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re: IRS computers crashed 10 days after House committee sent letter asking...
Posted on 6/23/14 at 4:26 pm to wfeliciana
Posted on 6/23/14 at 4:26 pm to wfeliciana
quote:
You are buying off a government contract and as usual you can buy a computer on open market cheaper. SO the $2000 may be low. I had that conversation many times when I was a Fed. I could walk into Best Buy and purchase a more powerful machine for half the cost. Also, budgets don't allow for new machines to be purchased for everyone every year or even very 3 years.
I work on the State level, we spent 2012-2013 upgrading 95% of our users to Windows 7 either with new computers or adding RAM to current computers that had qualifying processors. Among our 600-700 users we have only 4 whose new machines might be in the $2k range, and those 4 do work with multiple TIFF files at a time (really, really big pics, for the non-IT crowd). The rest of the desktops were under $1k with the few laptops we purchased being about $1,200. No idea what they are using at the IRS, but we use Dells here and get a decent discount because we do so much business with them. An agency as large as the IRS should be getting a much better deal (but then again the federal government has never been known as "thrifty").
1
Posted on 6/23/14 at 4:27 pm to Bard
I have a Dell Lattitude, iPad, and iPhone. We have top notch IT where I am.
This post was edited on 6/23/14 at 4:29 pm
Posted on 6/23/14 at 4:33 pm to Federal Tiger
Rex's argument is "plausible deniability"
Jesus
Jesus
Posted on 6/23/14 at 4:46 pm to McChowder
quote:
Hard drives have a median lifespan of about 6 years.
I've seen the Backblaze article too and there are some problems with it in this scenario.
1. Those drives were used 24/7 as part of a server environment.
2. Their data only goes for 4 years, the 5th and 6th years are estimates based on the previous 4 years.
From my personal experience with regular business users, hard drives crashing are a rare bird. Even more rare is it when the crash is so severe that data can't be recovered by specialists. With our 600-700 users, it's not uncommon for hard drives to last the entire time we have the computer (we try to rotate them out every 5 years, but often the budget ends up having us extend it to 7 years and sometimes up to 10).
Posted on 6/23/14 at 4:59 pm to McChowder
quote:
They don't have to be. This is a discussion about hardware and data retention policy. When you work for the government, they don't hand you special drives you don't see commonly used in the public sector. They are the same you and I use at home.
It seems I wasn't clear in expressing what I meant to convey. No they are not special drives, but they aren't usually as good as you and I have at home. Lower end Dells or worse that are often maxed out in capacity and used for 3 or 4 years and used more than my home laptop or PC. Couple that with ridiculous security software and being part of a system that has problems. Top that off with the fact that some agencies have people using "2nd hand" computers, e.g. those replaced by better machines by one section may be the replacement for a computer that can't be fixed (economically). As I said my experience is you can't compare to private/business users/equipment/business practices. Now, 6 crashing in one office, that is very strange, if true.
Posted on 6/23/14 at 5:04 pm to wfeliciana
quote:
Now, 6 crashing in one office, that is very strange, if true.
The IRS better be able to cough up statistics on how many crashes they've had during the past 4 years.
If they've lost these 7 people just as the investigation heated up, then I'd have to think a huge percentage of the IRS would be coming down with crashes around the same time.
Posted on 6/23/14 at 5:07 pm to DelU249
quote:
Rex's argument is "plausible deniability"
When all you've got is a hammer, everything is a nail.
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