDR3, God please may it be DDR3)

Found an old monitor in our garage and decided to hook it up to my laptop. Yes, I am learning how to use Linux :D

tldr:
everyone got the same hardware because senior dev liked it

So my project team was allowed to buy some hardware (monitors/keyboards/mouses etc.) so teamleader asked what we want.
senior dev: i need 1 monitor because i like to work with 1 monitor. i prefer this 27' zoll 4k monitor for around 1k dollars. since i work with multiple pc's i like this bluetooth keyboard and mouse because u can pair them with them and switch witch a click between the pc's costs around 300 dollar (1 setup of this costs 1'300 dollars)

me: so i like to use 2 monitors because i tried out multiple setups and this works for me the best (also what i have at home). but they dont need to be fancy. 2x 24' zoll montitors for each 200 dollar are enaugh (together 400 doller)
i also only work with 1 laptop and would like to have just a simple keyboard and mouse with cable because everytime they dont respons or battry runs out im fk triggered. so for me its okey if its this 30 dollar keyboard and 20 dollar mouse. it would be cool if i could get this mechanical keyboard for 80 dollars but not really needed. i only prefer mechanical keyboards a little bit more. and also i would like this mousepad i really like. it makes the mouse super responsive it's also just 10 dollars (this setup cost 510)

so at the end the teamleader was like. ah u know what senior dev has more xp and knows whats better for coding so we only buy this for every dev. but that 10 dollar mouse pad is okey u can get this extra its not that expensive.

WTF why u dont give me the cheaper setup which i more like. and why u even ask.

So 10 months ago i moved from Cambridge (UK) to Guildford (UK), due to moving this distance i started working from home and going into the office once a week.

Now after 10 months i have finally got my home office how i first imagined it. Everything runs from my laptop which is located on the shelving unit away from my desk. Everything plugs into it via 1 USB lead.

Setup:
27" 2560 x 1440 monitor flanked by two 1280 x 1024 monitors.
Asus Laptop (i5-6300HQ, 12GB ram, 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD)
Home PC (i5-7600, 8GB ram, GTX 770)

Accessories:
StarTech USB hub - This allows me to plug my three monitors, keyboards, mouse and everything else into my laptop.
KVM switch - Allows me to swap between my Work PC and Home PC with a click of a button

The most famous ranter in devRant (maybe) rants now due to cleaning.

LG Ultrawide 29" monitor
Logitech bluetooth keyboard K380
Logitech wireless mouse B175
Rubber ducky

LG UltraPC laptop (not in pic)
- Intel core i5 7th gen
- 8gb ram
- 256gb ssd + external 1tb hdd
- NVIDIA GeForce 940MX

Well, some time in the future, i will have to sit a computer science exam with C#. It can't be that bad, right?

Wrong.

To start off, Visual Studio 2013. Why the fuck someone would use this pile of garbage in 2018. I have no fucking clue why any semi-competent IT department would decide to skip TWO fucking releases of the software and decide, that it's okay to just roll with it. It's okay to not have any updates. It's okay to just no care at all.

I literally brought in my laptop with a VM installed since Visual Studio 2017 is really superior to the crap from 5 years ago just to do my coursework most lessons.

-------

Second issue, you know thoes desks where the monitor is literally under the desk and you get a small little window to see the monitor? Yeah, well I will have to take my proper exam in one of these all over the fucking room. Pic related.

Today we had a mini mock - - it went something like this:
- There was glare from the glsss on the desk because of the lights in the room and literally the monitor itself.
- The glass was beyond fucking pig filthy.
- There was neck pain from my back because i was constantly looking down and bending over the see the screen.
- There was eye strain because the document given to us was a tiny piece of paper with tiny writing and the monitor was far away and the paper was close i couldn't focus my eyes.
- Literally every desk was as bad as the next.
- I did fuck all work because i just couldn't focus because of the things above.
You can tell how great that felt.

If i was in a room with a man (or if it was a woman, let's just pretend she has balls), who was the creator of the room i just described, Hitler, my College's IT staff and other really bad people while having infinite ammo, i would continuously shoot the creator in the balls while not giving a shit about anything else.

Forever.

Until heat death.

Thanks for reading.

We live in a world where portability is more important than usability.

I've got to buy a fucking adapter just to get enough USB ports to use a mouse and keyboard with a monitor, as well as ports for other things like my laptop fan.

It's also becoming evident with the lack of headphone jacks to save that 0.000001" of phone size. It's fucking bullshit that adapters are required to charge phones and listen to music at the same time.

DevOps required skillset:

* Frontend engineering
* Backend services
* Database administrator
* Security consultant
* Project management
* 3rd party contract negotiator
* Build system monitor
* Build system hostage negotiator
* Paging, alerting, monitoring
* Search server admin
* Old search server admin
* Old-old-new search server admin
* Redis, ElasticSearch, MySQL, PostGres, owner
* Agile coach
* No you shouldn't do that coach
* Oh, you did that anyway coach
* DNS: (Optional) It'll replicate when it wants, and how it wants to to anyway
* Multi-Cloud deployment strategist
* Must be able to translate Klingon to YAML, and YAML to MySQL
* Cost analyzer, reducer, and justifier
* Complex documentation generation in markdown that we should have done years ago anyway
* Marketing's email went to spam analyzer
* Wordpress is broke fixer
* Where the fuck does Wordpress run anyway?
* Ability to fix MySql running Wordpress on marketing's dusty laptop

So here goes my home setup. The leftmost screen is the first computer screen I ever had about 13 years ago. The right one came next and I upgraded it this year with a monitor arm to make it vertical. The center one is 27" 1080p (1440p was too expensive).

The wooden thing on the left is a ghetto stand for my laptop. Another salvaged thing is the fan on the middle, it's just pushed to a cut usb cable, not even soldered, but it works.

Peripherals are pretty standard: Cheap mechanical keyboard, Logitech g502 and a drawing tablet. My headphones are the shp9500 (best thing I ever bought).

Little by little it came to this and Im pretty happy about it.

PS: Say hi yo my dog.

My new computer finally arrived. Now I'll be able to run Visual Studio (which my laptop couldn't while connected to my monitor at the same time). 👍

So turns out,using my external monitor as my primary monitor and my laptop as a second was an excellent idea.

Finally got time to share my new laptop. I love its rgb backlight keyboard. I will buy a NVMe SSD and second monitor asap.

I finally finished building my desktop to the specs I want!

I bought NZXT's Nuka-Cola themed case & mobo cover when they were announced. I've been planning this build for a while, but:

My laptop fell off a bench (while in my backpack) a couple months ago and the screen broke, so I bought this nice CHG70 from Samsung and put on top of it. That worked fine for a while, but within a couple weeks that laptop also stopped sending a display signal.

Having already dropped a lot of money on the monitor of my dreams and not being able to bear returning it after having it in front of me, I decided, Fuck It; I'll just build the whole PC I've been planning on right now.

Except, I wasn't ready. Had to start out with a Ryzen 2400g. Then got an RX580 on sale for $200. This week was when I swapped the Gigabyte B350M DS3H & 2400g for NZXT N7 Z370 & i7 8700k

Updated. Got my second monitor. The laptop itself is only kept open for the fingerprint reader.

I know it is 1 week too late but i dont care. Im aware that my workbench looks like shit but in reality it is a "creative mess"

@Condor Do you envy me now? I have 1054z that is hacked and has all its features unlocked! I have desoldering station and crappy (very crappy) soldering station. In addition to that i got simple sine/square generator that goes to 1Mhz (old communist poland tech - indestructible and great)

Situation with my pc is complicated. My main pc (with the curved monitor)
-i5 3350p
-12 Gb or ram (2*4Gb and another 4 that friend gave me)
-radeon 7800hd (*RIP* cant play games anymore 😥)
-256Gb sata SSD
-2Tb WD blue HDD

In addition to that i have a laptop
i5 4 cores, 8Gb ram, 1Tb HDD, GTX1050

I use my lap for gaming now, i even connected that monitor as main lap.
(double monitors yay!) sometimes i use my old pc for minor things but i use rdp for that, it is great experience! (my lap displaying rdp from my old pc on second monitor that was my old pcs main one 😂 i find it a tiny bit funny)

Dual monitor windows PC for working/gaming and an ubuntu laptop for on the road. My desktop monitor setup is a bit ghetto tho, ones gloss and ones a matt finish, both different sizes and different heights 😋

So this was going to be a comment but damn!!!!

Windows is seriously about making life harder for power users now, every fucking update lately is moving more easy to change things and fucking hiding them inside hidden menus or stupid links that don’t make sense. I mean fuck I just want to turn on dual screen with my laptop (because for some bizarre reason, just showing the desktop on the plugged in monitor is so hard to do automatically, especially since I just plugged a hdmi cable in) and the fucker was gone with nothing but a “detect screens” button before it would use an external screen.

Fuck I’m so close to pulling the plug on windows, but Linux just doesn’t sell me for daily use (yet... it’s getting there though)

The fucking forced updates (yes I consider a random bsod due to a system interrupt, then as it reboots magically has updates awaiting... a forced update) are starting to get to me, the fucking thing half crashing and not responding due to a network transfer of files (the fucker was 5GB)

If it wasn’t for my gaming needs and someone can show me a very good alternative to MS Visio (I haven’t really found one yet) then I would swap over and just adjust to the not so great (imo) desktop environments.

If you had to use one laptop for programming on a daily basis and nothing else, which one would you choose? And I'm talking about to work and back home, and you can't use another monitor either.

The GPD pocket windows or the Acer Predator?

Obviously I'm not getting any of those. I'm just curious.

Someone as scrawny as me probably won't be able to carry the Acer Predator, and it discriminates against lefties. The pocket windows is too small for anything, but it is adorable.

I'm a jr developer. I started off in automation testing and don't mind it but the testing codebase is cancer, doesn't follow basic Java conventions even basic naming conventions like camelcase, and the tests are super slow using hardcoded Thread.sleep(). Since the automation tests are not automated, I have to run manually. YES manually, every morning I wake up early at 7am to run the 2.5 hour long tests (7am because this before people get to work and when the application goes back online). I run this bitch and monitor them but most of them fail anyways. I also have to write a email report on the results which means I have to explain why shit is failing so I have to debug all this crap. This shit literally eats up an additional 2-3 hours of my work day everyday and the time is not even accounted for. ALSO, since it's running on my laptop, it makes my computer slow most of the day. If I have to debug, I can't have the browser be headless so fuckin chrome browsers be popping up every 2 minutes. I did this for legitimately 8 sprints until I decided enough was enough and bitched about it and the team told me I had no choice. I eventually got them to push towards automating it but it's still in progress so I'm still running this dumb shit. The contractors try to take advantage of me any way they can by giving me mindless bitch work they don't want and they know I don't usually say no since I'm a jr resource. I hate running the fucking automation tumor. Sometimes I go into the meeting rooms alone to scream.
I feel like I'm wasting my life away and not learning as much as I could somewhere else

Finally got the time to show my setup. Darn simple, but clean as well. How do you think?

Stuff:
LG 29 inch Ultra-Wide monitor (LG29UM58E)
Logitech BT Keyboard K380
Logitech Wireless Mouse B175
LG 15 inch laptop (15U570-KA5EK), not in picture
Rubber duck (a.k.a. TOLO BATH DUCK)

4 Weeks ago i went to a Electronics store here in germany. My Intention was to look at some smaller laptios (12-14 zoll) to use while im traveling to my work. While i was looking at some Laptops i hear a conversation next to me between a customer and a guy working at the Electronic store.
He says to the customer That the Laptop has a 8 zoll Monitor pointing at the Laptops bottom. My First thought was wtf because i dont knwo any Laptop with an 8 Zoll screen but its still possible. After they done talking i walk to the Laptop and look at the Spot the guy was pointing at. There was a battery sign saying 8h battery duration. says no more :)

I guess I had an EMP attack in my home.In a single day my laptop charger burst,my desktop monitor got damaged and my Lumia phone has stopped opening.Dont know what to do

Today, I extended my laptop display with another monitor..... because I feel lazy to switch within different windows to ctrl+c and ctrl+v

Honestly remote work allowed me to stay productive but to make it more better:

* I usually isolate myself from the rest of the family so I can focus on work

* Taking breaks between sessions so I don't over-exert myself.

*Calming music (I don't know how calming Symphonic Metal is but it is to me)

Other than that, these are just my ways to keep myself efficient, aside from the additional setup my home setup needs which are a new external keyboard and a additional monitor (I use a laptop)

Additional notes: If you get burnt out too easily, try not extending your sessions for a entire day, you'd risk being devoid of motivation easily

When your second monitor for your laptop is bigger and the mouse gets stuck on the edge. 😡

We had a blind auction at work. Selling off 'redundant hardware'

Most of it was old crap but a bit a couple of bids in for shits and giggles. Also, I'm a desktop man but we have rolling blackouts so an older laptop for the simple sake of having something bigger than my phone to browse definitely has some appeal.

So there was an old HP Elitebook 8540W. A chonky boi if ever I did see one.

Spec sheet as listed
4GB DDR3
i7 M 640 @ 2.80 Ghz
128GB SSD
Win 10 Pro
"not booting up/ power button flashing"

So bid R100. Now for context, a petrol is R22 a liter. A Big Mac is R43, a Big Mac meal is R90

So basically I big so I could harvest the SSD. And I won.

Much to my surprise, I simply attached the correct charger and it boots fine. The drive was empty though but that's fine cause I was gonna chuck Ubuntu on it anyway. Also found it was in fact 8GB of RAM. It also has a blu ray drive

So in summary, for the price of 1.1 Big Macs I got:
Full 1080p 15.6"
128GB Samsung SSD
8GB ram
First gen i7
Blu ray player

I'm most not sad about the 900x that I bid on as well. It was a cute little thing, my plan was to steal the ram and ssd out of this thing and put it in that, then boom ultra portable little machine for R400. Oh I also got an old monitor with a feint line down the screen for a grand total of R1

My 12inch laptop without any extra monitor.................

after moving from a dual monitor setup back to a laptop because of finances, I just realized, I hate managing really large codes on laptops, it sucks!, screen size!, everything !

i cant be the only person who feels this way

For the Project Management exam, my university requires us to install a program on our PERSONAL laptops that is meant to take over the control over the entire system during the exam, monitor any “suspicious activities”. The software is closed-source (it’s called Schoolyear Exams), does god-knows-what in the background, takes the control over the entire system and can be summoned through any Chromium web browser.

Don’t get me wrong, I get that you want to make sure nobody is cheating - but at this point, I’d rather write it with pen and paper. Or just provide us with computers for the time of exam.

I decided to whip out my old laptop instead, installed a Windows 10 on a separate SSD, and installed that software on it.

Also it’s very amusing that this software is also mandatory for the Linux exam… But the program can’t run on Linux (it’s Windows and Mac only and doesn’t even support M1 chips).

EDIT: typos

Here is my home setup (I mainly work at home)
Left monitor is for my windows machine, right monitor swaps between my laptop and my PC (depends if I am working or not) laptop running Manjaro with i3 and the tablet on the whiteboard will be used for some monitoring in the future

Don't mind the terrible cable management behind the table :)

Who else has to hear the nagging from family members, significant others, friends etc... when you say your planning to get another laptop, desktop, or even a new monitor?

I swear I hear the nagging every week almost.

Dev of 15 years here. All my career historically started and evolved/revolved around Microsoft in one way or the other, so was my exposure to only DOS and the Windows as a child and growing up.

Like already discussed in multiple rants here, I was one of those naturally Windows -favoring ppl through all my life. That is not to say I didn't try Linux here and there, for hosting of personal projects, as one usually does. But it never quite stuck with me as a personal daily driver, mainly because all I ever needed for personal use was a browser, discord, and Steam/GOG/Epic Games store for gaming (work-wise I always had and still have company provided laptops which are OF COURSE Windows powered)

Anyway, maybe you can see where I'm going with this... I recently gave Nobara Linux a go (Glorious Eggroll's Fedora flavor, with some custom kernel patches) and I have to say, not thinking of going back to Windows at all.

Just a few thoughts on comparing two sets of experiences with Win vs Nobara
- Win definitely feels more sluggish
- Nobara's default desktop env was Gnome 42 with some extensions pre-enabled. I dove right into hacking/customizing it to my tastes and it looked glorious. Never would have achieved this customization with Win
- I was using RDP to remote into my work laptop from my personal desktop setup with Windows and I still successfully do so with Remmina now in Linux
- A week ago I dove deeper and installed Awesome window manager as a UI and mh boy does this feel intimidating at first. But then the allure of having nice window managing experience was too strong, and 15 years of coding do help with just seeing a new language and kinda feeling at home instantly (Lua language for AwesomeWM customization/themes). Fast forward a week and now I'm sitting happily with 3 monitor setup, one of them vertical, all properly auto aligned with arandr on startup, variety+wal for wallpaper auto circling and applying a theme out of main wallpaper colors every so often (+wrote a script to put those main colors into my RGB peripherals via OpenRGB)
- Gaming. I still game, Steam Deck from steam gave me all the confidence to set up Linux gaming that I needed. I think I am now properly versed in all things Wine/Proton/Lutris/Bottles/Heroic Games Launcher, you name it. Recently finished Cyberpunk 2077.

ANYWAY, thank you for coming to my Linux appreciation TED talk. It's amazing.

Worked on a 13 inch laptop for one year straight. Back and neck started to get really f'ed up.

I bought a 27" monitor and still lean forward and my neck is still fucked.

I am currently under a desperate crunch at work, trying to get things wrapped up before my honeymoon.

Of course, this is when My Greatest User decides he will come to my office no fewer than five times today. Not once was it for an actual, legitimate issue that he had not created himself. Here were the top three for today:

#3
MGU: "The scroll wheel on my mouse isn't working. I used to be able to scroll stuff with it but now I can't."
ME: *Looks at his mouse. All looks well.*
ME: "Show me what you're trying to do."
MGU: "I'm trying to scroll this Word document. See? It won't scroll!"
ME: ..."That's because there is nothing to scroll... The entire document is on your screen..."

#2
MGU: "I can't move my mouse off the edge of my screen! I used to be able to move it from my monitor to my laptop screen and I can't do it anymore!"
ME: "Did you move your laptop?"
MGU: "Yeah I moved it to the other side of the monitor. That shouldn't make a difference, should it?"

#1
MGU: "You know the DOS commands?"
ME: *Does a triple take.* ... ... "Huh?"
MGU: "The DOS commands. You know how you can use DOS commands to make the computer do stuff. Like Ctrl+M."
ME: "Ah. You're talking about keyboard shortcuts."
MGU (ignoring me): *Goes on a long, confusing explanation of something he's trying to do in Outlook and wants to know a keyboard shortcut for instead of clicking.*
ME: "I don't know what the shortcut for that would be and honestly I don't have time to look right now. I really need to keep working on this project."
MGU: "You don't know?"
ME: "Nope."
MGU: "Oh... I'd have thought that with being a programmer you'd have gotten into the DOS commands."

I have never been so tempted to quit.

I can't get any work done at work... The potatoe they gave me for a laptop is 5 years old, Every day I was approx 2 hours (no joke) for it to power up, open up my visual studio solutions, connect to the VPN, and open my browsers.

Then my fucking shit computer loses connectivity with one of my 2 monitors every 15 min so I need close the lid, reopen it again so it "picks up the monitor" then wait another 5 min for my windows to respond.

Agh!!!!!

It's frustrating too cuz my boss ordered me a new computer 2 months ago. But cuz I work for corporate bozos it took them 2 months just to process/place the order for a new computer. So now I have to wait even longer just to have a functioning computer.

I am at Lenovo service center to bring back my laptop after replace of motherboard (they replaced because card reader not working). Ohh. I checked again and it's not yet working (illiterate technician)...
.
..
Waiting for 1 hour..
..
Meanwhile I see they are outsourcing their screen , monitor,scanner etc. From dell,acer... Ohh how can they prove they are better...
.
.
.
.
Okay!now hit me hard a person came here for service and without even booting they concluded the windows inside laptop is pirated🤔😌

I finally bit the bullet and got a 2018 macbook pro i7 with 1 terabyte ssd. I've been needing a personal laptop for development for awhile. I thought about going full Linux but it's tough finding Linux laptops that support thunderbolt 3 charging.

I tried to make Windows and WLS work. But it's a pain getting my Golang, GCP, and Kubernetes workflow setup on it. I keep having to jump command prompts and it annoys the shit out of me. Going multi monitor helps a lot, but I like to be at coffee shops and code.

I feel sick a out giving Apple more money especially $3,000. But it was money well spent. My workflow is seamless and unlike on my Windows laptop I dont spend 3 to 4 days just setting up my environment.

My laptop is screwed. The laptop's monitor doesn't light up at all. An external monitor works with heavy artifacts.

Oh god, so many... I'll list my top two then, just because I can't decide which one was actually better. (:

One of my work colleagues left to go to Cape Town, so we filled his Corsa sedan with helium balloons and wrapped his car with clingwrap. :D The good sport that he was, he still climbed in and drove forwards about 2m with all the balloons. Lol.

Then for my boss's birthday, we wrapped literally everything on and around his desk in newspaper. His phone, monitor (secondary for a laptop), his shelves, everything on the shelves, etc. Took him a few hours before he could get back to work stuff after that, and some things still stayed wrapped for a few months... If I can find the photos from this I'll share them.

Ah, we have so much fun here... Hehe.

So this is my setup,
An over heating partially broken laptop with external Monitor.. 😭😭

Show yours 🤔

hey ranteros! i like to dream and i know many of us dream of a nice machine to do anything on it, if you want to post the specs of your ideal build(s) (even a laptop, pre-built pc, space gray macbook pro... doesn't matter). and your current one.

here's mine:

ideal: {
type: desktop-pc,
cpu: intel i7-8700K (coffee lake),
gpu: nvidia geforce gtx 1080ti,
ram: 32gb ddr4,
storage: {
ssd: samsung 960 evo 500gb,
hdd: 2tb wd black
},
motherboard: any good motherboard that supports coffee lake and has a good selection of i/o,
psu: anything juicy enough, silver rated,
cooling: i don't care about liquid cooling that much, or maybe i'm just afraid of it,
case: i accept any form factor, as long as it's not too oBNoxi0Us,
peripherals: {
monitor: 1080p, maybe 1440p, i can't 4k because of the media i consume (i have tons of shit i watch in 720p) + other reasons,
keyboardmousecombo: i like logitech stuff, nothing fancy, their non mechanical keyboards are nice, for mice the mx master 2 is nice i think, i also don't care about rgb because i think it's too distracting and i'm always in darkness so some white backlight is great
},
os: windows 10, tails (i have some questions about tails i'll be asking in a different post,
}

i think this is enough for ideal, now reality:

current: {
type: laptop,
brand: acer (aspire 7736z),
cpu: pentium dual-core 2.10ghz,
gpu: geforce g210m 2gb (with cuda™!),
ram: 4gb ddr3,
storage: hdd 500gb wd blue 5400rpm (this motherfucker stood the test of time because it's still working since i bought this thing (the laptop as it is) used in late 2009 although it's full of bad sectors and might anytime, don't worry i have everything backed up, i have a total of 5 hdds varying from 320gb to 1tb with different stuff on them),
screen: 17 inch hd-ready!!! (i think it's a tn panel), i've never done a test on color accuracy, but to my eyes it's bright, colorful, and has some dust particles between the lcd and backlight hah,
other cool things: dvd player/burner, full-sized keyboard with numeric keypad, vga, hdmi, 4 usb ports, ethernet, wi-fi haha, and it's hot, i mean so hot, hotter than elsa jean and piper perri combined,
os: windows 10, tails
}

if you read this whole thing i love you, and if you have some time to spare on a sunday you can share your dream rig and the sometimes cruel current one if you dare. you don't have to share them both. i know many will go b.o.b and say "what you're hoping to accomplish, i already did bitch.", that's cool as well, brag about your cool rig!

I'm here in my bed. I can't sleep and in less than 5 hours I will have an important exam. I was thinking that a few months ago I went to a IT company as a school program. I would have to stay there for 2 weeks and "work" for them.

Upon arrival, the guy who had to monitor me gave me a sheet of paper with 5 alghoritmic problems to solve. He tells me to use java and hands me a laptop. naturally with windows. I try to look for some ideas but I can not find anything. I go to the control panel and search for something. Obviously there is a lot of bloatware and nothing catches my attention. then strangely I find something called oracle ... something ... but when trying to open it it gives me an error.

Fuck me. I decided to open notebook(normal one not ++ or something) and start solving the problems trying to remember the names of the methods and the classes based on what I had learned in school. then the guy comes back and looks at me puzzled. I tell him I did not find any IDE for java and the only one I found seem to give me an error. The guy double clicks and the program opens...fucking shit... He tells me to finish the problems and goes away perplexed. I copy the code from notepad to the IDE, I check the errors, I run it and the add some comments and I call the guy. he looks at the code, says that everything seems fine and then assigns me other things to do.

Now. HOW FUCKING STUPID MUST SOMEONE BE TO THINK THAT WRITING JAVA IN NOTEPAD IS A VIABLE CHOICE, AMONG ALL THE POSSIBLE SANE CHOICES I COULD HAVE MADE LIKE TRY TO UNDERSTAND THE ERROR OF THE IDE OR CALL THE GUY... NO. MY LITTLE SHOTTY FUCKING BRAIN DECIDED THAT NOTEPAD WAS A GOOD CHOICE. IF I COULD GO BACK IN TIME IN THE SAME MOMENT THAT I OPENED NOTEPAD I WOULD BITCH SLAP MYSELF SO HARD THAT I WOULD LOSE MY SOULD AND THE LAST 2 NEURON THAT MADE THAT SHITTY CHOICE. I WOULD BITCH SLAP MYSELF SO HARD THAT THE KINETIC ENERGY PRODUCED WOULD COLLAPSE THE UNIVERSE ITSELF. AND FROM THE DARKNESS A NEW UNIVERSE WILL BE BORN. A UNIVERSE WHERE THERE IS NO JAVA OR WINDOWS. A UNIVERSE WHERE MY 2 NEURONS WOULD HAVE MADE THE SHITTIEST DUMBEST CHOICE EVER IN A I LAST MISERABLE SELF DESTRUCTIVE ATTEMPT.

but then I come on devrant and I read about people who did thing worse than writing java on notepad and then everything is fine

PS my English is so bad I had to use Google translate, write an original version, translate it and do a side by side comparison with my translated version to check If I could improve something. Don't now If It improved the quality or not...

@cozyplanes birthday is coming.....
And my dad is asking if I want some presents....
But I can't think of one.
I already have decent headphones and earphones, speaker, keyboard, mouse, laptop, monitor, phone, and tablet...
I personally don't need anything now, but I want to get something.

Can anyone recommend hardware stuff for me? (not software) Mostly tech related, but if you can think of music stuff or leisure stuff (like boosted board, even tho I don't have the time to ride it), that's great too!

Will waiting for you guys/gals suggestions.

P.S. Ofc I want to get my own A320 or A350, but I am pretty sure my dad can't afford it. If any of you guys/gals have the money, please contact me.

"Your next computer is not a computer" says Apple. Have you tried connecting your iPad to a keyboard, mouse, and monitor? If you're lucky enough to only use apps that natively support this setup, then more power to you. If not, I encourage you to try it. I made it 30 minutes before I got frustrated and moved back to my laptop.

Saw some desk pic yesterday; here's mine at home. Mostly for gaming, but I do some work occasionally at it. Laptop's setup so I can monitor some Asterisk servers at work.

Gaming rig is:
4690k@4.5ghz
16gb RAM
GTX 980
Acer 24in 1080p 144hz Gsync monitor

Laptop:
2009 MacBook Pro
2.53ghz Core 2 Duo
8gb RAM
SSD

My grandmother recently died and me and my brother were wondering what was to happen to her 10+ year PC (Dell optiplex 760). I could find a use for the monitor and my brother wanted to use it as a server. We asked around at the family and everyone seemed ok with that except for one guy..

Apparently the PC is still in "prime condition" running Windows 7 after an upgrade from Vista. It has 'a graphics chip or something like that' and is better than any laptop on the market right now. (I actually had my HP zBook 15 g3 with me). He claimed it wasn't some old worthless piece of junk and most family members would probably be interested in this machine.

I didn't try to argue because I realized he was not at all knowledgeable about technology and I didn't want to be disrespectful.

The pc in the bottom left is my gaming rig. The silly one at the right is from my preteen years i use it as server now. My laptop doesn't have dvi, so I can use the left monitor for gaming only😊

Rainy days are when I'll program with one monitor. I'll bring my laptop to bed, sprawl out on my heated blanket, brew some tea; and work on side projects

I only have one laptop monitor to myself at home, so I overcompensate at work.

Also, my phone has a potato camera.

I invested in a brand new 27" curved monitor to work more efficiently with my laptop but now
HDMI isn't recognized by my linux distro on dual boot where it works perfectly with fucking windows and it used to work nice before the latest update
Tried to install official nvidia drivers to try to fix that
🙃 Guess who has a fucked up X configuration now 🙋🏾‍♂️

One time I was with a +1 monitor in my laptop and they ask me if lost my files becuase of the second monitor.

Not my week for tech.

5 year old 21" desktop monitor burns out. 2nd monitor, so at least not completely down.

Then my toddler reached for my root beer and spills it on my 1 month old laptop. I quickly pull the plug and turn upside down, get it wiped off and pray. Next day, arrow and enter keys a little sticky and battery is blown. The 2 exact fucking reasons I bought the new laptop. (keyboard issues and battery)

Keep em coming tech gods.

woooooohoooooo! successfully installed Gentoo on my laptop after 7 hours of compilation. It's probably not in the perfect state as I'd like, but I hope to work it out.
My current problem...
WHY can't i have separate DPI's on different displays!!!!
I can't use my second monitor right now because of DPI issues.

BTW, i configured Gentoo + i3

For now, i'll sleep sound 😅😅😊😊😊

I've finally got a monitor at work that works with Samsung Dex.
Positive things:
- new super cool monitor
- can remove windows now from the dual boot of the laptop since everything I needed it for can be now done on Dex.

Negative things:
- DevRant doesn't work with Dex. It just doesn't load properly. But maybe it will work through a browser. Need to test...

A friend is trying out linux and I am helping him with it. Helped him to install and configure linux on his laptop. Tried several Arch distros and different Ubuntu flavours. But it is not about distros,but about strange glitch...

Imagine, you are having 2 monitors. One is your laptops and second is plugged in via VGA. You're dragging windows from one screen to another, doing you things, etc..
You can see and configure VGA display in display settings and so on.
So situation is exactly the same with my friend, but here comes the plot twist:

There is no monitor connected to VGA.

I can't explain it, but linux is always detecting a non-existent display. So you can drag windows to nowhere. You can see resolution on 2nd monitor and so on. Luckily, you can disable it.

Sooo

Wat

I have a colleague that prefers to develop (web) with only one monitor, either just the laptop or a mirrored secondary.

Like a psychopath

You know what you shouldnt do? Leave your bag with your work laptop at the stairs.

Woke up as normal today and helped the kids down the stairs without checking. Then I just heard how I stepped on something.

Lets say its a big crack in the middle of the screen and you see shit. But gladly it work with work with external screens so its just the screen that are damaged. So tomorrow I must either:

- Work as normal with an external monitor and simply wait to call the boss for fix until after christmas.

- Or call the boss and tell him how stupid I am and hope its okay and I van get a new one/fix this.

Right now I feel for the first one.

Wanted to have Samsung Dex for work, so I can run office on it and kick windows from my dual boot laptop.
Dex pad was on sale.
Bought it.
Brought it to work.
Work monitor doesn't have hdmi.
...
fuck. <.<
I'll ask the technician later if he either has a monitor flying around he doesn't need or an adapter or something.

Guess who was studying on his laptop and also had a near deadline about an university project and now admire this fab burnt monitor flat.
(About a week ago i also reiceveid and sticked devrant's sticker to it)

Throwback to an old setup (June 2015)

My productivity is dying for want of a second monitor. I've been hooking up a new-ish HP external LCD to my brand new HP Spectre laptop. Every time I do this, the laptop soon locks up. Won't launch programs, won't even let me click the Windows button to restart. Have to hard reset and go back to single 15" screen. THEY'RE THE SAME BRAND?! WHY ARENT THEY COMPATIBLE?!

Few weeks back, I have subscribed /r/battlestations and drooling everyday. Now with this latest devRant news, it's time to save money or sell my ass on street to

1) buy a wide monitor or monitors
2) buy backlit keyboard and mouse
3) buy a good desk
4) buy a good chair
5) buy/rent a room with enough space

Forget about buying and setting up a good unit, I can just use my potato laptop for one photo taking. *dry-laugh*

(∩︵∩)

I have begun to prefer a single monitor over multiple ones. Currently I have my laptop and a 1080 23" at home. I have been getting used to just the 23" with the laptop closed. With multiple workspaces/desktops I find it quicker to just use my keyboard to switch over to look at something and switch back.

Which leads me to consider a single ultrawide monitor for my next upgrade. Thanks for reading.

Can't fucking stand my tiny desk!!! It's only 23" x 45" (approx 58cm x 114cm)

I can hardly fit my mouse, keyboard, and laptop on the damn thing let alone an external monitor.

The only reason I can't get a larger desk is that we don't have any goddamn room for a decent sized work station in this shitty 800sqft apartment.

but luckily for me, I get the privilege and blessing to live in california! So this fabulous 800sqft; in all it's hickory-smoked horse taint glory costs over 2K a month in rent. Golly-Gee I sure am glad to be getting raked over the coals every month. IT FEELS FANTASTIC!!! /s

In from of a cinema. I was doing my BSc thesis involving a GPS receiver. The pointcloud on my pc had to be synchronized with where the receiver was, so it had to be tested outdoor. I and my teacher drove around some streets to see if my code worked, and everytime it didn't we had to stop in a parking lot (the one of a cinema). I couldn't code inside the car because the GPS receiver my laptop was connected to (via USB) didn't get a decent signal there, so I had to fix bugs sat on a brickwork in front of the cinema. My teacher kept looking at my monitor constantly, it was summer with 28°C, the sun hitting on me and my monitor, I couldn't see shit, the sweat of my hands flooding the keyboard. After a while I was saved by my laptop's battery which gave up. Thank you laptop <3

A few months ago I switched from Windows 10 to Arch Linux on my main computer and the upgrade is incredible. I knew it would be, of course - I already had Linux on my laptop. But wow, on a dual monitor setup, and with the motivation to set it up nicely, it's brilliant.

My question is, what's everyone's favourite Linux distro, and why? Pictures of your desktops would be cool.

OK trust me, DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO. NOT. TRY TO DO ANYTHING ON A COMPUTER WHEN YOU HAVE SMALLER SIBLINGS, my baby brother has broken my PC monitor, my laptop screen, my phone, and hell, I'm desperate to the point of jailbreaking my Nintendo switch, witch he almost broke already, I'm typing this on my school laptop BTW.

Did I ever tell you guys about that time I got a whole monitor for 1 Zar?

Probably but I shall again.

"twas the same auction at work where I got the R100 laptop. There was an LG Flatron W2243S listed with no reserve price. It had description "Faint line down middle of screen"

Figured what the hell, bid R1, mostly to see kif anyone else would. I won it. Literally just swapped out the vga cable and did a factory reset. All happy now. Only downside is that it's vga only but hey, what else are you gonna do with R1?

I hate having to use Windows 10 for work 😭

And the laptop doesn't have an HDMI port and also doesn't connect to my monitor using an adapter 😕

I live share to my mac as a workaround, but that has its own problems :/

Acer vs MSI Laptops.

Five years ago I bought an acer aspire vn7-591 laptop in Redcoon. It was the expensive laptop I bought ever in those days. My experience at the beginning was really bad because the battery laptop crashed after few months and the screen had some vague/dead pixels, but the worst was the imminent bankruptcy of Redcoon. So I couldn't use the warranty. Anyway, It didn't bother so much I have been enjoying this laptop and still doing it. However, last year the screen put me on alert since it started to fail with vertical bars and color changes.
It was time to buy a new computer and due to the problems with some of the components, I've decided to buy a laptop from a company with a better reputation than Acer in aspects as the reliability of the components.
My choice was a Msi Prestige 15 because of the thunderbolts, since the rest of specs are 'more or less similar', although it has more updated hardware, it is lighter, battery holds up to 4-5 hours etc... But... It is really noisy compared to my Acer computer. 2 CPU fans are around 3000 rpm in idle state... Acer seems to be working without using the fans if you are doing intensive work. I google it as I thought it was a factory problem, but it seems to be not a malfunctioning... In fact I found other users complaining about the same and the community proposed to reduce the fan speed through software.
Right now I have both laptops working and since the new boy is in house, Acer is working flawlessly. I am preparing the Acer for my girlfriend as a gift, otherwise it is a pitty to shut it down and store it in a wardrobe.
So, this is my impression about ACER and MSI. I m still experiencing with the new laptop, but I find weird things like the fan speed or how hot it gets in idle despite it uses a new generation of intel i7 cpu with lower consumption... I should monitor the power consumption...

The contractor/developer sitting next to me asked for a power adapter for the MacBook the company issued him (it's an older MacBook that currently connects to his monitor with one of those 2-in-1 power and display port cables).

They told him it was not company policy to provide power adapters to contractors.

They also wouldn't give him a license for a Windows VM for some Windows specific stuff he needed to work on for an outside vendor, stating it was a "security risk"

They've also talked about taking Linux off my laptop (which I run natively outside a VM cause fuck MacOS).

I hate our IT department. They're the least competent and least helpful bunch I've ever met.

Here’s my setup, a little late. I use the dual monitors with my work computer and laptop + monitor for personal computer.

Hello, world!

Okay, guys and gals... I need your creative minds. I need a concept for sort of a property manager for my game.. I have an idea of my own, feel free to tear it apart or throw it out the window.

So basically.. You'll no longer have one Computer System (and you wont instantly hit the login screen for that System on startup) Instead, you'll have a lot of things. They will probably only be represented using text and menu's (likely no 3D or 2D environments or anything.. Though, a setup like News Tycoon would be epic, but I think that would be too much for this game.) You'll basically start off with a small space (probably a basement) with x amount of free space. In that space, you'll need to add things like a desk, chair, and a laptop, or tower + monitor. You can also buy things like server rigs with a ton of space, but those are pricy and bulky. Each item costs X amount and takes up X amount of space. Also, you'll need a desk for a monitor (or multiples..) and other things.. (Like your rubber duck collection ;P JK) You can also rent and manage servers. (renting is more exspensive in the long run, but things on your server are not on your property. But, if you own a server on your property you can rent space to to NPCs) As well as manage your devices, properties, stocks, etc..

Also, there will be in-game time. Depending on how "comfortable" you are will determine how long you can stay up in a day. In-game events will take place later on at specific times so staying up (or not..) will need to be managed well. Especially if you're being targeted by a rival (NPC) hacker.

1+9, but my laptop plugged into HDMI monitor..

To all you linux fans out there:
What DE/WM would you use for a 2 monitor desktop setup?
I’ve tried i3 and a couple major DEs (xfce, gnome, kde,...) and i don’t really have a strong preference for either.
I like the efficiency of i3 but also the ease of use of - say - xfce. I’d definitely use i3 on a laptop, but i dunno what i should go for on desktop... recommendations?

This shit is long story of my computer experience over my lifetime.

When I was young I got my first PC with windows it was not so bad. It required safe shut down of it’s fat32 partition. From time to time I needed to reinstall it cause of slow down but I got used to it I was only a gamer.

Time passes and I got more curious about computers and about this linux. Everything worked there but installation of anything was complete madness and none of windows programs worked well, and I wanted to play games and be productive so I sticked with windows.

I bought hp laptop once with nvidia card, it was overheating and got broken. So I bought toshiba and all I told to the seller was I want ATI card. Took me 5 minutes to do it and I was faster then my friend buying pack of cigarettes because I was earning money using computer.

Then I grown up running my small one person programming businesses and I wanted to run and compile every fucking program on this world. I wanted linux shell commands. I wanted package manager, and I wanted my os to be simple because I wasn’t earning money by using my os but by programming. So after getting my paycheck I bought mac. I can run windows and linux on vm if I need it. I try not to steal someones work so I didn’t want to run hackintosh. I am using this mac for some time.

Also I use playstation for gaming. Because I only want to run and play game I am not excited about graphics but gameplay. I think I am pragmatic person.

I can tell you something about my mac.
When I close lid it go sleep when I open it wakes up instantly. I never need to wonder if I want to hibernate or shut down or sleep and drain battery. It is fucking simple.
When I want to run or open something it doesn’t want me to wait but it gives me my intellij or terminal or another browser or whatever I search for. Yeah search is something that works.
Despite it got 8 gigs of ram I can run whatever number of programs I want at the same speed. The speed is not very fast sometimes but it’s constant fast.
I have a keychain so my passwords are in one place I can slow down shared internet speed, I can put my wifi in monitor mode and I don’t need to install some 3rd party software.
And now I updated my mac to high sierra, cause it’s free and I want to play with ios compilation. Before I did it I didn’t even backup whole work. I just used time machine and regular backups. And guess what, it still works at the same speed and all I did was click to run update and cook something to eat.
When I got bored I close the lid, when got idea open lid and code shit, not waiting for fucking wakeup or fucking updates.

I wanted to rant apple products I use but they work, they got fucking updates all along at the same time. And all of updates are optional.

I cannot tell that about all apple products but about products I use.

I think I just got old and started to praise my limited time on this world. Not being excited about new crap. When I buy something I choose wisely. I bought iPhone. I can buy latest iPhone x but I bought iPhone 7 cause it’s from fucking metal. And I know that metal is harder then glass, why the fucking apple forgot about it? I don’t know.
I know that I am clumsy and drop stuff. Dropped my phone at least 100 times and nothing.

I am not a apple fan boy I won’t buy mac with this glowing shit above keyboard that would got me blind at night.
I buy something when I know that it can save my time on this world. I try to buy things that make me productive and don’t break after a year.

So now piece of advise, stop wasting your time, buy and update wisely, wait a week or a month or a year when more people buy shit and buy what’s not broken. And if something’s broken rant this shit so next customer can be smarter.
Cheers

A monitor
A lamp
A chinese pocket watch
A box with figurines, pens and die for DnD.
A box of pendrives
Ergo mouse
BT Headset
Guts of a laptop
Two identical bottles, one full of vodka, the other water
Five coffee cups
Thomas the cockroach in a sealed bottle. I found him today and I'm waiting for him to suffocate because he can fly and he's 6cm so I'm not gonna risk letting him out by opening the bottle until he's definitely dead.

I remember that when I was about 8 years old, my dad brought a desktop computer home one day.

I don’t remember any specs, but it had a huge ass CRT monitor, a very loud clicky keyboard, a mouse with a real ball inside, and a CPU that uses floppy discs and CDs. Nope, CDs, not DVDs. And on that computer, it ran Windows 95. There’s was no internet most of the time (it was still quite expensive and unnecessary and dial up was troublesome to set up back then).

I remembered playing bootlegged games sold in CDs that my dad bought during his trips to China back then. Duke nukem, Command and Conquer Red Alert 2, Microsoft solitaire and GTA 3. Those were the games I played.

As a kid, it was glorious, looking through a box on a table, seeing and interacting with so many different worlds, stories, characters and games. I really miss those simpler times.

These days, every time I open my laptop, and I see that new mail that need to be dealt with, that homework that’s about to be due and a reminder of my next class in 15 min. Well shit.

I currently don't work over 40 hours a week. When I come to work, everyone else is setup in the "war room," however my monitor and laptop are still at my desk (it's quieter with everyone out in the war room).

I have a good work/life balance, and I'm not alone. One of the other employees also refuses to work over 40 hours or on weekends. He has a PhD and teaches classes on the side. We both did at least participate in a Sunday all-day work session to get something to production.

What I'm worried about is resentment. I have taken zero vacation and was going to bank all my time, then in January take it all at once. I was going to ask for 3 weeks of unpaid on top of that so I could get a month and a half off to go south for the winter.

Even though my output has been really good while I've been working, I have a fear of resentment from others who do put in the extra time. We're all salary and none of them get paid overtime except for a one-time bonus for that Sunday I mentioned.

Hey guys,

I need your advice about deciding wether to work as a freelancer for a startup or no.
So this French startup is couple years old and they decided to build a team in my country. I went to the interview few weeks ago and we discussed the projects, details, potential salary and everything seemed great.

Couple days ago I received a service contract from them and now I need to decide to work for them or no.

Plan is for them to come to my country, rent an office and I should go there and work for them.
The salary that they offered is medium level and they will not have any legal entity in my country. However it’s not a problem for me since I have my own LTD company so I would pay salary on my own.

However there are some cons:

My team members are being hired as freelancers, however salary is defined with a daily rate instead of hourly and we are allowed to work maximum 20 days a month. It is not clear how many hours a week/month they will expect us to work and at this point I’m afraid to rock the boat with my questions. I understand that I shouldn’t receive any health insurance, sick leave pays, vacation days, home office, pension contributions and so on. But it’s so weird that they pay per day instead of per hour. It screams with unpaid overtime.

Payment time is 30 days after invoice has been sent. So If I started working from September 01, I will send them invoice at September 30, then I will work all October and will receive my money only around end of October. Working 60 days to receive my first salary doesn’t seem nice.

Notice period is 30 days. Which is fine on my end since I can be completely free after initial notice. But in their case if they want to fire me I guess they will simply not give me any work to do and since I’m charged per day I won’t be able to send them any invoice. No employment safety, which means if after 2-3 months they don’t have anything to do I can get royally screwed. But it’s startup nature I guess?

They don’t provide a laptop to work with. I’m lucky since I have a laptop for developing mobile apps, and they said they will at least provide office to work in and a monitor.

All this situation is sending vibes of "we want to save money so we came to your country for cheap labour and now we gonna exploit you"

What complicates matters is that my sister will be working with me and It’s her first job. They agreed to pay her a decent salary and even be flexible with her studies. However this deal for me does not seem too great as I will be receiving mid level salary with no benefits that I would otherwise get.

On the other hand maybe I'm just overthinking this I can just try it out for few months and see where it goes.

Any thoughts?

Last week I hired a friend of friend to work on my projects. Hes a young and friendly guy. However he never worked in actual office and it shows. During the meeting he brings his phone and in the middle of explaining he pulls out his phone to respond someone back. Basically lacks professionalism and has this young person cockiness where he thinks he is competent to handle everything while in reality last week he did 2-3 hours worth of work. I want to set up some boundaries but I dont want to seen as a harsh dictator. On the other hand Im paying him over the top even though he doesnt have skills, but the least I want to is a decent attitude and effort. How u would advice me to approach this and teach him to get his shit together? Im already becoming resentful and next week if he keeps treating his work like a school project I will let him go.

Im really trying to setup a nice environment for him to work at, I rented a nice office in a hub space and also bought entirely new laptop plus monitor setup for him to work. I even took him for drinks and lunches but for some reason I start to feel that hes taking that shit for granted and Im being too good.

Hes not proactive, it seems that he will do bare minimum that I give him.

some old time clients finally decided to pay me, so I had a bit of cash on me (I feel rich, lol).

here's the thing: I am torn in between buying a second monitor and investing in that server i planned to build in a previous rant.

I could just save the money, I dont know if I am being extra right now, I remember when I just had half a laptop screen to work with, now i have a this used 24 inch monitor I bought for cheap now I want to expand with another 24 inch probably. this arrangement will make things a bit comfortable and faster for me but it still wont affect me if I dont get it...........ok I'm talking too much

Calling all devs with multi monitor setups.

What made you decide to get another monitor? I am asking because I want to buy one, but can't *really* justify it.

For ref, I have an Asus ROG Strix G17 laptop which has thin bezels, 17.3 inch screen.

P.S. I am aware that I'm using 'rant' tag. Please don't hate me lol.

I've gone through so many tiling wm this semester and can't figure out what I like best...
i3, bspwm, xmonad, windowchef, herbstuffwm, awesomewm, fvwm, etc.

I love the cleanliness and productivity aspect of them compared to something like Windows and it's floating/snap feature. Awesomewm looks like a good choice but the config scripting is quite verbose.

So many choices! Probably doesn't help I want to keep it consistent across my laptop and 3 monitor setup (1 21:9, 2 16:9).

Was always happy with my 24" 1080p monitor. Then got a laptop with a 15" 1080p, and suddenly I need a better monitor...

After over 2 months the controller is here.

Sadly the LCD panel is not FHD
But it should be fine.

Not seeing colleagues & no proper work set up. Fucking Laptop keyboard and no 2nd monitor..

I prefer to have lesser things to my desk except my monitor I connect my laptop to and my speakers and peripherals.

I like my desk to be absolutely as clean as it can get.

!rant

When connecting your laptop to an external monitor do you place your laptop to the left or right of the monitor?

Was working today when all of a sudden the background on my laptop and monitor changed from its usual mostly black image to bright white. Tried to set the desktop background, but it had no effect. Honestly thought I broke my computer for a few minutes.

Turns out one of the ubersichts (custom desktop widgets) was attempting to curl a page that was "Down for server upgrades". Definitely one of the weirder computer issues I've had.

Are there some good external portable macbook pro monitors that have the vertical/portrait functionality? Also, it should be rechargeable and should not get power from my laptop when there's still a charge. (I use MBP 15" 2018 model)

We are agile at work (all use laptops, no permanent seats) and I need an extra portale monitor because there are no provided external monitors to use.

I was thinking of buying and iPad pro as a portable external monitor via catalina sidecar but it is laggy somehow and very expensive. Thanks! 🙂

I'm looking to get a laptop, and I want your opinion on which one to get, because I'm a dev and don't care about whatever most reviews are looking at. Here is what I want from it:
1. I'll be running linux on it
2. I need it to be powerful enough to go through heavy development
3. It has to be decent sized 15" and below
4. It needs to stay cool under light load, under heavy load I've got a good cooling pad
5. Battery is not that important, and discrete graphics are not that important

I will be hooking it up to a keyboard/mouse/monitor setup when at home or work

Any suggestions? I've been looking at lenovo thinkpads for their ruggedness and dependability and Dell laptops as they've been around for a long time. Ultrabooks (like the XPS) are appealing but I don't know how well they deal with heat and thermal throttling under heavy load?

I just had the sudden thought that I should get a standing desk stand for home. Not an entire desk but I'm thinking something to raise the kb, mouse and 27in monitor. But can't seem to find a suitable one. All the pics either have a laptop or 2 monitors.

I'm thinking I just need an extension I can put on top of my existing desk.

Does anyone know a good one at a good price. And how do you feel about actually using it. Does it help. I saw one con is potential joint problems... And still could have had posture...

Grr.
I have been struggling with schema compare and editing anything SQL related in Visual Studio for a couple of weeks now. Cursor constantly flickering, can't click on anything, and actually running the compare results in Visual Studio disappearing in puff of smoke.
I'd put it down to an update, but then this week's update didn't fix it.
Turns out it is a "feature" that Microsoft has been refusing to fix for over a year now, where none of the SQL stuff in VS works properly on a 4k external monitor. And of course I only started trying to use that stuff on my 4k monitor since I have been working from home.
Dragging VS across to the laptop screen solves the problem (and is the Microsoft fix), but I think I now need to visit the optician to get new glasses to see WTF is going on.

Have you ever use Ubuntu (or any Linux that use Pango to render text) for a significant amount of time that you notice that text in Mac OS is just not that crisp? To the point that it looks blurry, even more so in non-retina display.
I want to justify buying new Macbook for that sweet M1 silicon, but I don't think I can live with the blurry text. I rarely use built-in display on a laptop, but it is hard to find external monitor with Retina resolution (200+ dpi) with decent size, or ultrawide for that matter.

!rant
It's been over a year since I installed elementary OS on my laptop and I still haven't regretted switching from Ubuntu. There were a few issues initially while setting things up but similar issues even used to happen when I was using Ubuntu.
The desktop shell of elementary OS is perfect for my use cases, its easier to switch between virtual desktops and the app bar at the bottom makes it easier for me to transition between my Macbook and Linux based laptop with ease.
The only major issue I found was no proper multi-monitor support.
The closest thing I found to the simplicity of this shell/distro was Zorin OS, although at this point I am just too lazy to try it out.
P.S. Feel free to mention your favourite Linux distro in comments 😁

First laptop I ever owned (around a decade old) continues to live, just in another form. After the first 6 years, the battery died, half the keyboard doesn't work, and the monitor began to fail.

But it still works, so I have decided to give it new life. Gonna make it a new body, add an SSD, new battery, substitute screen, replace keyboard... Maybe this is too costly. No, it must be done.

Finally install a lightweight Linux distro. It shall be glorious!

So Steam Deck is like a tiny PC, lets you play PC games on a tiny monitor?

Why would you want that? vs buying a gaming laptop/desktop

Assuming you already don't have one... And well if you do, why would you buy this?

Sense more like a downgrade?

!rant
Preface: As it was unpaid labor I won't count my school-internship in a games resell shop in which I was ordered to "program" a BDSM-Shop with MS Frontpage.

My first paid gig was back in 2006. I got booked to write the website of a new company by friends of the family. The problem was that the gig had to happen ~600km away from my home town. Back in 2006 it was far from common to own a laptop for young folks, which is why I packed my Pentium 4 HT "powerhouse" tower, my 15" TFT monitor, keyboard and mouse into a suitcase and took a bus. I not only had to write the website, but had to do all the Frontend and Design as well and was paid 400€. Hahaha what a deal. They are still using my logo btw.
Anyhow... I was like 17yo and the work experience was more valuable then the money anyways. Plus at the time 400€ weren't a bad payment either. After that it took 2 more years and half a dozen of boring jobs until I started earning money with programming again. I can't understand why I haven't started programming earlier. Especially considering the wage gap between the jobs I did and potential programming jobs. Guess you're always smarter afterwards.

Okay this is gonna sound weird just hear me out.

I feel a massive difference when programming on a desktop compared to my laptop.

I prefer using a desktop so much compared to my laptop. I usually have to plug my laptop into a monitor for the past year, and I can’t use my desktop because it’s currently, uh, let’s say inoperable.

Is anyone using Wayland with KDE-Plasma environment already? I'm still waiting for this to work on my laptop. X doesn't support multi-monitor scaling which I desperately need

I want to play some games in my free time, what would be the best option for me ?

choice 1 : ps5 or xbox?
choice 2 : monitor or 4k tv
choice 3 : above choices or simply buy a windows laptop?

context :

1. i have never been a hardcore gamer. i don't dig multiplayer global kinda games like pubg, or other fps. I rather like offline story games like takken or NFS most wanted 2005

2. my current laptop is a macbook. i started development with windows laptop years ago, and at that time i was free enough to complete most wanted 2005 and max payne 1/2 (with cheats) i liked gta vice city / sanandreas as well, but i could not pass its missions and would rather end up roaming around

3. i recently played it takes 2 , some bmx bike racing and some archery game with my friend on his PS5 and damn i liked that crispy super fast and detailed graphical games. might be a good investment for relaxation and weekend time pass

4. i am shifting homes and in need of a personal tv/display as I don't want to share family tv anymore. i don't really watch any cable tv shows apart from news channels and mainly consume ott content (netflix ,prime Hotstar etc) i am wondering if a display could also be mounted on wall and could be able to run otts vis some firestick, jio stick or google cast etc.

5. as i mentioned that i never had a taste for gaming, i wonder if all above would be a bad choice and if i should simply buy a good windows laptop

( whatever that technology is , all i want is to control that screen content with a remote, like we do in tv)

So what's best for me?

So I've been using Duet on my iPad Pro for a couple years now (lets me use it as an external monitor via Lightning cable) and without issue. Shit, I've been quite happy with it. Then the other day, whilst hooked up to my work laptop, there was a power fluctuation that caused my laptop to stop sending power to connected devices. Which is fine - I have it plugged into a surge protector so these fluctuations shouldn't matter. After a few seconds the laptop resumed normal operation and my connected devices were up and running again.

But the iPad Pro, for some reason, went into an infinite boot loop sequence. It reboots, gets to the white Apple logo, then reboots again.

In the end, after putting the iPad into recovery mode and running Apple's update in iTunes (as they recommend), it proceeds to wipe all my data. Without warning. I lost more than a couple of years of notes, illustrations and photos. All in one fucking swoop.

To be clear, you get 2 options in iTunes when performing a device update:

1. UPDATE - will not mess with your data, will just update the OS (in this case iPadOS)
2. RESTORE - will delete everything, basically a factory reset

I clicked UPDATE. After the first attempt, it still kept bootlooping. So I did it again, I made sure I clicked UPDATE because I had not yet backed up my data. It then proceeds to do a RESTORE even though I clicked UPDATE.

Why, Apple? WHY.

After a solemn weekend lamenting my lost data, I've come a conclusion: fuck you Apple for designing very shitty software. I mean, why can't I access my device data over a cabled connection in the event I can't boot into the OS? If you need some form of authentication to keep out thieves, surely the mutltiple times you ask me to log in with my Apple ID on iTunes upon connecting the damn thing is more than sufficient?! You keep spouting that you have a secure boot chain and shit, surely it can verify a legitimate user using authenticated hardware without having to boot into the device OS?

And on the subject of backing up my data, you really only have 2 manual options here. Either (a) open iTunes, select your device, select the installed app, then selectively download the files onto my system; or (b) do a full device backup. Neither of those procedures is time-efficient nor straightforward. And if you want to do option b wirelessly, it can only be on iCloud. Which is bullshit. And you can't even access the files in the device backup - you can only get to them by restoring to your device. Even MORE bullshit.

Conversely, on my Android phone I can automate backups of individual apps, directories or files to my cloud provider of choice, or even to an external microSD card. I can schedule when the backups happen. I can access my files ANYTIME.

I got the iPad Pro because I wanted the best drawing experience, and Apple Pencil at the time was really the best you could get. But I see now it's not worth compromise of having shitty software. I mean, It's already 2021 but these dated piles of excrement that are iOS and iPadOS still act like it's 2011; they need to be seriously reviewed and re-engineered, because eventually they're going to end up as nothing but all UI fluff to hide these extremely glaring problems.

I can work productively and for very long hours with a lot of stuff which many dev considers productivity hurdles:

- single small monitor? No problem (in fact in one occasion in which my roommate accidentally broke my laptop charghing port and I couldn't get a spare I worked on an iPad connected trough SSH to a Linux machine completing one of the hardest tasks I ever did without significant loss of productivity)
- old machine? That's ok as long as I can run a minimal Linux and not struggle with Windows
- noise and chatter around me? A 10€ pair of earbuds are enough for me, no noise cancelling needed
- "legacy" stack/programming language? I'd rather spend my days coding in Swift or Rust but in the end I believe which is the dev and its skill which gets the job done not fancy language features so Java 8 will be fine
- no JetBrains or other fancy IDE? Altough some refactoring and code generation stuff is amazing Neovim or VS Code, maybe with the help of some UNIX CLI tools here and there are more than enough

despite this I found out there is a single thing which is like kryptonite for my productivity bringing it from above average* to dangerously low and it's the lack of a quick feedback loop.
For programming tasks that's not a problem because it doesn't matter the language there's always a compiler/interpreter I can use to quickly check what I did and this helps to get quickly in a good work flow but since I went to work with a customer which wants everything deployed on a lazily put together "private cloud" which needs configurations in non-standard and badly documented file formats, has a lot of stuff which instead of being automated gets done trough slowly processed tickets, sometimes things breaks and may take MONTHS to see them fixed... my productivity took a big hit since while I'm still quick at the dev stuff (if I'm able to put together a decent local environment and I don't depend on the cloud of nightmares, something which isn't always warranted) my productivity plummets when I have to integrate what I did or what someone else did in this "cloud" since lacking decent documentation everything has do be done trough a lot of manual tasks and most importantly slow iterations of trial and error. When I have to do that kind stuff (sadly quite often) my brain feels like stuck on "1st gear": I get slow, quickly tired and often I procrastinate a lot even if I force myself out of non work related internet stuff.

*I don't want this to sound braggy but being a passionate developer which breathes computers since childhood and dedicating part of my freetime on continuously improving my skill I have an edge over who do this without much passion or even reluctantly and I say this without wanting to be an èlitist gatekeeper, everyone has to work and tot everybody as the privilege of being passionate in a skill which nowadays has so much market

Feature not a bug...

My work laptop has started rebooting almost every night.

It's not clear why, but I sort of think of it as a feature now.

I have an ultra-wide monitor, plus another wide next to that one, and a bunch of virtual desktops.

I often think "ok everything is where it is that's good" but coming in reality with a bazillion things open across all the desktops and screens sometimes when I come back the next day ... it's actually just a lot of mess / overhead to pick up where I was.

Sometimes I think we introduce a lot of complexity to solve a problem and ... actually it's just more complexity if you're not already 8 layers deep.

Alternative for Control board (Display)???

So I took out the monitor of my old laptop ,and I'm planning on using it as my new secondary monitor. BTW I'm from Nepal, and it is not possible to find any control board available in market for the spare LCD.

So could anyone suggests me with an alternative for the control board for my spare monitor?

Thanks in advance.

!rant
tl;dr I should start writing sitcoms

So my mind is going crazy. Last I night I had a dream about a colleague. He was working on a kind of smart photo frame thingie, which should be published to stores like walmart and so on. Also his 30th birthday was around the corner and his soon to be wife was driving him nuts. So the stage is set for some action. I was visiting him along to said store on the publishing day since he was that paranoid as his job was tightly connected to the success of this project. Anyway now the whole thing gets this tragic comedic type of feeling. He is about to go through a mental breakdown in the very store. Destroying things, yelling like a gramps and stuff you know from sitcoms. I swear at some point he did loose his pants. Also the staff didn't give a damn about him. I was trying to clean his path of destruction so that no one takes note of this. Of course I failed gloriously. This thing goes on for a while. Finally in some kind of credits scene he was sitting in front of his laptop reading a blog post about the success of this thingie. After an insanly long pause of suspension he was starting to kiss his monitor in relief. I swear to god there was fake laughter somewhere in the background like in the good old sitcoms.... Never eat pizza right before sleeping....

People of devRant, I need your help! I am finally buying a new laptop - ive been using a Dell N4140 for the past 4 years and I absolutely love it. But it's about time to retire the machine and upgrade.

I'm a programmer, I don't play games and haven't used windows in the last 2 years. Im looking for a 4-8GB RAM under $1000K. I plan to replace the HDD with an SSD. 13' is too small a screen and i feel 15.6' is slightly on the large side. I have a 21' external monitor anyway. My old dell was 14' and i loved it. And looks really matter for me. Alsooo, I dislike having a number pad. Its useless for me.

I know I'm picky. I can't afford a MacBook right now (about to graduate from university), but if you could help me in finding the right laptop, I'd be really grateful!

Have to do work on a trashcan of a Mac, and instead of connecting my keyboard, mouse, and monitor to the trashcan I have both my monitors and keyboard+mouse connected to my laptop. Using VNC to remote into the trashcan, allowing me to use everything without actually switching devices.

I have already gotten used to using the WIN key mapped to the CMD key on mac, but fucking VNC has ALT mapped to the CMD key.

FFS

what is your tech spec? laptop, smart phone, monitor etc ,..

I have a mini laptop ( i-ball CompBook Excelance). I want to add an extra monitor to it for coding purpose. Can I do it? Someone suggested me not to do so as monitor would require more power which this laptop will not be able to provide and would result in a short circuit. Is it so that I can't add a monitor to this kind of mini laptop? If it's possible then tell me the kind of monitor to add and it's procedure.

Also it has a 2gb sdRAM. Can I run Android Studio in that? Or can I add more RAM to it?

I know I have asked too many questions here! But please help me guys coz I think that this is the platform where I'll get answers to all my queries. The people I am surrounded with are not worthy to ask such questions. Please help!

Thanks in advance!