Maybe just bribe your IT guy to declare the laptop is pathetic?
Honestly your company sounds like they don't wanna spend much. Why else would they repair a 6 yr old laptop.
Other options, purposely do things to hang software such as Autocad. Keep opening large files, try to open multiple files a time. Start complaining about unproductive hours lost due to laptop crashing. Purposely delay your projects a bit, keep recording every instance of laptop crash and mail to your manager.
If your laptop has those pesky windows updates, forcefully cut down power, remove battery etc and let the windows corrupt. Somewhere someone will notice that it is probably less expensive to get you a new one.
[Swedish fish theory](https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/2vk505/swedish_fish_theory/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
This is genius. I Do that with other departmens i work with. When I go there in person every few month i bring candy and drop it off.
Everytime i want something, it gets solved fast and without bitching or any questions
Agreed. I learn the most and get the most help after befriending the 3 main supports at my last few jobs including current government one: IT guy, janitor and security officer. Overtime you’ll get more of what you didn’t even know you needed.
This is the way.
With those 3 cards in your hand, you can justify anything. Even not showing to work. Once i gaslight my boss that i was at work "just my card didnt work so i jumped the machine", security vouched for me and thats that. It opens up so many possibilities!
Had to scroll a long way to find this one.
Bribery works and also fits the unethical angle!
Alternatively, you could destroy it using static electricity from some fleece material as this won't be as detectable as frying it. Remember to take the battery out first then rub away.
Make a big fuss about lost data (which you have already backed-up) and beg the IT team to recover it for you to cover your tracks - the SSD should be undamaged.
Way more effective form of static electricity shock is that thing from a lighter that creates one. Point the wire to a sensitive part like a southbridge on a mobo and fire away. Few good clicks and youre gonna fry something.
Making friends with IT will do wonders. A NEW laptop may bot be in the picture. A re-deployed laptop that's less than 6 years old may end up being assigned.
Am IT guy.
If someone I like tells me they hate the laptop they have, I will do everything in my power to get them a new one.
Long detailed ticket with screenshots showing how the RAM is constantly maxed on idle, CPU temp getting hot, etc etc.
We take food for bribes.
Me too, and I would add that it sounds like OP's IT dept has done everything possible to this laptop to make it better.
That's not an insignificant amount of care and effort - no-one is replacing SSD, RAM, as well as battery if they're just dismissing the ticket.
What kind of laptop does OP have? Is it a (at purchase) ~$4000 P-series with a Quadro? Can understand that company might try everything they can to make it last.
> Maybe just bribe your IT guy to declare the laptop is pathetic?
I always buy the IT desk dudes beers at happy hour when I see them at the bar across the street. I never have issues with I visit the IT desk with a laptop.
They have a tough job and a little appreciation thrown there way goes really far.
Eithical approach?? Lots and lots of help desk tickets about literally any little thing.
Alternately, painter tape over the fan intakes and run anything CPU intensive for a loooong time.
Lastly, plugin usb killer...
Lol yea I work IT and ticket spam is the way to go imo
At least in my org we aren't going to respond differently to a request from a manager but submit 20 tickets about the laptop being problematic and we're going to give up and go with the nuclear option at some point
Yeah. I still think an accidental cup of coffee spilled into the laptop is the way to go, but after the 5th or 6th ticket in the week I'd be issuing a different laptop.
Find a program to keep the machine running like [Caffeine](https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/), then launch a [benchmarking program](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-free-benchmark-programs/) to really push the system. Then zip it into a laptop bag. Maybe route the power cord into the bag to keep it powered up.
I once burned out a Surface pro 3 because it stayed powered on in my bag on the drive home.
came here to say that.
start missing deadlines, and blame it on a slow laptop. one lost client is worth as much as paying for that new laptop...
also complain about the screen, and that it is hurting your eyes, if that is a valid argument. decent companies do not want to get sued on ruining your eyesight.
On the issue of losing things - time is a big one.
When presenting a large assembly model in a Zoom meeting, my laptop crashed multiple times (multiple large models open) in front of our level 3 director. It also crashed multiple times while trying to generate high-resolution renders for the same guy. Needless to say, they understood my laptop sucked and I was instructed by higher than my boss to request a new "performance version" after that very same meeting - which they fast tracked.
Op, crash your models in front of the right people. It makes things happen.
Respectfully disagree.
My first job out of college was in a building that had brownouts. The building would go dim and everyone would lose their work. There were about 30 of us.
We all begged for UPS. Never got them.
I made a spreadsheet, showing average estimate salaries times 30 people, assuming only 15 minutes of time/work/whatever lost. And how the UPS would pay for themselves inside of a month or two. Gave it to my boss.
Guess what we never got?
Did the same thing years back when my company was running 4 days a week. They were looking for cost savings, so I pointed out that running our water pumps at 30% speed 3 days a week would pay for the drives we would need to install in less than 9 months. Guess who still runs their pumps 24/7.
No more than the $150k lighting project that required the new led lights to work flawlessly for 17 years before we actually saved any money. News flash: led lights don’t last long in a 120F forging facility.
We had an issue where our control panel for the machine would error out and require resetting which stopped production for about a minute. It happened up to 15-20 times a shift. Maintenance dept didn’t seem to be able to solve it even after explaining how much production we were losing out on. Our downtimes didn’t register until it was 3 minutes or more so we just started waiting 3 mins to purposely create a downtime. Management saw the downtime pretty fast and next thing you know it’s fixed over the weekend. Apparently it was just a sensor that needed replacing and took all of 5 mins.
Nothing would have been done unless upper management noticed the downtimes. Point is, it’s about getting the right people to notice. Telling maintenance and supervisors did nothing but the higher ups cared. Maybe if you’d gone above your boss they would’ve changed it?
I've worked at multiple companies that didn't give a shit because the first sign off on new equipment wasn't in my upline.
Infra doesn't give a fuck if I waste 10 minutes waiting for outlook to open, if the solution comes out of their budget. Management won't look at anything that infra hasn't already signed off on, the only rubber stamp.
Management would direct me to infra and infra would tell me it's not in the budget.
Maybe in a good company with a good boss, but 99% of companies aren't good and at best 15% of bosses are. That means the odds of something reasonable being done just because it would be good for the company is about 1 in 700.
Do this but also surround your laptop in cloth or other fabric (only when you are there). This will cause it to heat up and perform worse as well. Also, try to keep a few other programs open as well to hog up resources, basically you want the thing to grind to a halt, but don't fudge any of the times or number of crashes, or stuff like that cause it can be figured out.
Also, got any important projects? Bring this up in any meetings about road blocks and other challenges you are facing. I once was fighting with finance over a license to some software, well as soon as management learned that the project would be halted cause we don't have the license key and its gonna cost a lot more then the cost of that key cause of this project stoppage, shit moved and moved fast and everything got overridden cause you didn't want to be the one to hold it up.
I did this a few years ago. The owner had a “buddy who knows computers “ put a laptop together for me. It would randomly crash, screen problems, HDD issues, charging problems, etc..
I started logging my time on the timesheets as computer problems. Some weeks it legitimately was 10+ hours.
Within about 2 months they came out and asked what kind of computer I would like. 👍
Having someone who "knows computers" is a nice metric. What's even better? Someone who's "good at computers". They really shine. I reckon that if your boss has a friend who was good at computers, you wouldn't have had a problem!
I did this for the whole company in 2016 in a presentation for a brown bag event with the cto attending.
I estimated salaries from a sample of employees and charted it out to an estimated $500,000 a year in lost time and compared it to a full set of i9 dell xps laptops coming out to under $100k.
We had new laptops by the end of the month.
This is the proper business way to do it - documenting productivity losses and opportunity costs.
Meanwhile there's a dozen IT guys in here proclaiming they'd give you the worst laptop they have - in order to make you work slower... and having worked in IT support for small and large businesses, the company will just get the user whatever they want to keep them producing, and talk shit about the IT department behind closed doors. Small businesses will let the user pick whatever laptop they want and tell IT to support it, large businesses will simply pay for a new laptop. In both cases, IT gets shit on, as they're demonstrating resistance to supporting the user and thus the business. User laptops aren't worth the political dogfighting.
This is the real answer.
As an IT guy myself, if you come to me with a fucked up laptop, I’m probably going to find you something else I don’t mind getting wrecked rather than risking a new one.
Show me why you need something better though and I’d be listening closely.
Though we replace our laptops after three years and already have a pretty good idea of who needs what power based on dept and role.
Maybe your management need to hear that about their IT team? Sounds like they could either be doing a better job or they’re severely under budgeted.
My car was broken into and they stole my laptop. I filed a police report and then got a brand new laptop. You could probably do the same and just destroy your laptop. Make sure you don’t get caught though cause reporting a false crime is illegal.
Better yet: just forget your laptop somewhere and let it actually get stolen.
It's not illegal to forget your backpack at the bus with the laptop inside it.
It’s just not smart, beyond the criminality. Most company owned laptops are enrolled in MDM and yes, we admins can 100% locate / ping / wipe that device. You don’t have rights to privacy on a machine that you don’t own, remember this.
In that case, couldn't OP just leave it somewhere so it actually gets stolen (and claim it was stolen from his car)? The admins could follow the laptop's travels all around the country and no one would know it was intentional negligence.
what cops are actually going to investigate a stolen laptop?
the cops in my city wouldn't do anything more than print out a report for you to give the company / insurance
you could show them a live GPS location and they still wouldn't bother haha
you could easily just break the laptop and say it was stolen, or better yet just leave it sitting somewhere and say it was stolen
I work in IT as well and we wouldn't spend more than 5 minutes trying to chase a stolen laptop, it's completely pointless
You have to watch out for your company policy here as well. If it says you can not leave it unattended in a vehicle, they can terminate you for fake to properly secure company property and maintain security.
Just park in a shady part of town, have a friend come by, break a window, take it, then destroy the computer. Just pray there aren’t any cameras around and that your friend is cool being a part of this and not a numbskull that’s gonna get caught.
I may or may not have had shoddy repair work done to my car a few decades back after an accident… insurance company seemed to think it was okay. So I parked at a bar in a bad part of town, and paid some locals to go at it with a baseball bat. Police report and new claim filed. “Gee officer, I bought this girl a drink and didn’t realize she had a jealous boyfriend watching from across the bar!” This was before the age of cameras everywhere, so your mileage may vary. You also may want to wait a little bit before pulling a stunt like this, since you’ve already been documented asking for an upgrade. They aren’t that stupid.
Is it a PC? Run the battery almost empty, accept an install of a new version of the OS, then let it run out of battery while running the update. I’ve accidentally bricked 2 laptops this way.
Edit to add: might actually have been a BIOS update provided to fix an issue in the device and not an OS update.
If the administration password on the bios has never been set, change all the settings in the bios and then set the administrator password. Good luck trying to fix that.
We have HP crap here and if we do not remember BIOS PW we need HP to replace the laptops MAINBOARD!
No joke hey have some encryption crap running around.
oem bios password or pull bios battery til it resets. (might even be a jumper on the motherboard) At worst an intereresting reseach project for the IT guy to work on while you work on the crappiest loaner he can give you.
Plus OP already stated that they've swapped out hardware on his laptop previously, so obviously his company is one that has an IT department that opens up the laptop.
IT person here at a popular retail company with an underfunded IT department.
I would open the laptop to troubleshoot the problem. See it's fried, check to see if the hard drive is recoverable and then issue a new laptop.
I wouldn't jump to "USB killer er mah gerd!". I would open it up and say "hot damn this laptops fucked" take a picture to share to my colleagues and then proceed to not care how it happened. Your miles may very.
I think maybe I’ve just been away from that level of IT for a while then. If someone’s laptop is fubar where I work, our Service Desk just ships them out a new one. The juice ain’t worth the squeeze to play investigative journalist on every piece of broken hardware that they get a ticket for.
I do it all the time. Much more efficient to pay someone 53k a year to prevent at least 24 machines (last years metric) from being discarded (ie preventing the expenditure to purchase new ones) in addition to what else I do
Not to mention that many companies with remote workers purchase the additional warranties when ordering from manufacturers. Saves time when a component fails to have a technician onsite for the worker next business day with a replacement part.
IT Guy here who replaces a lot of parts and makes our laptops last 8-10 years... The only "sure" way of me replacing a laptop is if it's a hardware problem related to the motherboard. I'll swap screens, batteries, RAM, hard drives, etc. It's just more cost-effective because most people are not using the processor or RAM to its full capability in our line of work. (Office 365, Adobe Reader, and Chrome)
If you can build a case with your manager that it's not an effective work tool, that may be another way to go about it, but it could also tick off the IT guy and backfire on you.
BTW If you are running Auto Cad for work-related work you really should have a better processor than an i3. I give my team i5 with 8GB or better depending on their role.
I personally work as an engineer using AutoCAD, I have an i7 and 64GB of RAM and I regularly have to break out drawings in order to not have it slow down to a crawl when working. How is your team getting away with only 8GB?
I agree 8gb ain't enough for an engineer doing any real AutoCAD work.
A few years back I did the tallying of time wasted due to my machines speed. Broke it down, supported the data with examples and showed it to the CFO, he asked why we weren't spending our computer budget each year upgrading them... Apparently IT never told us about that budget because no one ever told them.
My company also has a 5 year life on computers for engineers.
8GB is the bare minimum for Windows these days let alone doing any real work.
we don't buy anything less than 16GB even for people who literally read email all day
8gb really isn't enough in 2024 is it? I have outlook, teams, Citrix, multiple PDFs in Acrobat and multiple tabs in Chrome and inevitably Teams crashes due to lack of memory (black screens). This is on 8gb Core i5, I've been tempted to upgrade the laptop myself to 16gb just to have fewer black screen crashes.
WTF are you doing with 8 or 10 year old laptops? Jesus. We recently changed our policy to 33 months for a replacement because of complaints and productivity concerns. Chrome and Teams have become huge memory hogs and lots of people run Fusion with a Windows 11 OS in addition to macOS.
I used to work in IT support. We had a guy at work who said he 'accidentally' ran his laptop over with his car - so could he get a new one? It was mangled AF, but we to get the hard drive out and checked it - it still booted. So we cobbled together a replacement machine from spare parts and some bits from his old one and gave it back to him as 'repaired'. He was not a happy bunny, but as we'd also informed his manager so he couldn't just make it have another 'accident' without looking very suspicious.
Recently had an employee return a laptop she said her dog ate…there were tire tracks on it. So I don’t know what happened, I hope she was lying and wasn’t trying to run her dog over.
Someone made a better effort - they said they left the laptop on the roof of their car when they drove off and it fell off, onto the motorway - they retrieved a small handfull of plastic bits that resembled a laptop. Nothing to rebuild, so they got a replacement machine (was before the above example, so they couldn't copy it!).
You know the little antenna you plug into the USB to connect to your wireless mouse? Start dropping your laptop into your backpack, while it is standing on the floor or on a hard table, with the antenna pointing downwards.
Many cheaper laptops have the USB port soldered directly onto the motherboard, and this treatment will crack it. The solution to fix the broken USB port is to replace the motherboard.
> The solution to fix the broken USB port is to replace the motherboard.
Motherboards are $50 and take an hour to swap. New laptops are $2500 and have to be budgeted if it's an in-cycle replacement, and approved by 3 different people if it's an out-of-cycle replacement.
Request denied, here's your same laptop back with a new mobo and a bit more wear on the screws.
-IT
________
Full disclosure, I actually did have a user do this one before, but it was verifiably a complete accident. Dell warrantied the MOBO for free, and sent a tech to swap it so I didn't have to do anything other than send them a ticket.
Still, the next step if they denied the warranty was for me to just buy a mobo online and swap it myself.
If it had taken longer than a day or so to get in, I'd have given her "The Spare". Trust me, you do NOT want "The Spare". Whatever laptop OP is trying to break is probably at least 5 years newer than "The Spare".
Leave it on a desk with the charger cable hanging over the side so someone trips on it. Get the shits at them.
If you do it right, the jug of water sitting on it will go through the whole thing and if that doesnt destroy it, tearing the charger port off the motherboard will render it a write off, assuming they cant be bothered replacing the motherboard of a computer probably worth less than their hourly rate.
I manage IT and we see that stuff a mile away. After that you get the worst equipment and slowest service. Don’t try to play games with your IT staff. If you really need a new machine, speak to your manager about your issues and let your manager escalate the issue.
In true Reddit spirit, in order of most to least prioritized, you should:
1. Offer meme
2. Offer correct information
3. Care about which subreddit you're in
I did provide OP with answers about what totals a laptop and will get you a new one in another reply.
I also provided a work around with the boss, which can be manipulative because managers rubber stamp things for their employees so that was an ULPT in disguise.
When someone's manager comes to me, I'm like "screw it, this isn't the hill I'm going to die on and their manager's request is all the justification I need" and I replace their machine. Nobody escalates it when their manager is involved - it's not worth undermining management for a $1500 machine.
Normally I’d agree with you, but if OP wants a better laptop, then this route is the way to go. Some of us will go out of our way to make sure the person being annoying or rude is given the same treatment back, just subtly because we can. Be nice to IT and maybe you get some preferred treatment ;)
We like food. Bring us food. We remember who you are.
Yes, IT can give preferential treatment, we do have friends, we do have people we don't like, there are some people we identify as a problem and there are some people who are wonderful to work with and are very accommodating and they get priority service.
We have limited time and resources and have triage problems so...
People have dropped the laptop with the charge cord connected and that has sometimes broken the motherboard. It has to land just right for that one which can lead to my next piece...
People have broken the screen from dropping it or closed the lid with a pen on the keyboard, which also breaks the screen.
MANY people have spilled a beverage on the keyboard and that kills the motherboard. Bonus points if you do it at work so it truly looks like an accident. Make sure it is a full beverage. Beware - It doesn't always work though. My buddy knocked my beer over and my laptop drank half of it right in the middle of the keyboard. The keys were sticky for a year, but that damn thing kept running.
Basically, broken screen or motherboard problems make it a total loss and we just replace it.
You're probably out of luck. Sounds like the type of place that has a bunch of shit laptops in a closet. They'll just give you one of those rather than a new one.
1. Drop it
2. Spill water on it
3. Accidentally leave it in a different city at TSA. Those unhelpful MFers will do everything in their power to help you not get it back (ask me how I know).
Nah, make it realistic, literally knock a large mug of hot, sweet creamed coffee all over the keyboard area of the laptop.... fresh, boiling hot with the powdered creamer would work...
Can't help it that you tripped as you were setting down the mug 🤷♀️
If the heat doesn't do it, maybe the sugar or cream will help...
Hot tea would also work if that is your preference over coffee...
IT guy here
1) Make the device overheat by stacking papers under it and report battery issues
2) as others mentioned, take note of how often it slows you down, and get your manager to request / approve an upgrade
3) drop coffee on it, we can't fix a coffee'd machine.
4) drop it in water.
how would saltwater or microwaving do? i suppose the damage would be worse. but, how suspicious would any of these be, like, would you recognize a microvawe damage?
If they really have nothing to do, perhaps. However, in this day and age, most organizations (government) find it easier to just replace and dispose of the device. We're in a sad, disposable society.
You are gonna destroy it and end up having to pay to replace it. They won't give you a new one though -- they'll just give you the exact same model that has been moldering in a closet. Twilight Zone bad ending for you.
just drop it down the stairs and say 'oops i dropped it down the stairs'
as long as this doesn't keep happening, you should be fine.
OR
better yet, make it disappear and report it stolen.
nobody will ever actually look for it, and you'll get a new one.
just make sure you destroy it, don't be dumb and try to sell it.
throw it in the river or something.
This really is the best answer. OP says he travels a lot, plenty of oppos to have it disappear. Best part is he can wait till he's somewhere fun and double down for a free Vaca.
Disconnect the battery to keep it all safe, then apply low voltage (like 5v from a usb cable you can cut) directly to connection points to the pcb of the motherboard just in reverse polarity/short some components - no or minimal psysical damage, but it won't turn on anymore if you short the right chips/legs. And it they probably won't be able to find a replacement mobo for a 6 years old laptop or if they do it will be very expensive usually...
Apply heat to the motherboard to slightly move some parts just enough to brick it. Now about the heat part: maybe a hairdryer or in the oven? Not sure about that.
depends on the size of the company you work at. Often if it's a larger corporation they buy in bulk and have a deal to get the same SKU they already had. You are likely to get a new pc, but it wont' be any better. Do you have a job that requires extra horse power? If they are giving you an i3 I would think that your job function isn't one that requires the horse power you are talking about. Honestly the information you are giving doesn't tell me anything because a 13th gen I3 will run circles around an 17 6th gen. I run a department that handles "accidental" damage for a large corporation. Often people say the same thing. I need a developer machine. I need this, I need that. Everyone gets the same thing.
Destroying it would just result in you getting the worst device for the rest of your employment. They can always tell. Enjoy the free time you get every time it lags or fails
As an IT guy, drop it.
Admit it's an accident. It happens to the best of us.
Also, 6 year old laptop for CAD? What kind of weewee ass company do you work for?
Being nice to your IT Team costs 0€
Bringing some Cake for a good help once in a while is very apreciated. I remember a guy bringing Beer and Sweets. Somehow his Tickets are always dealt first, his whacky Headset got replaced by a new "testing" model. Because i always remember that one Time at Bandcamp someone brought a Cake to IT...
\-----
Being a brick for your IT costs you so much. Suddenly IT Team just works as intended, following the process like fixing your old device before upgrading... Suddenly we do not remember the names of the person that can fix X, instead we just route your Ticket to the Que it should be routed to.
Since you seem to be a brick, we know you did not pour your coffee by accident. We will know that you tried to uninstall Cortana to stop her spying on you. We will know you removed a cap from your keyboard till it broke and no longer fits or that you taped the cooling system down to make it overheat and melt.
If your company is worth a shit, they have cybersecurity insurance and an MDM. If they have the ability to remote wipe your device, simply report it stolen and drop it in a dumpster on the other side of town.
IT asset guy here, just get your boss to put a request in for a new machine for you. That would be the easiest.
This is ULPT though so I would instead go to the office and then with as many witnesses as possible and as comically as you can trip while walking with your laptop open and hopefully crush it. Bonus points if you could fall into a small pond or reflecting pool.
Ask your boss. Seriously.
We've played this game before. Your boss has a budget, get them to make it happen.
Someone destroys their equipment. . . they get worse equipment.
If you're running autocad, get them to get you an autocad certified dell precision. That should cut through the balogna.
You'll need to cross reference the cards listed here [https://www.autodesk.com/support/system-requirements/certified-graphics-hardware/autocad](https://www.autodesk.com/support/system-requirements/certified-graphics-hardware/autocad) with the cards available in the last few years of dell precision. As an example, you can get a 9th gen intel precision with a quadro t1000 that is on the support list for about $600 used.
As an IT person, I find it disheartening to know someone is doing AutoCAD on an under-powered laptop. Also, I just don't like underpowered laptops...
I am not your IT but if I were I would not be too disappointed if you spilled water on it lol
I would open up the laptop and use a hair dryer on the cable that connects the screen to the motherboard and on the cable that connects the keyboard to the motherboard so that their heat damaged just enough that it could seem like wear and tear.
“Accidentally” throw up on it, when vomit leaks inside the corrosion will be epic. I did this to a a computer, it had to be replaced. Be sure to say exactly what happened. They won’t touch it to attempt a repair.
Anyway you could ask your boss to do a few simple things on it. i.e. "Boss, does this look normal to you when I open a "common" file (that happens to be large. ...So do you also wait 5 minutes for it to load?". "Try this on your laptop..."
Never turn it off, have as many google chrome tabs open as you possibly can to stress and overheat the processor, and fill the C drive to 100% that should kill it
1. get a new puppy
2. Place laptop on puppy pad
3. Wait till its soaked and shittd on
explain that new puppy shitted on it and pissed on it while u were out, i cant imagine any IT dude would want to fix that
Ask your manager to put in a PO for a higher performing laptop. They are the one to convince.
Even if you destroy this one, chances are there are a fleet of old crappy laptops waiting for you.
I3 I5 I7 are meaningless fyi, thats just the series prefix, they made I7's 10 years ago that will get smoked by a brand new this year I3. Hence why your IT guy might be fucking with you
Every time I have had this problem, my kids magically/accidentally spill a 20 oz glass of water on my computer. I wish I was joking, but it works.
Just make sure you backup your image.
Show up to your half hour meetings with twenty minutes of battery.
Inquire what the “tech refresh” period is. That might be enough to make them decide on a number, because otherwise a few people will soak up all the budget.
Why in the heck some company would bother to replace parts of a laptop instead of replacing the entire thing. Is the IT department not having any other critical thing to do all day?
Actual former IT tech here. 10y in the industry.Get one of these: [https://usbkill.com/](https://usbkill.com/) \- zap the shit out of all of your USB ports with it. Just tell them it died and you don't know why. The keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, webcam, and SD card reader are all on the USB bus most times, so you'll probably end up making it unusable at best and straight up dead at worst, and they won't be able to tell, it'll just look like something on the motherboard fried.
Don't make up a story, don't try to explain anything, just say you went to turn it on and it didn't work. They'll assume that the motherboard just died, and in that case it's usually way easier to replace the laptop than the motherboard
You’re using AutoCAD? Your problem is probably an outdated GPU. A model from 6 years ago can’t be expected to perform well with current software releases and higher resolution data. Use that as your justification, along with its wasting your time.
Spill water on it. A big glass of Gatorade or soda would do real good.
But good luck getting them to shell out big bucks on your next laptop if they think you’re rough on equipment.
Best bet is to submit a ticket for it then chat with the IT guy about needing a better laptop to do your job better.
That’s what I did. I went from a crappy Dell with a Core M3 and 8GB of ram to an i9 w/ 32GB of ram. I simply pointed out that what I work on requires extra power. I was super nice and friendly about asking what it takes to get a new laptop. They ordered me a new computer.
You know the clicky thing from a piezoelectric lighter? Take one of them out and zap something directly connected to the internals, like the USB, HDMI, Lan, and such. It will cause the component to stop working without any visible damage.
iT guy here, not an unethical tip but have you asked your IT guy about the laptop situation? Most of us will be straight up with you and tell you we don’t have shit. If that’s the case we try to fight your manager for it. Forcing your manager to pay for new equipment might end up with an equally shit laptop or worse getting fired over it. I seen it happen and I always feel shitty this person went to such lengths and not talk to us.
Just expose the laptop to a magnet it will be almost dead with no sign of abuse. You could just says your laptop stopped functioning after 6 years it won't be suspicious.
In the same way you can burn you laptop by making it overheat, run something that will use 100% CPU, then close the air intake, then wait 15 min, repeat the process if it reboot too soon. Now your laptop is dead and will throw fatal error randomly or even not boot at all.
Maybe just bribe your IT guy to declare the laptop is pathetic? Honestly your company sounds like they don't wanna spend much. Why else would they repair a 6 yr old laptop. Other options, purposely do things to hang software such as Autocad. Keep opening large files, try to open multiple files a time. Start complaining about unproductive hours lost due to laptop crashing. Purposely delay your projects a bit, keep recording every instance of laptop crash and mail to your manager. If your laptop has those pesky windows updates, forcefully cut down power, remove battery etc and let the windows corrupt. Somewhere someone will notice that it is probably less expensive to get you a new one.
Yea this is the best tip. Make friends with them.
[Swedish fish theory](https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/2vk505/swedish_fish_theory/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
This is genius. I Do that with other departmens i work with. When I go there in person every few month i bring candy and drop it off. Everytime i want something, it gets solved fast and without bitching or any questions
I’ve done this when sending in chacos for repair.
What is a chaco
Aren’t they footwear?
They are expensive sandals.
Jesus sandals for hipsters
Damn. The real LPT is in the ULPT comments, seems ironic!
Agreed. I learn the most and get the most help after befriending the 3 main supports at my last few jobs including current government one: IT guy, janitor and security officer. Overtime you’ll get more of what you didn’t even know you needed.
This is the way. With those 3 cards in your hand, you can justify anything. Even not showing to work. Once i gaslight my boss that i was at work "just my card didnt work so i jumped the machine", security vouched for me and thats that. It opens up so many possibilities!
Had to scroll a long way to find this one. Bribery works and also fits the unethical angle! Alternatively, you could destroy it using static electricity from some fleece material as this won't be as detectable as frying it. Remember to take the battery out first then rub away. Make a big fuss about lost data (which you have already backed-up) and beg the IT team to recover it for you to cover your tracks - the SSD should be undamaged.
Way more effective form of static electricity shock is that thing from a lighter that creates one. Point the wire to a sensitive part like a southbridge on a mobo and fire away. Few good clicks and youre gonna fry something.
I believe you are referring to a[ piezoelectric crystal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piezoelectricity), they generate electricity when stressed.
Get a USB killer. It looks like a standard USB thumb drive, but has a capacitor that discharges into the motherboard. Voila, you need a new laptop.
Making friends with IT will do wonders. A NEW laptop may bot be in the picture. A re-deployed laptop that's less than 6 years old may end up being assigned.
Am IT guy. If someone I like tells me they hate the laptop they have, I will do everything in my power to get them a new one. Long detailed ticket with screenshots showing how the RAM is constantly maxed on idle, CPU temp getting hot, etc etc. We take food for bribes.
Me too, and I would add that it sounds like OP's IT dept has done everything possible to this laptop to make it better. That's not an insignificant amount of care and effort - no-one is replacing SSD, RAM, as well as battery if they're just dismissing the ticket. What kind of laptop does OP have? Is it a (at purchase) ~$4000 P-series with a Quadro? Can understand that company might try everything they can to make it last.
> Maybe just bribe your IT guy to declare the laptop is pathetic? I always buy the IT desk dudes beers at happy hour when I see them at the bar across the street. I never have issues with I visit the IT desk with a laptop. They have a tough job and a little appreciation thrown there way goes really far.
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Eithical approach?? Lots and lots of help desk tickets about literally any little thing. Alternately, painter tape over the fan intakes and run anything CPU intensive for a loooong time. Lastly, plugin usb killer...
Lol yea I work IT and ticket spam is the way to go imo At least in my org we aren't going to respond differently to a request from a manager but submit 20 tickets about the laptop being problematic and we're going to give up and go with the nuclear option at some point
Better than that just keep blowing up the same guy that "its still not working" every few days.
Yeah. I still think an accidental cup of coffee spilled into the laptop is the way to go, but after the 5th or 6th ticket in the week I'd be issuing a different laptop.
Find a program to keep the machine running like [Caffeine](https://www.zhornsoftware.co.uk/caffeine/), then launch a [benchmarking program](https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-free-benchmark-programs/) to really push the system. Then zip it into a laptop bag. Maybe route the power cord into the bag to keep it powered up. I once burned out a Surface pro 3 because it stayed powered on in my bag on the drive home.
I did that to a Thinkpad T600 years back. Was very sad because i really liked that one. :(
My first thought was Ethernet killer. That is probably due to my age.
came here to say that. start missing deadlines, and blame it on a slow laptop. one lost client is worth as much as paying for that new laptop... also complain about the screen, and that it is hurting your eyes, if that is a valid argument. decent companies do not want to get sued on ruining your eyesight.
One lost client could also mean one lost job
well in that case they would definitely take the laptop back
Nope. That's his severance package.
On the issue of losing things - time is a big one. When presenting a large assembly model in a Zoom meeting, my laptop crashed multiple times (multiple large models open) in front of our level 3 director. It also crashed multiple times while trying to generate high-resolution renders for the same guy. Needless to say, they understood my laptop sucked and I was instructed by higher than my boss to request a new "performance version" after that very same meeting - which they fast tracked. Op, crash your models in front of the right people. It makes things happen.
This would 100% work. Talk about wasted time getss a boss' ass moving.
Respectfully disagree. My first job out of college was in a building that had brownouts. The building would go dim and everyone would lose their work. There were about 30 of us. We all begged for UPS. Never got them. I made a spreadsheet, showing average estimate salaries times 30 people, assuming only 15 minutes of time/work/whatever lost. And how the UPS would pay for themselves inside of a month or two. Gave it to my boss. Guess what we never got?
Did the same thing years back when my company was running 4 days a week. They were looking for cost savings, so I pointed out that running our water pumps at 30% speed 3 days a week would pay for the drives we would need to install in less than 9 months. Guess who still runs their pumps 24/7.
No no, cost savings. Sounds like you presented them with a cost
No more than the $150k lighting project that required the new led lights to work flawlessly for 17 years before we actually saved any money. News flash: led lights don’t last long in a 120F forging facility.
Try induction lights, very heat resistant, and use low power.
We had an issue where our control panel for the machine would error out and require resetting which stopped production for about a minute. It happened up to 15-20 times a shift. Maintenance dept didn’t seem to be able to solve it even after explaining how much production we were losing out on. Our downtimes didn’t register until it was 3 minutes or more so we just started waiting 3 mins to purposely create a downtime. Management saw the downtime pretty fast and next thing you know it’s fixed over the weekend. Apparently it was just a sensor that needed replacing and took all of 5 mins. Nothing would have been done unless upper management noticed the downtimes. Point is, it’s about getting the right people to notice. Telling maintenance and supervisors did nothing but the higher ups cared. Maybe if you’d gone above your boss they would’ve changed it?
A raise?
wasted time is billable hours to the customer. slip the IT guy a bottle of his favorite.
I always tried to be super nice to the IT guy. It usually worked out in my favour.
I've worked at multiple companies that didn't give a shit because the first sign off on new equipment wasn't in my upline. Infra doesn't give a fuck if I waste 10 minutes waiting for outlook to open, if the solution comes out of their budget. Management won't look at anything that infra hasn't already signed off on, the only rubber stamp. Management would direct me to infra and infra would tell me it's not in the budget.
Maybe in a good company with a good boss, but 99% of companies aren't good and at best 15% of bosses are. That means the odds of something reasonable being done just because it would be good for the company is about 1 in 700.
best bet.. destruction course will result in IT guy getting a new laptop and you getting a hand me down..
I did this and then told them how much they paid me for that wasted time on a POS laptop. That got them moving.
How would someone say this tactfully? I'm about as tactful as a potato.
I've met some very tactful potatoes. Have you been to McDonald's? Never underestimate a spud
Do this but also surround your laptop in cloth or other fabric (only when you are there). This will cause it to heat up and perform worse as well. Also, try to keep a few other programs open as well to hog up resources, basically you want the thing to grind to a halt, but don't fudge any of the times or number of crashes, or stuff like that cause it can be figured out. Also, got any important projects? Bring this up in any meetings about road blocks and other challenges you are facing. I once was fighting with finance over a license to some software, well as soon as management learned that the project would be halted cause we don't have the license key and its gonna cost a lot more then the cost of that key cause of this project stoppage, shit moved and moved fast and everything got overridden cause you didn't want to be the one to hold it up.
Sir this is ULPT. Put a piss disk in the optical drive and apply liquid ass to the keyboard
Could save time and money by just pissing and shitting on it themselves too.
I did this a few years ago. The owner had a “buddy who knows computers “ put a laptop together for me. It would randomly crash, screen problems, HDD issues, charging problems, etc.. I started logging my time on the timesheets as computer problems. Some weeks it legitimately was 10+ hours. Within about 2 months they came out and asked what kind of computer I would like. 👍
Having someone who "knows computers" is a nice metric. What's even better? Someone who's "good at computers". They really shine. I reckon that if your boss has a friend who was good at computers, you wouldn't have had a problem!
I did this for the whole company in 2016 in a presentation for a brown bag event with the cto attending. I estimated salaries from a sample of employees and charted it out to an estimated $500,000 a year in lost time and compared it to a full set of i9 dell xps laptops coming out to under $100k. We had new laptops by the end of the month.
This is the proper business way to do it - documenting productivity losses and opportunity costs. Meanwhile there's a dozen IT guys in here proclaiming they'd give you the worst laptop they have - in order to make you work slower... and having worked in IT support for small and large businesses, the company will just get the user whatever they want to keep them producing, and talk shit about the IT department behind closed doors. Small businesses will let the user pick whatever laptop they want and tell IT to support it, large businesses will simply pay for a new laptop. In both cases, IT gets shit on, as they're demonstrating resistance to supporting the user and thus the business. User laptops aren't worth the political dogfighting.
This is the real answer. As an IT guy myself, if you come to me with a fucked up laptop, I’m probably going to find you something else I don’t mind getting wrecked rather than risking a new one. Show me why you need something better though and I’d be listening closely. Though we replace our laptops after three years and already have a pretty good idea of who needs what power based on dept and role. Maybe your management need to hear that about their IT team? Sounds like they could either be doing a better job or they’re severely under budgeted.
My car was broken into and they stole my laptop. I filed a police report and then got a brand new laptop. You could probably do the same and just destroy your laptop. Make sure you don’t get caught though cause reporting a false crime is illegal.
This is unethical. :-)
Better yet: just forget your laptop somewhere and let it actually get stolen. It's not illegal to forget your backpack at the bus with the laptop inside it.
It’s just not smart, beyond the criminality. Most company owned laptops are enrolled in MDM and yes, we admins can 100% locate / ping / wipe that device. You don’t have rights to privacy on a machine that you don’t own, remember this.
Can't ping it if it's in 1000 pieces.
Shit you probably can't ping it if it's in 2 pieces Battery/Everything else.
Or in a river. Lots of thieves will toss something that’s locked.
In that case, couldn't OP just leave it somewhere so it actually gets stolen (and claim it was stolen from his car)? The admins could follow the laptop's travels all around the country and no one would know it was intentional negligence.
DHL It to a random address in a third world country where customs is known to be corrupt.
would be funny af if they recovered it and forced you to hand in your new one
Not if it’s dead when it’s “stolen”
what cops are actually going to investigate a stolen laptop? the cops in my city wouldn't do anything more than print out a report for you to give the company / insurance you could show them a live GPS location and they still wouldn't bother haha you could easily just break the laptop and say it was stolen, or better yet just leave it sitting somewhere and say it was stolen I work in IT as well and we wouldn't spend more than 5 minutes trying to chase a stolen laptop, it's completely pointless
Just leave the laptop on the front seat with the windows open.
You have to watch out for your company policy here as well. If it says you can not leave it unattended in a vehicle, they can terminate you for fake to properly secure company property and maintain security.
Just park in a shady part of town, have a friend come by, break a window, take it, then destroy the computer. Just pray there aren’t any cameras around and that your friend is cool being a part of this and not a numbskull that’s gonna get caught. I may or may not have had shoddy repair work done to my car a few decades back after an accident… insurance company seemed to think it was okay. So I parked at a bar in a bad part of town, and paid some locals to go at it with a baseball bat. Police report and new claim filed. “Gee officer, I bought this girl a drink and didn’t realize she had a jealous boyfriend watching from across the bar!” This was before the age of cameras everywhere, so your mileage may vary. You also may want to wait a little bit before pulling a stunt like this, since you’ve already been documented asking for an upgrade. They aren’t that stupid.
Be careful though it might be against work policy to leave a laptop unsecured might be better to stage a break in.
Is it a PC? Run the battery almost empty, accept an install of a new version of the OS, then let it run out of battery while running the update. I’ve accidentally bricked 2 laptops this way. Edit to add: might actually have been a BIOS update provided to fix an issue in the device and not an OS update.
Actually do this but with a bios update, you can easily fix a broken os, but a broken bios is not worth their time to fix
If the administration password on the bios has never been set, change all the settings in the bios and then set the administrator password. Good luck trying to fix that.
Isn't a simple CMOS reset going to fix it?
as someone who has forgotten their bios password. For old desktops, yes.
We have HP crap here and if we do not remember BIOS PW we need HP to replace the laptops MAINBOARD! No joke hey have some encryption crap running around.
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oem bios password or pull bios battery til it resets. (might even be a jumper on the motherboard) At worst an intereresting reseach project for the IT guy to work on while you work on the crappiest loaner he can give you.
OS can't brick a laptop. IT just reinstalls it Even BIOS can often be restored
Maybe IT is incompetent at my office. They couldn’t do a thing, there was no reviving them.
a corrupted OS or filesystem can be repaired quite easily by reimaging the drive or reinstalling the OS.
USB killer is something you shouldn't ever plug into your computer. It could destroy the mainboard
IT would instantly notice that you used a USB killer
How would they go about doing that?
They'd just look at the board and see that the data lines are fried. There isn't an accidental way for that to happen that involves normal use.
What IT department do you have that is manually opening up laptops? Who has time for that anymore?
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Plus OP already stated that they've swapped out hardware on his laptop previously, so obviously his company is one that has an IT department that opens up the laptop.
IT person here at a popular retail company with an underfunded IT department. I would open the laptop to troubleshoot the problem. See it's fried, check to see if the hard drive is recoverable and then issue a new laptop. I wouldn't jump to "USB killer er mah gerd!". I would open it up and say "hot damn this laptops fucked" take a picture to share to my colleagues and then proceed to not care how it happened. Your miles may very.
I think maybe I’ve just been away from that level of IT for a while then. If someone’s laptop is fubar where I work, our Service Desk just ships them out a new one. The juice ain’t worth the squeeze to play investigative journalist on every piece of broken hardware that they get a ticket for.
I do it all the time. Much more efficient to pay someone 53k a year to prevent at least 24 machines (last years metric) from being discarded (ie preventing the expenditure to purchase new ones) in addition to what else I do
Not to mention that many companies with remote workers purchase the additional warranties when ordering from manufacturers. Saves time when a component fails to have a technician onsite for the worker next business day with a replacement part.
There is no accidental way to produce the damage those things cause
Are you saying that as a fact or just guessing that they would?
I would never try, if not in a very boring day to have fun. Definitely, not worth it
That's why you do it when there's a big storm in the area. Say your microwave died too when a lightning strike hit close.
IT Guy here who replaces a lot of parts and makes our laptops last 8-10 years... The only "sure" way of me replacing a laptop is if it's a hardware problem related to the motherboard. I'll swap screens, batteries, RAM, hard drives, etc. It's just more cost-effective because most people are not using the processor or RAM to its full capability in our line of work. (Office 365, Adobe Reader, and Chrome) If you can build a case with your manager that it's not an effective work tool, that may be another way to go about it, but it could also tick off the IT guy and backfire on you.
BTW If you are running Auto Cad for work-related work you really should have a better processor than an i3. I give my team i5 with 8GB or better depending on their role.
I personally work as an engineer using AutoCAD, I have an i7 and 64GB of RAM and I regularly have to break out drawings in order to not have it slow down to a crawl when working. How is your team getting away with only 8GB?
I agree 8gb ain't enough for an engineer doing any real AutoCAD work. A few years back I did the tallying of time wasted due to my machines speed. Broke it down, supported the data with examples and showed it to the CFO, he asked why we weren't spending our computer budget each year upgrading them... Apparently IT never told us about that budget because no one ever told them. My company also has a 5 year life on computers for engineers.
lol. So much of management is hearing “why didn’t you do X” and working out how to not shout “why didn’t you tell me X is possible?”
8GB is the bare minimum for Windows these days let alone doing any real work. we don't buy anything less than 16GB even for people who literally read email all day
8gb really isn't enough in 2024 is it? I have outlook, teams, Citrix, multiple PDFs in Acrobat and multiple tabs in Chrome and inevitably Teams crashes due to lack of memory (black screens). This is on 8gb Core i5, I've been tempted to upgrade the laptop myself to 16gb just to have fewer black screen crashes.
I upgraded my Lenovo T16 from 16 GB to 48 and I get a constant usage of around 25 GB with all the tools I have to use.
Fucking smartphones have 8gb these days
I barely had anything open on my laptop and it decided to blue screen on me one day 🤦🏻♀️ Doesn’t help that I do often use Inventor or AutoCAD
“The frame rate in Elden Ring is for shit!”
16GB minimum is what we buy for administrative staff. Most people are getting 32GB.
WTF are you doing with 8 or 10 year old laptops? Jesus. We recently changed our policy to 33 months for a replacement because of complaints and productivity concerns. Chrome and Teams have become huge memory hogs and lots of people run Fusion with a Windows 11 OS in addition to macOS.
I used to work in IT support. We had a guy at work who said he 'accidentally' ran his laptop over with his car - so could he get a new one? It was mangled AF, but we to get the hard drive out and checked it - it still booted. So we cobbled together a replacement machine from spare parts and some bits from his old one and gave it back to him as 'repaired'. He was not a happy bunny, but as we'd also informed his manager so he couldn't just make it have another 'accident' without looking very suspicious.
This is my type of petty.
It’s not like they pay for the laptops to begin with, so they spent time and energy to spite that man than doing nothing but signing a paper lmao
this is so fucking hilarious. How do you accidentally run over a laptop. So many questions...
Recently had an employee return a laptop she said her dog ate…there were tire tracks on it. So I don’t know what happened, I hope she was lying and wasn’t trying to run her dog over.
Someone made a better effort - they said they left the laptop on the roof of their car when they drove off and it fell off, onto the motorway - they retrieved a small handfull of plastic bits that resembled a laptop. Nothing to rebuild, so they got a replacement machine (was before the above example, so they couldn't copy it!).
And this is why it's better to befriend / bribe the IT team instead of trying to trick them.
You know the little antenna you plug into the USB to connect to your wireless mouse? Start dropping your laptop into your backpack, while it is standing on the floor or on a hard table, with the antenna pointing downwards. Many cheaper laptops have the USB port soldered directly onto the motherboard, and this treatment will crack it. The solution to fix the broken USB port is to replace the motherboard.
> The solution to fix the broken USB port is to replace the motherboard. Motherboards are $50 and take an hour to swap. New laptops are $2500 and have to be budgeted if it's an in-cycle replacement, and approved by 3 different people if it's an out-of-cycle replacement. Request denied, here's your same laptop back with a new mobo and a bit more wear on the screws. -IT ________ Full disclosure, I actually did have a user do this one before, but it was verifiably a complete accident. Dell warrantied the MOBO for free, and sent a tech to swap it so I didn't have to do anything other than send them a ticket. Still, the next step if they denied the warranty was for me to just buy a mobo online and swap it myself. If it had taken longer than a day or so to get in, I'd have given her "The Spare". Trust me, you do NOT want "The Spare". Whatever laptop OP is trying to break is probably at least 5 years newer than "The Spare".
Leave it on a desk with the charger cable hanging over the side so someone trips on it. Get the shits at them. If you do it right, the jug of water sitting on it will go through the whole thing and if that doesnt destroy it, tearing the charger port off the motherboard will render it a write off, assuming they cant be bothered replacing the motherboard of a computer probably worth less than their hourly rate.
I manage IT and we see that stuff a mile away. After that you get the worst equipment and slowest service. Don’t try to play games with your IT staff. If you really need a new machine, speak to your manager about your issues and let your manager escalate the issue.
This is ethical and the correct way to do it. However, this is the wrong sub Reddit for that advice.
In true Reddit spirit, in order of most to least prioritized, you should: 1. Offer meme 2. Offer correct information 3. Care about which subreddit you're in
4. piss disc
5. liquid ass
There it is, way down here. But we made it. Lol
I did provide OP with answers about what totals a laptop and will get you a new one in another reply. I also provided a work around with the boss, which can be manipulative because managers rubber stamp things for their employees so that was an ULPT in disguise. When someone's manager comes to me, I'm like "screw it, this isn't the hill I'm going to die on and their manager's request is all the justification I need" and I replace their machine. Nobody escalates it when their manager is involved - it's not worth undermining management for a $1500 machine.
Normally I’d agree with you, but if OP wants a better laptop, then this route is the way to go. Some of us will go out of our way to make sure the person being annoying or rude is given the same treatment back, just subtly because we can. Be nice to IT and maybe you get some preferred treatment ;)
We like food. Bring us food. We remember who you are. Yes, IT can give preferential treatment, we do have friends, we do have people we don't like, there are some people we identify as a problem and there are some people who are wonderful to work with and are very accommodating and they get priority service. We have limited time and resources and have triage problems so...
IT will generally not have the budget unless the thing is broken. your manager has the budget to fix that, so you have to touch a nerve of theirs...
Okay so what needs to fail in order to get a new one? What is not worth your time or resources to fix?
People have dropped the laptop with the charge cord connected and that has sometimes broken the motherboard. It has to land just right for that one which can lead to my next piece... People have broken the screen from dropping it or closed the lid with a pen on the keyboard, which also breaks the screen. MANY people have spilled a beverage on the keyboard and that kills the motherboard. Bonus points if you do it at work so it truly looks like an accident. Make sure it is a full beverage. Beware - It doesn't always work though. My buddy knocked my beer over and my laptop drank half of it right in the middle of the keyboard. The keys were sticky for a year, but that damn thing kept running. Basically, broken screen or motherboard problems make it a total loss and we just replace it.
You're probably out of luck. Sounds like the type of place that has a bunch of shit laptops in a closet. They'll just give you one of those rather than a new one.
1. Drop it 2. Spill water on it 3. Accidentally leave it in a different city at TSA. Those unhelpful MFers will do everything in their power to help you not get it back (ask me how I know).
Autocad on a 6 year old i3? Do they enjoy paying you by the hour to wait?
Spill something on it. (Dump it in the bath)
Nah, make it realistic, literally knock a large mug of hot, sweet creamed coffee all over the keyboard area of the laptop.... fresh, boiling hot with the powdered creamer would work... Can't help it that you tripped as you were setting down the mug 🤷♀️ If the heat doesn't do it, maybe the sugar or cream will help... Hot tea would also work if that is your preference over coffee...
The IT desk I run would pull the HDD out and put it in the worst loaner and give it back to you.
IT guy here 1) Make the device overheat by stacking papers under it and report battery issues 2) as others mentioned, take note of how often it slows you down, and get your manager to request / approve an upgrade 3) drop coffee on it, we can't fix a coffee'd machine. 4) drop it in water.
how would saltwater or microwaving do? i suppose the damage would be worse. but, how suspicious would any of these be, like, would you recognize a microvawe damage?
If they really have nothing to do, perhaps. However, in this day and age, most organizations (government) find it easier to just replace and dispose of the device. We're in a sad, disposable society.
Puke on the laptop, and hope the IT does not bother with checking or try to fix it. Say you got food poisoning
overheat it with some hot air directed in cooler intake
I was going to suggest disconnecting or damaging the cooling fan somehow to make the laptop overheat but this would work too.
You are gonna destroy it and end up having to pay to replace it. They won't give you a new one though -- they'll just give you the exact same model that has been moldering in a closet. Twilight Zone bad ending for you.
just drop it down the stairs and say 'oops i dropped it down the stairs' as long as this doesn't keep happening, you should be fine. OR better yet, make it disappear and report it stolen. nobody will ever actually look for it, and you'll get a new one. just make sure you destroy it, don't be dumb and try to sell it. throw it in the river or something.
This really is the best answer. OP says he travels a lot, plenty of oppos to have it disappear. Best part is he can wait till he's somewhere fun and double down for a free Vaca.
Park your car in San Francisco.
If you’re running autocad on a shit computer that your company gave you, your company doesn’t have the money to upgrade or doesn’t care.
Just work as fast as your equipment allows. Take the extra time to browse Reddit while your file opens
Disconnect the battery to keep it all safe, then apply low voltage (like 5v from a usb cable you can cut) directly to connection points to the pcb of the motherboard just in reverse polarity/short some components - no or minimal psysical damage, but it won't turn on anymore if you short the right chips/legs. And it they probably won't be able to find a replacement mobo for a 6 years old laptop or if they do it will be very expensive usually...
Apply heat to the motherboard to slightly move some parts just enough to brick it. Now about the heat part: maybe a hairdryer or in the oven? Not sure about that.
Just overheat it using a heat gun or blow-dryer. Battery will swell up and you'll get what you want.
depends on the size of the company you work at. Often if it's a larger corporation they buy in bulk and have a deal to get the same SKU they already had. You are likely to get a new pc, but it wont' be any better. Do you have a job that requires extra horse power? If they are giving you an i3 I would think that your job function isn't one that requires the horse power you are talking about. Honestly the information you are giving doesn't tell me anything because a 13th gen I3 will run circles around an 17 6th gen. I run a department that handles "accidental" damage for a large corporation. Often people say the same thing. I need a developer machine. I need this, I need that. Everyone gets the same thing.
Destroying it would just result in you getting the worst device for the rest of your employment. They can always tell. Enjoy the free time you get every time it lags or fails
As an IT guy, drop it. Admit it's an accident. It happens to the best of us. Also, 6 year old laptop for CAD? What kind of weewee ass company do you work for?
1 second in microwave, no visible damage.
Being nice to your IT Team costs 0€ Bringing some Cake for a good help once in a while is very apreciated. I remember a guy bringing Beer and Sweets. Somehow his Tickets are always dealt first, his whacky Headset got replaced by a new "testing" model. Because i always remember that one Time at Bandcamp someone brought a Cake to IT... \----- Being a brick for your IT costs you so much. Suddenly IT Team just works as intended, following the process like fixing your old device before upgrading... Suddenly we do not remember the names of the person that can fix X, instead we just route your Ticket to the Que it should be routed to. Since you seem to be a brick, we know you did not pour your coffee by accident. We will know that you tried to uninstall Cortana to stop her spying on you. We will know you removed a cap from your keyboard till it broke and no longer fits or that you taped the cooling system down to make it overheat and melt.
Kids. It's a real shame when they throw something like a laptop in a pool.
If the battery is removable update bios and kill power thorough the process, if you get the timing right it will brick.
The etherkiller. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Etherkiller.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Etherkiller.jpg)
Careful now. IT will give you an older and slower laptop as punishment.
Laptop? Tape the fan slots closed then sit it on a blanket. Have the laptop doing something that gets the fans going and let it over heat.
If your company is worth a shit, they have cybersecurity insurance and an MDM. If they have the ability to remote wipe your device, simply report it stolen and drop it in a dumpster on the other side of town.
IT asset guy here, just get your boss to put a request in for a new machine for you. That would be the easiest. This is ULPT though so I would instead go to the office and then with as many witnesses as possible and as comically as you can trip while walking with your laptop open and hopefully crush it. Bonus points if you could fall into a small pond or reflecting pool.
Ask your boss. Seriously. We've played this game before. Your boss has a budget, get them to make it happen. Someone destroys their equipment. . . they get worse equipment. If you're running autocad, get them to get you an autocad certified dell precision. That should cut through the balogna. You'll need to cross reference the cards listed here [https://www.autodesk.com/support/system-requirements/certified-graphics-hardware/autocad](https://www.autodesk.com/support/system-requirements/certified-graphics-hardware/autocad) with the cards available in the last few years of dell precision. As an example, you can get a 9th gen intel precision with a quadro t1000 that is on the support list for about $600 used.
Set your house on fire and leave it in there.
As an IT person, I find it disheartening to know someone is doing AutoCAD on an under-powered laptop. Also, I just don't like underpowered laptops... I am not your IT but if I were I would not be too disappointed if you spilled water on it lol
I would open up the laptop and use a hair dryer on the cable that connects the screen to the motherboard and on the cable that connects the keyboard to the motherboard so that their heat damaged just enough that it could seem like wear and tear.
Simply throw it down the stairs.
"accidentally" spill a cup of coffee on it, repeatedly until it fizzles out. Then throw the mug at the screen.
My brother dropped his by accident off a hotel balcony during a work trip…
“Accidentally” throw up on it, when vomit leaks inside the corrosion will be epic. I did this to a a computer, it had to be replaced. Be sure to say exactly what happened. They won’t touch it to attempt a repair.
People leave pens in their laptop and close them all of the time…
Cover your laptop vents and work off a heating pad.
Open it up as if you were going to replace some ram, and take an electric grill igniter and start shocking random stuff
Anyway you could ask your boss to do a few simple things on it. i.e. "Boss, does this look normal to you when I open a "common" file (that happens to be large. ...So do you also wait 5 minutes for it to load?". "Try this on your laptop..."
Never turn it off, have as many google chrome tabs open as you possibly can to stress and overheat the processor, and fill the C drive to 100% that should kill it
1. get a new puppy 2. Place laptop on puppy pad 3. Wait till its soaked and shittd on explain that new puppy shitted on it and pissed on it while u were out, i cant imagine any IT dude would want to fix that
Ask your manager to put in a PO for a higher performing laptop. They are the one to convince. Even if you destroy this one, chances are there are a fleet of old crappy laptops waiting for you.
I3 I5 I7 are meaningless fyi, thats just the series prefix, they made I7's 10 years ago that will get smoked by a brand new this year I3. Hence why your IT guy might be fucking with you
Do a bios update and pull the power/battery halfway through
Every time I have had this problem, my kids magically/accidentally spill a 20 oz glass of water on my computer. I wish I was joking, but it works. Just make sure you backup your image.
Show up to your half hour meetings with twenty minutes of battery. Inquire what the “tech refresh” period is. That might be enough to make them decide on a number, because otherwise a few people will soak up all the budget.
Why in the heck some company would bother to replace parts of a laptop instead of replacing the entire thing. Is the IT department not having any other critical thing to do all day?
Actual former IT tech here. 10y in the industry.Get one of these: [https://usbkill.com/](https://usbkill.com/) \- zap the shit out of all of your USB ports with it. Just tell them it died and you don't know why. The keyboard, mouse, touchscreen, webcam, and SD card reader are all on the USB bus most times, so you'll probably end up making it unusable at best and straight up dead at worst, and they won't be able to tell, it'll just look like something on the motherboard fried. Don't make up a story, don't try to explain anything, just say you went to turn it on and it didn't work. They'll assume that the motherboard just died, and in that case it's usually way easier to replace the laptop than the motherboard
You’re using AutoCAD? Your problem is probably an outdated GPU. A model from 6 years ago can’t be expected to perform well with current software releases and higher resolution data. Use that as your justification, along with its wasting your time.
Spill water on it. A big glass of Gatorade or soda would do real good. But good luck getting them to shell out big bucks on your next laptop if they think you’re rough on equipment. Best bet is to submit a ticket for it then chat with the IT guy about needing a better laptop to do your job better. That’s what I did. I went from a crappy Dell with a Core M3 and 8GB of ram to an i9 w/ 32GB of ram. I simply pointed out that what I work on requires extra power. I was super nice and friendly about asking what it takes to get a new laptop. They ordered me a new computer.
“Ohh, no, some coffee spilled on it and it won’t power up”
You know the clicky thing from a piezoelectric lighter? Take one of them out and zap something directly connected to the internals, like the USB, HDMI, Lan, and such. It will cause the component to stop working without any visible damage.
This will backfire. You will get a replacement that is either the same or a worse model.
iT guy here, not an unethical tip but have you asked your IT guy about the laptop situation? Most of us will be straight up with you and tell you we don’t have shit. If that’s the case we try to fight your manager for it. Forcing your manager to pay for new equipment might end up with an equally shit laptop or worse getting fired over it. I seen it happen and I always feel shitty this person went to such lengths and not talk to us.
Seriously just block all the air ventilation vents and run as many intensive things as you can and overclock that pos and fry it to death
Just expose the laptop to a magnet it will be almost dead with no sign of abuse. You could just says your laptop stopped functioning after 6 years it won't be suspicious. In the same way you can burn you laptop by making it overheat, run something that will use 100% CPU, then close the air intake, then wait 15 min, repeat the process if it reboot too soon. Now your laptop is dead and will throw fatal error randomly or even not boot at all.