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back to article Big Blue offers staff Apples

IBMers used to be famous for filing lots of patents and for uniforms of dark blue suits and white shirts, but an internal email seen by the Reg suggests black turtle-necks, faded jeans and berets might be more in order now. Admittedly IBM flogged off its PC business to Lenovo some time ago, but we didn't expect them to so …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Devil

    Lametime?

    Can you run the awful, awful Lotus Notes and Sametime on a Mac? As part of the soul destroying process that is working for IBM you have to use these "productivity" tools so this could be a show stopper.

    Then again, it would be wonderful to have a laptop that worked and wasn't subject to all of the IBM crapware you get on a standard corporate Lenovo.

    Not that it makes a lot of difference, IBM are still evil fuckers and working for them is beyond awful so a nice laptop won't make things better.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Lotus Notes

      Yes IBM has provided mac applications via a mac@ibm internal site for years now and there is large number of mac users within IBM already.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      OSS tools available

      "Can you run the awful, awful Lotus Notes and Sametime on a Mac? As part of the soul destroying process that is working for IBM you have to use these "productivity" tools so this could be a show stopper."

      yes, there are OSS tools you can use instead of Notes and Sametime. For example, pidgin has had a Sametime plugin for quite some time now. and, http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/postfix/2006-02/0392.html .

      time recording, on the other hand, ... javur ftl.

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    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Devil

      Lotus Notes makes baby Jesus cry

      Yes, they have Mac versions too.

      "IBM are still evil fuckers"

      My team was working along-side a consulting team from IBM, they were clueless; typical bodyshop consulting, loads of bodies and not one with a clue or any idea but lots of big fees to the client. Their managers liked what we were doing, an analysis which was a different project to them although somewhat related, and after a large multi-group meeting their most senior guy on their team asked me for an electronic copy of our piece. Instead of telling them to "fuck off" I naively thought "what harm could there be?"

      I soon learnt when our entire piece of work came back to me, forwarded by a client, but plastered in IBM logos because they had simply applied their slide-master to our work (not even bothered to change from our colour palette to their or anything else, it was blatant), and then they'd pitched to take over the project by demonstrating (with our work) that they knew what they were doing.

      So yeah, "evil fuckers" sums it up for me nicely.

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    4. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Not as bad...

      ...as working for HP - I promise you that!

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not much of a 'benefit'

    You buy a computer from your pre-tax salary and are supposed to use it as your business machine? I presume that's a completely unenforcable tax rule that's completely ignored.

    Do they want you to buy your own stationary as well?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Flame

      Yes, they do,

      at least in the US.

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  3. Horridbloke
    WTF?

    Cool...

    ... so IBMers will be able to pay for their work machine instead of having their employer pay for it? Awesome.

    (IBM's HR department seemed quite upset when I turned down a job offer from them some years ago. There were things in the employment contract I really disliked.)

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Do tell

      All the dirty details

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Lenovo

    Once you read the piece about the hacked mouse you might get a feel for why IBM would prefer Macs. True - they're assembled in China but they aren't designed there.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Making employees pay for their laptops

    This is just IBM's first step to making employees pay for their own laptops. They'll start with shiny pretty Mac's and then make the employees pay for thinkpads and later their chairs...

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      title

      Oh, we've had the "opportunity" to help out our beloved employer by paying for our own business machine for quite some time. Aren't the benefits generous? We also get to pay for our own broadband if we work form home, or connect from an airport or somewhere while travelling. And if we buy a blackberry and are prepared to get our work emails forwarded to it, we are allowed to pay the company £10 a month for the privilege.

      Musn't grumble though.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Boffin

      @AC, you must not know IBM then...

      1) IGS or whatever they are calling their consulting services group today is either at a client site or at their own home. They do have an option of going in to a satellite sales office, but not many do.

      2) S&D, satellite sales office, home office or on a customer site.

      3) In a satellite office, you don't have an assigned desk. First come, first serve.

      So there is no chair for the employee.

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    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Shiny Mac's...

      It didn't start with shiny Mac's but with shiny phones. If you want a decent company mobile phone then it's self funded already. This is not the first step and certainly won't be the last. Next thing will be I have to pay IBM to work for them!...

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Big Blue

    I am glad to know I'm not the only former employee to hold them in a low regard.

    0 0
  7. dssf

    Why the rigmarole... Why the rigmarole?

    IBM should buy/lease the computers, creatively depreciate them, "dispose" of them to employee buyout AFTER the two years, and then... wait, hold on...

    YOU* "WHO"?

    Instead of dicking around with this, IBM, just modernise Lotus SmartSuite, and ditch symphony. SmartSuite may be patent-encumbered to some extent, but if you rip out that patented stuff (you have had since, when, 2002, to find out what you can rip out. Replace that functionality with up-to-date code. To me, the best parts of Smartsuire are Approach, WordPro, and 1-2-3, in that order. Sigh....

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  8. Bonzo the Wonder Dog
    Unhappy

    Corporate Wankery

    I assume that YOU* is pronounced "You Star", and was gonna make a joke about it being pronounced "You Footnote". After reading the comments from the IBMers, You Footnote doesn't seem like such a joke.

    I'm an ex-HPer. Their employee purchasing program might as well be called "YOU worthless piece of shit. No you can't have a fucking pay rise. Or a chair. What, you think this is still EDS? BWAHAHAHA!!! HIRING FREEZE TIME!!!"

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    I got a discounted MBP

    As about my last action as a 12 year IBM'r, I used the IBM employee discount with Apple to buy myself a nice 17" MBP.

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    1. Horridbloke
      Reply Icon
      Coffee/keyboard

      @AC with discounted MBP...

      That's nice. So what sort of discount did you get and did IBM get at all awkward about this "asset" (whose asset is it at that point anyway?) when you went forth?

      Not flaming you at all, I'm genuinely curious...

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