11 minutes, 37 seconds. Why?
- Walk into library, find computer in the lab with the good computers. Wait for the machine to log in. Meanwhile, upload assignment to school mail server from laptop.
- Get kicked out of the good lab because a teacher wants to use it for a class.
- Go to the other lab, begin picking computers based on availability. The fifth one is actually connected to the school network's Active Directory server, and it takes three minutes to log in. Wonder why one lab is good and one isn't, despite how the computers have exactly the same specs and network links.
- Proceed to school webmail interface. Try again when you are redirected to the MSN website.
- Download 25kb assignment. Wait for machine to connect to network share where My Documents is located. Save, and wait for the transfer from the mail server to the client to the network share to finish. Total time taken: 43 seconds.
- Wait two minutes for Excel to connect to the My Documents network share and load the assignment.
- Hit Print. Go to printer in the print room to pick up.
- Find that assignment is not waiting for you in the print room. Return to lab to find that the printer you submitted to is offline, but you were charged the five cents anyway. It'll print out when the printer is fixed, and then the stack of thousands of queued printouts will be thrown in the recycling bin.
- Print to another printer, and return to the print room. Pick up assignment and return to lab, to find that someone has gummed your notebook (paper, not computer) while you were away. Ah, freshmen.
- Spend the next minute ensuring that the computer logs off, so that no one steals your print credits without permission.
Seeing as I timed it this time around, you may gather that this is a fairly common occurrence.