There's only a very few places where typing IP addresses actually makes sense. Configuring DNS is the main one. Trying to isolate problems is another - if you can ping 8.8.8.8 but not google.com you can reasonably infer that the problem is DNS. I really can't think of any others.
That latter one is admittedly kind of a pain, but a wallet-sized cheat sheet can solve it for you. Might be a good idea to try to convince vendors to include a reliable entry or two in the hosts file for that purpose? You can always add it yourself for now, when you're on your own workstation.
That latter one is admittedly kind of a pain, but a wallet-sized cheat sheet can solve it for you. Might be a good idea to try to convince vendors to include a reliable entry or two in the hosts file for that purpose? You can always add it yourself for now, when you're on your own workstation.