Buying a new computer. How important is an SSD drive? Would you rather have a 2TB non-SSD (7200 rpm or whatever is good) or a 240GB SSD?

2TB easy. I have 250GB on my mac pro now and I'm always running out of room.

I have to store itunes on a separate drive which of course Apple turns into a gigantic PITA where you have to trick it to change locations and I always have to google how to do it. Hey ****faces - how about you make it a goddamn setting?

Before everyone @s me, here's the flow:
1. Move itunes library to an external drive.
2. Boot itunes, let it complain it can't find the itunes library, then point it to the external drive.
3. After that, any time you want to use itunes, and don't have your external drive plugged in, you have to let it create a new local itunes library - or itunes won't start.
4. When you actually want to access your music, you have to delete the local drive itunes library and start over at step 2.

Ridiculous. The only thing I do with my music is load it onto iPods. I don't need access to it 24-7.

How much space do you need? Go for an SSD if you can afford it, it's nice to have stuff load faster.

On my last couple computers I've gone with a smaller SSD drive as a main drive (OS/applications), larger non-SSD secondary drive for data (mostly games that need like 50GB of space).

Those numbers are tough since I think 240GB is just a touch too small for me. But that's mostly due to storing pictures. I think SSD is clearly way better than non-SSD. I remember getting a SSD being one of the most noticeable improvements I'd seen with a new computer.

I guess I'd probably go with the 240GB SSD and just make do with fewer pictures stored locally.

My biggest gripe at the new job was the old-school 3 week vacation policy. They just announced at the quarterly all-hands meeting that they are paying out all accrued vacation and going to a flexible vacation policy.

I had this at my last employer and as long as you aren't shy about using it, it's freaking awesome.

Whichever is cheaper, because as long as it isn't soldered in, I'd be replacing either one with a bigger SSD.

You can get a perfectly adequate 1TB 2.5" SATA III SSD for $110-$120 now (AData or Crucial), $~150 for a quite good Sandisk or Samsung SSD, and <$200 for a high performance Sandisk or Samsung one.

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/in...t=price&page=1

I just pay them to stream whatever I want and don't worry about where my stuff is... Of course that's after I went through what you're doing and had it erase all my playlists...

I have about 1500 hours of music. Luckily I have it saved elsewhere in case Apple gets frisky and deletes everything. I'm also out in the middle of nowhere a lot where streaming isn't an option.

They still managed to screw me by moving every song into its own folder. So it's almost impossible to deal with. I think I un/checked the wrong box one time for it to re-organize everything for me. I could reload the music but then I lose all my playlists.

IMO you need an SSD. If the SSD doesn't have enough space get an SSD and a second hard drive, but run the OS and your most used apps off the SSD. Or replace the SSD. Or whatever, but definitely have an SSD :P

Its a ****ing trap. My place is a FFA with hours and its a nightmare. Creates resentment between people if not well managed (it never is in my opinion).

Idk. I’d love an old school policy, both as a manager and someone whod like to take time off. I’m taking my first non-sick days off on the week of christmas. And I’m just taking two days. That’s for the ENTIRE YEAR and i still felt like I had to justify it and bad for taking it because we’re a little slammed, and if i am out of office i feel like things will fall apart

This is C. Just realloc for basic allocation, free for releasing memory.

I think some locks are being held somewhere. I cant find them. I need a command line tool that can profile memory usage per function.

IT loves people who don't take vacations and manage to get a **** ton done before burning out and changing jobs where they don't take vacations and get a **** ton done... Vacation is always at your managers discretion regardless of how they account for it, so ask for it. I'd wager 90% of the time you think they need you and you don't take a long weekend they don't.

I bought the smaller SSD. I have an old HD I can use externally and there are various clouds. I'm going to try to keep everyone from putting a gazillion songs and pictures on here.

I'm going to be doing and hosting (remotely) some websites, so one way or another I'm going to have access to lots of remote storage.

This is my first SSD. And it's a cheap computer. And just setting it up and installing some of the software I use I'm very happy. It does have 8gigs of RAM (I've probably never had more than 4) so that helps I'm sure.

Unlimited vacation is a huge scam though. Employers know that employees will take the same or less vacation under an unlimited policy. And they don't have to maintain a cash balance to cover vacation days so they removed a massive liability from their balance sheets.

And for employees the value of their benefits goes down. Under the old school policy it was possible to get paid for more than 52 weeks a year. That is no longer true with the new policy

How old was the computer you are replacing? It sounds like you haven't had a new computer for so long it confuses me.

What's "FFA with hours"? Given the context I'd assume flexible/unlimited?

Anyway, you need some swag and confidence to take what's yours. Vacation is something you are entitled to, your employer does not get to take all of your time all year long. If their policy says that you get flexible vacations then take some flexible vacations, and if people try to call you on it, ask them what the **** they're doing with their lives that they feel the need not only to spend all their time at the office but to make sure everyone else does too.

On average, maybe. Looking at our HR app I've taken 29 vacation days this year, and 25 last year (at least - probably an extra day here and there that I just verbally confirmed with my manager and forgot to formally request). This is probably slightly higher than the number of days I'd get on an old-school policy, and at no point in time has anyone ever subtly hinted that I'm approaching some kind of socially-enforced limit at our company (and I probably would take a little more if not for my gf being more limited in the time she can take off at her job).

This. I got two sweet payouts at my last job - one when our company changed our ability to roll-over vacation days, so they did a one time payout. And one when I left that I had accrued for the year.

Can confirm. I saw Microbet a couple weeks ago and his laptop looked like one I had in the early 2000s.

In most of my work situations we'd have too many crunch time projects for me to even think about taking this many days. They hated when you take more than a week off at a time - even in slow times. I had to go to the wall to get 2 weeks to travel when they sent me to India to work for 2 weeks.

Note this is a normal vacation company - but anyone there 5 years had tons of time. What a lot of them ended up doing is just take Fridays off the last half of the year. Bleh.

The variance on an "unlimited policy" is definitely higher since it depends so much on culture and company implementing it. It can be amazing and it can be super ****ty. Although going from 3 weeks of formal vacation time to unlimited seems like an obvious win.

The thing I like the best about "unlimited" vacation is that I never care about long weekends / leaving early / appointments / sick days / etc. If I need a little bit of time off I just take it and nobody ever cares at all.

The thing I like the least about "unlimited" vacation is that it makes it hard to negotiate actual effective time off. If you have set vacation days - you can negotiate for more or sacrifice pay for time off pretty easily. That's hard to do with "unlimited" policies.

At the two big corporations I worked at - Fridays were a wfh day and if you didn't work no one cared. We could definitely take off a day here and there and just say wfh and no one cared.

It was just taking any more than a week that was a huge PITA. I really wish the US was like Europe and people were almost expected to take a big chunk every year. I wouldn't be nearly as stressed about working the next 10 years if I knew I could take a month off each year to see some part of the world.

wrt flexible vacation, a friend/coworker did encounter this recently here: he had a vacation scheduled last month, and then wound up becoming a critical part of a last-minute project we started (important to emphasize: vacation was booked and scheduled before any of this project ever came about).

One of the execs strongly suggested he not go on this vacation, and made a pathetic offer of $5k to cover costs of re-booking the same (international) vacation in January. Worth noting that my friend had scored business class tickets at a mistake price (super low) for this vacation, and would likely not be able to do so again.

Coworker declined and went on his vacation. Nothing happened. As a developer, you have tons of irreplaceable value to your employer, don't let them treat you like a cog.

This sounds like a dystopian hellscape

I fight the system by doing my job half-assed.

I fight the system by surfing 2p2, twitter and chiefsplanet until 3pm every day.

Hah, I've had this discussion with a few people recently in similar situations where they were worried about not doing something their employer really wanted them to do.

But if you're so important that they're desperate for you to do something like skip your vacation, do you really think if you go on your vacation suddenly you become worthless? Of course not!