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Microsoft Bug

Wasting Time Fixing Computers 613

Posted by michael from the get-a-bigger-hammer dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Interesting experiment by Marshall Brain, where he tracked every time-wasting error, repair, annoyance on his home network for one month. He logs 11 hours and 20 minutes of crap, everything from driver problems to forced upgrades, spam overflows... you name it. Anyone on /. is experiencing the same thing. Is it going to get better or worse in 2004, and how much time are we all wasting?"
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Wasting Time Fixing Computers More

Wasting Time Fixing Computers

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  • worse (Score:2, Insightful)

    by 3dLuke ( 725468 )
    in my opinion it will get worse, as my machine gets older and filled with more junk i fear more time wasting errors will occur....and it does'nt look like M$ are doing alot to stop it.

    • Re:worse (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bas_Wijnen ( 523957 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:50AM (#7872461)

      Then you could consider doing something yourself. You probably found out before that MS isn't really the place to trust when it comes to putting the customer first. How about a conclusion: Use something else.

      And if you take the time to do some thinking anyway, think deeper (perhaps with a bit of help from the philosophy section on gnu.org [gnu.org]), and conclude that only free software can give you what you want. Unless there is some strange company that actually cares more for its customers than for money... No, I can't think of one either.

      • Re:worse (Score:5, Informative)

        by t0ny ( 590331 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:02AM (#7872720)
        I spend very little time with problems on my network. I cite having a very simple, yet intelligent, design as the key.

        Thinking back to my support problems, the only recurring issue is on my roommate's PC, which has a flakey WLAN card. I also have to occasionally reboot my cable modem and the router, but I chalk that up to consumer grade hardware.

        Thus, 90% of my problems are hardware related, but it doesnt really take very long.

        The OS never locks up, the computers dont get viruses or bugs, etc. Oh ya, and I forgot to mention: the entire network runs on Windows 2000.

        My point is, if you know what you are doing, and have a smart design, you eliminate almost all of your support issues.

        • Re:worse (Score:5, Insightful)

          by John Courtland ( 585609 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:18AM (#7872780)
          It all comes down to this: "What do you these computers do on your network?" If all you do is use it to access the internet and play video games, and are just a periphery to the network, then you won't have much downtime because you aren't asking very much of it. Now, if you're running IIS, hosting files for your floor (assuming you're in a dorm, by mention of roommate, if not then my mistake), running as a NAT and perhaps even an streaming music station, WHILE playing video games and surfing the internet, then that's a more notable thing. A month uptime with Win2K and all that crap I just listed is a very long time in my experience, and before you assert that I don't know how to make a simple or smart design, let me mention that I've had uptimes over one year on a 486/40MHz w/ 8MB RAM using linux 2.0.36, which ran Apache, was my NAT and stateful packet inspection firewall, ran ftp server, ran ssh server and acted as a streaming music server. There is hardly a windows box out there with a year of uptime, much less one that does what that little 486 did.

          Now, I DO run WinXP Professional, and I like it for the most part, but I get uptimes of maybe 2 weeks before the memory leaks in explorer.exe get to be too much. A good system if you shut the computer off every night, like a workstation, but for major links in your network that would render large headaches if they fail and require long uptimes, like a router, then I would not recommend using windows.

        • Re:worse (Score:3, Funny)

          by Geek of Tech ( 678002 )
          >> I spend very little time with problems on my network. I cite having a very simple, yet intelligent, design as the key.

          Okay, but what happens when the cup or the strings break? :P

    • Re:worse (Score:5, Insightful)

      by October_30th ( 531777 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:05AM (#7872513) Homepage Journal
      And it's not just the machines that get older - we get older.

      About 10 years ago I had both the interest and skills to build a Linux installation from scratch. I built Alphas, Suns and piles of single- and multi CPU PCs just to experiment with them and then sell them off.

      Now I'm too old. I get irritated by the glitches and bugs. These days I get annoyed even with kitchen-and-sink Linux distributions like Mandrake. Sure it installs cleanly and looks smooth but I still have to fiddle with it to get Flash or Real work with Mozilla and so on.

      I just want things to work.

      My next computer will be a Mac.

      • Re:worse (Score:3, Informative)

        by joestar ( 225875 )
        > but I still have to fiddle with it to get Flash or
        > Real work with Mozilla and so on.

        Buy a Mandrake pack, it installs by default with a multimedia install.

      • Re:worse (Score:3, Insightful)

        by danila ( 69889 )
        Good point. And for us old people the worst things are actually the minor irritants. May be because the machine still works and you can't find the will to spend hours to fix it. Just two examples that drive me nuts:

        1) My 160Gb Samsung HDD died and I sent it for replacement. The system was on another 120Gb drive and there is also one more 160Gb. The dead drive was Primary Slave, the system is on Primary Master. But for some reason the system (Win2k) doesn't boot. I didn't want to fiddle too much with the sy

      • Re:worse (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Dixie_Flatline ( 5077 ) <vincent.jan.gohNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @01:47PM (#7873871) Homepage
        Though it's been said by a bunch of people, I'll throw in my 2 cents.

        I used to be a pro sysadmin. I worked my way through University being a junior sysadmin with my department - Computing Science. All day long I would fix dinky little problems and install software, etc. After that, I'd come home to my linux box and futz with that so that I could do something like watch a video. Sometimes I'd be up quite a lot of the evening doing sysadmin type things at home. Of course, I also had to maintain my partner's Windows/Linux box as well.

        I got tired of it last year. I was spending my time in front of the computer fixing things, not using my machine. I'm a programmer now, but I still don't enjoy doing work when I come home (meaningless work, anyway. Programming at home isn't 'work'.) I still have a FreeBSD mailserver that I have to maintain, but it's one of those things that takes a few days to set up right and then requires little effort after that. My main machine is now a G5. It requires no work. It took me a while to figure out why over this holiday season I was sitting in front of my computer with nothing to do. It's because I had nothing to fix. The worst problem I've had since I got this machine was I briefly had a firewire problem when I did the firmware update. I rebooted the machine and it went away. By comparison, I recently installed WinXP pro on my partner's machine, and already the machine is giving me issues, with a drive only intermittently showing up in Windows. I think it's a driver issue with the on-board Promise Ultra ATA controller, but it's still ridiculous. The operating system had only been on the machine for an hour and I was already fighting with partition magic and windows to try and recognize the drive was there, and if they found it was there, to try and reformat it.

        My partner covets my Mac. The next machine she buys will be a Mac, too.

  • Heh (Score:4, Funny)

    by metlin ( 258108 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:36AM (#7872408) Journal
    I spend half of that time reading Slashdot everyday :-/
    • Yeah I waste my time reading endless discussion forums and random websites. And reloading Slashdot over and over so I can get that FP. ;-) I must be an internet and information addict; isn't step one admitting your addiction? I can quit any time I want, really!

  • none at all (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Basically, once my linux systems are up and running, I spend 0 minuts fixing it and about 5 minutes/week upgrading it.

    • Re:none at all (Score:3, Interesting)

      by einhverfr ( 238914 )
      I was going to comment in a similar vein.

      This is what I really HATE about running Windows-- it is way too time consuming.

      My home network is typically 4-5 Linux-based PC's and dedicated systems, and I use bayesian spam-filtering to cut down on time waisted by spam. Sometimes I have even been known to forget about several systems because they just work. Aside from the hard drive crash, and annoyances like trying to get the NVidia drivers to work properly... I have had to put in 0 minutes over the last yea

      • Re:none at all (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Realistic_Dragon ( 655151 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:32AM (#7872604) Homepage
        "Sometimes I have even been known to forget about several systems because they just work."

        While doing some recabling at a law firm I found a 486 server (running) in the back of a cuboard. No one knew what it was for. It was running some crypticly named binaries but wasn't seeing that much network traffic.

        So, we shut it down it, and all at once their fancy account system (apparently running on a dual xeon windows 2000 server) died. Turns out this machine had been handling the business logic for years and the last lot of cowb^H^Hnsultants had just thrown on a new front end and database without mentioning they didn't bother to rewrite or port the app.

        As far as I know, it's still running well, with no plans to upgrade it... and I'm sure that with time they will forget about it again :o)

        • I bet it was running netware.... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by einhverfr ( 238914 ) <chris.travers@g m a i l.com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:45AM (#7872646) Homepage Journal
          While doing some recabling at a law firm I found a 486 server (running) in the back of a cuboard. No one knew what it was for. It was running some crypticly named binaries but wasn't seeing that much network traffic.

          So, we shut it down it, and all at once their fancy account system (apparently running on a dual xeon windows 2000 server) died. Turns out this machine had been handling the business logic for years and the last lot of cowb^H^Hnsultants had just thrown on a new front end and database without mentioning they didn't bother to rewrite or port the app.

          I had the same experience with a 386 running Netware tucked into a corner of an office. Nobody knew what it was there for, but it was running the business logic for a payroll system...

      • Re:none at all (Score:3, Insightful)

        by renoX ( 11677 )
        >I use bayesian spam-filtering to cut down on time waisted by spam

        And how is that linked to Windows?
        I'm using Mozilla on Windows and it has a spam-filtering tool too..

        >Sometimes I have even been known to forget about several systems because they just work.

        Well for client work, Windows XP works pretty well too..

        Yes, you have to do security update quite often, but this is true for Linux too..
        If you forget some system without updating you may end up with having your server rooted, currently it is les

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • My mother ran into this problem (Score:5, Informative)

    by fataugie ( 89032 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:38AM (#7872416) Homepage
    With a Dell last Christmas....she called and went through the support desk script and it was determined that she had a software driver issue. They would send out a new driver (since she couldn't access the internet...it was a modem driver). 1 month later and over 40 hrs logged on hold and tech support, she finally went to a friends house, downloaded the driver to a floppy, installed it and it still didn't work. Called Dell and they finally send a tech to replace the modem.

    I can beleive it, I've seen it.

    • Re:My mother ran into this problem (Score:4, Interesting)

      by giberti ( 110903 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:57AM (#7872491) Homepage
      I manage 9 Dell servers and have the "Gold" 4 hour on site service on all of them. It took 2 days of being on hold for over 4 hours to get a service tech to my facility. They shipped a new MB, new backplane and new PCI Riser cards (no processor, no system ram, no power transformers for the processor, no RAID ram. The technician worked on the machine and spent a little over 1 hour on the phone with tech support himself. He installed everything and nothing, machine is still dead. So now they're sending more parts and another tech to fix the problem again. Hopefully this time they will bring a whole machine with them! Monday morning will decide if I continue to buy Dell hardware.

    • Re:My mother ran into this problem (Score:4, Insightful)

      by t0ny ( 590331 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:14AM (#7872765)
      Here is a tip(because I've used this many times)- If you have on-site support, dont have them tell you to try this and that. That isnt YOUR job. Tell them firmly that you have on-site support, and they need to send somebody out.

      Just for some background, I work in corporate IT, and generally end up doing things nobody else can do. So I spend a lot of time on the phone and internet with vendor support.

      If you have a catch-all service like on-site, use it! Dont let them push the problem back at you.

      • Re:My mother ran into this problem (Score:5, Interesting)

        by shyster ( 245228 ) <brackett@uflPOLLOCK.edu minus painter> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @11:49AM (#7873263) Homepage
        Here is a tip(because I've used this many times)- If you have on-site support, dont have them tell you to try this and that. That isnt YOUR job. Tell them firmly that you have on-site support, and they need to send somebody out.
        And here's another tip. Read your contract with Dell (or others) and it states that you get on-site service only after phone troubleshooting fails to resolve the problem, and at the phone tech's discretion. Dell policy is that the onsite service is for hardware replacement only, not troubleshooting. Here's the quote:

        Technician will be dispatched if necessary following phone-based troubleshooting. Availability varies. Other conditions apply.

        Just for some background, I work in corporate IT, and generally end up doing things nobody else can do. So I spend a lot of time on the phone and internet with vendor support.

        Just for some background, I used to work for Dell, and talk to folks like you at least once a week.

        • About that point is when I talked my bosses out of buying dells and started buying from a local shop! After spending 8-10 hours of my time trying to get a replacement dell power supply out of them that I knew was bad had the part number and wanted to pay for, but couldn't get directly from their website, I said "hang it"! That was entirely unacceptable. Now I buy from my local shop...everything's standard, and it takes less time and money [and time == $$!] to simply drive to the store and get another, th

  • 11? more like 110! (Score:5, Funny)

    by gantrep ( 627089 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:40AM (#7872426)
    If he only found 11 hours of stuff to fix, he obviously isn't utilizin his full imagination.

    I suggest overclocking, attempting to run a computer submerged in pure water(maybe those two at the same time), or extending the range of a wireless network with items purchased at a hardware store.

  • This is why I don't fix for family (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Amiga Lover ( 708890 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:42AM (#7872436)
    I simply don't have the time. It's quite surprising too, how much antagonism I get from family members that I, who Knows Computer Stuff, won't come around for an evening to just fix a few little things. A third of the time it's a "little thing" that can be lived with, another third it's a little thing that can be fixed quickly, but the last third it's a little thing that requires much effort, much time, and occasionally a little money to fix. There's only so much Fixing Stuff I can get to do, and only so much 'training' people on the correct ways to use a computer and fix it themselves (yes thats the ideal solution, but it doesn't just take a 10 minute rundown to get that working in practice)

    My sisters, my brother, my mother, stepfather, father, aunt, two uncles, a few cousins and about six friends all see me as "the computer guy" and call on me to fix things.

    Do you people who know car mechanics intimately get the same kind of fixit requests from family? damn that'd shit me. Maybe I should go become an expert in astrophysics or some other shit my family don't do

      1. Do you people who know car mechanics intimately get the same kind of fixit requests from family?

      I know some lawyers (one friend from childhood, another a brother-in-law) and I know each would help me with legal matters if I asked. I haven't asked, and I am sure that they wouldn't want to spend a couple hours a month helping me with what they do professionally; it would get old real fast.

    • Hmm... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:10AM (#7872528) Homepage Journal
      Do you people who know car mechanics intimately get the same kind of fixit requests from family? damn that'd shit me. Maybe I should go become an expert in astrophysics or some other shit my family don't do

      Well, I suppose if they were a mechanic they might. The problem is a lot of us arn't "mechanics". I was into building and fixing PCs in high school. But after a while I 'knew everything' and it got to the point where it was more tedium then excitement.

      I'm about to graduate with a CS degree. I enjoy programming, and I don't mind tinkering with my own machine once in a while. But really, asking me to fix a computer would be like asking some guy who works at ford doing some kind of advanced engineering to fix their car. The person could do it, probably, because they are a good engineer in general but it would be a huge pain.

      • Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by anon*127.0.0.1 ( 637224 ) <slashdot@baudkaM ... om minus painter> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:09AM (#7872745) Journal
        I do tech support for my extended family as well. Most of them (cousins, in-laws, friends of family, etc) offer to pay me when I spend some time fixing them up. I almost always refuse, but the fact that they recognize the value of my services is appreciated.

        As for immediate family... parents, brother... nah, they get free tech support. Part of the reason I'm So Darn Smart is that my parents brought me up that way, and bought encyclopedias when I was young, and helped me with my homework and drove me to computer club and helped pay for college and and and and and and and....

        I figure I could do 2 hours of tech support every day for the rest of my life and still not pay them back.

    • Bill for your time (Score:5, Insightful)

      by chigaze ( 98602 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:14AM (#7872550)
      My dad the welder taught me not to let family take advantage. If you do something for a living it means you bill for your time. You might have a 'family rate' but you still bill. He does make exceptions but in general he has a an hourly rate he charges for welding. He has also paid me for any tech work I've done for him.

    • Re:This is why I don't fix for family (Score:5, Interesting)

      by G. W. Bush Junior ( 606245 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:16AM (#7872560) Journal
      I have a few plumbers, painters, etc. in the family.
      What I've noticed is that people expect to pay these guys to come around and fix something.... Even if it's relatively close family.

      For some reason my time seems to be worth less than theirs :-/

      • Re:This is why I don't fix for family (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:51AM (#7872682)
        I suspect the reason for that is twofold:

        1) they're used to paying people to do that sort of thing, as it's been that way their whole lives
        2) those things clearly take effort, whereas most PC problems are fixed sitting down

        Given enough time, I think people will come to realise that actually, PC repair does take effort (mental, rather than physical), and that people do get paid to do it professionally.

    • Re:This is why I don't fix for family (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:48AM (#7872667)
      My sisters, my brother, my mother, stepfather, father, aunt, two uncles, a few cousins and about six friends all see me as "the computer guy" and call on me to fix things.

      Maybe you should examine your priorities in life. If you are judging family and friends beneath the time spent on your job/hobbies, something is out of whack.

      My parents live on the opposite coast, but whenever I go visit I plan to spend at least 3-4 hours cleaning and fixing their computer. It is unreasonable to expect them to learn how to fix some of the things that can occur, and even though it's "a waste of time" I'm happy to do it for them, and they are grateful.

      I have a dear friend I built a computer for, and when it was not running as smoothly as planned, I took a few 3.5 hour train trips to spend part of my weekend getting it right, even though I also knew that part of the bargain was me taking her out to dinner. And No, sex wasn't involved. It's just something you do for your friends. Do I do it for all of them? Of course not - but to suggest that helping your family and friends is a waste of time reveals a completely skewed sense of what life is about.
      • I have mixed emotions on this. When you go home to visit your parents, and their roof is leaking, and you're not a roofing repair man, you STILL at least take the time to take a look at it. If the toilet is plugged, you haul out the rooter and see what you can do, even though you're not a plumber. You help vacumn, wash the dishes, and mow the lawn.

        So why shouldn't you help with the computer when they have a problem?

        But what if you were a plumber, and every time you crossed the continent to visit your pare

    • Re:This is why I don't fix for family (Score:4, Interesting)

      by aardwolf204 ( 630780 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:21AM (#7872792)
      Here's a typical day at the supermarket:

      Reading nutritional facts on side of lima bean can (you know, cause I'm on the ./ diet [slashdot.org])

       RING! RING

      me: elo?
      friend: Hey what was that thing you said I should do last time you were over here
      me: you mean shave
      friend: no the computer thing, what was it called, frag
      me: thinks quake3, no wait - you mean defrag?
      friend: yeah think i need to do that, my computer got a monkey and its getting annoying so i tried to delete it and he wouldnt go in the recycle bin, i think i need to defrag him
      me: should i tell him? no, that'll just take longer, let him defrag and ill run adaware later - yeah, go to my computer
      friend: whos computer?
      me: the icon that looks like a computer on the top right of your desktop, double click it
      friend: it looks like a fish
      me: thats wonderful, open it up and select your hard drive, it will say C: somewhere in the title
      friend: i clicked it and it didnt do anything
      me: ok now i need you to right click on it and select properties
      friend: a window came up that says "system properties" and it has a bunch of tabs at the top
      me: oh god he did a properties on my computer instead of the c drive

      etc, etc, etc...

      me: dude, forget it, I'll come by your place with VNC after i finish shopping, that'll make things easier
      friend: whats VNC?
      me: why am i such a fucking pushover

      And I know I'm not the only one that goes through this. I was next to a guy on his cellphone at Busch Gardens a few months back who went through the same thing. From what I overheard he was instructing his mother to get to defrag through start > run.

    • Skewed results (Score:3, Insightful)

      by t0ny ( 590331 )
      This guy is MAJORLY padding his results. For those who dont want to RTFA, here are some choice quotes-

      Repair #3 -- summary: Windows XP security updates -- time spent: 1 hour

      Repair #4 -- summary: Another Windows XP security update -- time spent: 20 minutes

      Repair #5 -- summary: Microsoft Outlook crashes about once a week, but cannot update it -- time spent (in December): 1 hour

      Repair #9 -- summary: Random application crashes that we all experience -- time spent in a typical month recovering from them: 30 mi

      • Re:Skewed results (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Stinking Pig ( 45860 )
        Would it be better if it said "ran MandrakeUpdate" or "ran apt-update" or "ran up2date" instead of "Windows XP security updates"?

        How long does it take you to sit down and diagnose why Google doesn't come up when you click the button? Do you automagically know that it was your ISP, or do you start by looking at your PC, your switch, your router/firewall, your caching name-server...

        I'm feeling this pain lately. Last night I tried to watch a movie with Xine only to find that the folks at XFree86 broke XV sup

    • Re:This is why I don't fix for family (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DivideX0 ( 177286 ) * on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:35AM (#7872866)
      I've had two really bad experiences.

      1. My ex's father replaced the gas tank on my car, I paid for the tank and paid him for doing the work. He own's a fully equipped professional garage so it didn't take long at all, about 40 minutes. Later, when he had a hard disk failure, at his garage business, I was called in to rescue any data and help install a new hard drive about 10 minutes for the disk, but hours rescuing the data. Needless to say he paid for the hard disk and then gave me a big thank you and thought it was even. No attempt at giving me any money, and he felt quite offended when I tried to hit him up for money. After that, his computer problems were just that, his problem.

      2. About 7 years ago when scanners and color printers were not as widespread as they are today, I did some photograph restoration work for a friend of mine. Lot's of touch up work on the aged photos and printing out on, expensive at the time, photo paper. I had about 20 hours of work and about $20 in paper plus whatever ink that it used. He also tried the give me a, "Hey, thanks man!" kind of payment. But he owned a bar where I was a regular at. 3 weeks later, my companies payroll didn't come in on time, and I was planning on going out that night. I went to his bar, asked to run a tab, and he looked at me as if I had just shit on his floor. He claimed he didn't know me well enough, even though we had drank together several times, been over to his house, been to concerts, and restored his pictures for free.

      Just because I like computers, doesn't mean I do it for free!
      • Setting expectations before starting in on the work is what you most likely needed todo to get paid.

        Yeah, i can fix that for [insert price here]
        Yeah, i can restore those photos for [insert price here]

        now if price is a flat rate or a perhour thing with a cap on it thats up to you.

        Don't let them think they are getting something for free then expect payment. If you are going to do that just don't hand over the Images, restored data, fixed computer, etc....
    • Hey, it's a waste of time if that's how you feel about your relationships with your loved ones. Goodness, I go out of my way several times to help my good friends to fix their PC problems. And I still don't mind doing it till this day.

      Reasons? Because relationships matters to me. And I enjoy seeing the happy looks on their faces when things are solved. Of course, I'm only a geek not superman. There are times you have to know your limits and tell them to either buy some decent anti-virus software, stop inst

    • Re: unless they agree to a few simple things (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hodet ( 620484 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @11:11AM (#7873074)
      - they must agree to never disable the Virus Scanner and Firewall
      - they must agree to never install games from a cereal box
      - they must agree to use Mozilla for web and mail..or Firebird\Thunderbird. (same stuff)
      - they must admit that their computer is having problems and they need help.
      - they must be open to understanding the importance of updates and the dangers of p2p programs that install spyware.
      - they must bring me their computer if they want it fixed. I just can't do it at their places as they are not setup for effective troubleshooting. (incredible how many people that eliminates...can't even be bothered to bring it to you...they want you there)
      - they must take an interest in maintaining the health of their system.
    • Do what I do....

      I give free support to all of my family/friends if they have a Mac OS X machine, or FreeBSD and KDE.

      I charge half of my consultant rate for any form of Windows.

      The reason: Once you have and OS-X or other Unix style operating system set up - the tend not to break randomly. Winodws brakes for no apparent reason -

      Clippy: " It looks like you doing somthing productive, would you like me to break Windows for you?"

  • Not to nitpick... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Fortunato_NC ( 736786 ) <verlinh75 AT msn DOT com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:44AM (#7872445) Homepage Journal
    But I think that time spent restoring a computer to its formerly working state isn't so much wasted as annoying. Because you're going to waste a lot more time if your computer isn't usable.

    Seriously, the downtime plague has gotten better in the past few years. Even Microsoft software is more stable than in the past (gasp!), and switching my personal laptop to an iBook running OS X has made reboots a lot less frequent (although I still have to force quit an app once or twice a week, Apple doesn't go completely blameless here).

    All in all, out of the 43,200 minutes in a month w/ 30 days, we're talking about a 1.6% rate of unavailabilty. And no doubt, that's unacceptable, but I bet as far as home computers go, that number is as good as it's ever been.
    • Agreed, but regarding switching to an iBook (I have as well) the amount of time I spend fixing problems has gone down immensely. OS X isn't holier than thou (I just had to relaunch the Finder) but if something does go screwy it doesn't take me half a day to fix it. Force quitting an app isn't the day-ending event that a blue screen can be.

  • How is it wasted time? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by KingDaveRa ( 620784 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:44AM (#7872446) Homepage
    How could it be classed as 'wasted'? Its a necessary fix. Would you class filling your car as wasted time, or making lunch as wasted time? I think the article is a bit redundant personally. Its just nullified my entire job by saying all I do is a waste of time.

    And Linux isn't the answer to all our prayers. It will work 100% out of the box, only if you install it on supported hardware, otherwise its a few hours finding an obscure patch to make things work. I spent a good few days trying to coax FreeBSD into running UDMA modes on its IDE controllers only to find out its not supported with the controller on the board. That's not 'wasted' time though. It was investigation to find the problem was mine - my fault for buying a cheap board. The only things I'd class as wasted time would be waiting for a bus that never came or waiting for a render which you knew wasn't going to work.
    • I guess time spent fixing problems resulting from spam is wasted, unlike lunch, which we do need, spam is something that we don't need, and when it comes, we waste our time to get rid of it.
    • But once you've installed Linux or FreeBSD and set up whatever obscure drivers you need, it normally stays running. It doesn't get slower and slower until it needs reinstalling, or require you to reinstall things because they have 'expired', or get infected with malware (unless you deliberately do something stupid). You have to keep up to date with security fixes, but with a good distribution that is mostly automatable and security fixes won't break random other things. When you do need to reinstall, mos

  • it'll get worse i'm afraid (Score:5, Interesting)

    by spectre_be ( 664735 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:47AM (#7872450)
    because many computer users i know simply don't care the least about keeping their machine clean. Why use another browser than IE which their so used to (they had a crash course of course). Outlook and word is all they use (perhaps even acrobat reader) and preferably as little as possible.
    I've spent countless hours removing blaster and the likes, removing spyware and viruses and trying people to get to use Moz Firebird or Opera.
    Of course, a month later they call me again with *exactly* the same problems.
    Alas for most people a computer is like a coffee machine it just has to fullfill its purpose. Companies can release all the fixes they want, it won't make a difference for a large part. My father for example has this Dell Laptop 2.4ghz P4 cpu. Runs on win98 (!) and office97 (no updates of course) because there's no money for upgrades or m$'s stupid licensing. The IT staff at his place doesnt have a clue bout spyware and the likes ('but we have a firewall') or vulnerabilities and i guess they wont ever care in this life.
    It's only gonna get messier i'm afraid.
    Thanks to Microsoft for exercising their right to innovate browsing
    • Ugh.

      Reminds me of a place I worked a few jobs ago. The uber-PHB had declared that laptops had to have Win9x because NT took too long to start up at airport security checkpoints.

      98SE lasted about a week before I blew it away and dropped on NT 4 Workstation. That made it a month or two before devouring its own bootloader in a fit of nihilism, and from then on ('til today) it's run Linux. (For a while it had VMWare with NT 4 under that... to run a Java app that had somehow managed to get Windows-ONLY wi

  • Waste #22 (Score:5, Funny)

    by gspr ( 602968 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:47AM (#7872452)
    Summary: Writing all this stuff -- time spent: 2 hours.

  • This is pretty ridiculous... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mOoZik ( 698544 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:51AM (#7872464) Homepage
    Look at some of the numbers:

    Repair #1 -- summary: Mom's printer driver -- time spent: 1 hour

    Repair #6 -- summary: Had to load motherboard-specific XP drivers on kids' machine -- time spent: 4 hours

    Repair #21 -- summary: Time Warner Internet blackout -- time spent: 30 minutes (blackout lasted 8 hours)

    It should be noted that not all of the time offs are due to Windows XP, as certain other anti-MS posters will attest, but but factors out of the users' control and also the users' stupidity. I would like to see how much time one spends every months getting Linux to function. :D

  • The one minute pick up line (Score:3, Interesting)

    by StarBar ( 549337 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:53AM (#7872473) Homepage Journal
    A friend and I both are singles and I made him a bet that a majority of girls that I introduced myself to would within one minute after that I told them what I do for a living ask for advice how to fix their Windows environment... this is probably something many people here have a common experience about. So far only about 40-50% has done that so maybe I have over estimated the "problem"

    My respons? Either of:

    "No problem, let me have a look"

    "Sorry, I am a Linux developer"

    This tip is GPL:ed ;-)

  • Get used to it. (Score:5, Funny)

    by mellon ( 7048 ) * on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:53AM (#7872476) Homepage
    You're in samsara. The Matrix has you. Things go wrong. You have to fix them.

    I've found personally that I spend a lot less time screwing around with broken things now that I'm running MacOS X, but YMMV - for example, my father has a dual-cpu G4, and he's getting frequent UI freezes right now (possibly system crashes - we don't know yet, because he hasn't done the latest diagnostic I asked him to do yet).

    This represents a nasty trend, actually - as soon as your own geek foo is good enough that you run out of your own problems to fix, people start to notice that you have supreme geek foo, and then you have to fix *their* problems. So there is no hope. Give it up. Get used to fixing computers. It is your karma. :')
    • Same here. I have a dual G4 quicksilver and i have never had a problem with OS X or the machine. Ever. I't has gotten to the point where i am bored, because all it does is help me get work done. And OS X makes working so well designed and easy that doesn't usually take long. So most of my time is spent playing a game or hunting down new music in the iTunes music store. It's unreal how stable Apple HW is, and how efficient OS X is at getting work done. Why anyone would buy a PC is beyond me. Really.

  • PEBCAK? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by qmrq ( 648586 ) <qmrq@hotmail.com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:55AM (#7872482) Journal
    I really don't feel much for this guy at all. If you use shitty software these things happen. Go get a real webbrowser like Phoenix, Opera, Netscape, or almost anything else that isn't IE. Grab a real mail client while you're at it. Thunderbird is kinda nice, Eudora isn't bad, TheBAT is ok. There are many more.

    Using Outlook and IE makes me wonder if this fellow is one of those who thinks IE "is the internet". Hm.

    Personally, I feel that a good bit of this waste and vulnerability is caused by Microsoft.

    Uhm.. sure. The latest version of their operating system is stable enough for most things. Around 50% of explorer crashes on XP are due to misconfiguration or user error.

    Microsoft could build a bullet-proof OS, solve the virus problem completely, etc. But it chooses not to do that and, at least for now, seems to be largely immune to liability for all of these problems.

    So stop using admin logons for everyday things. Most of the problems with spyware, malware, etc will disappear.Would you check your email or do anything else that is not admin work on linux as root? Of course not. When you have administrative priveledges on NT you can do lots of nasty things to your computer without difficulty. This means that any applications you run can do the same, since they are run with your access priveledges.

    • Re:PEBCAK? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Hanji ( 626246 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:46AM (#7872650)
      Around 50% of explorer crashes on XP are due to misconfiguration or user error.

      No matter what the user does, short of hacking the executable or its memory space or something similarly drastic, user error should never be able to outright *crash* a program.

    • Re:PEBCAK? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Sax Maniac ( 88550 )
      You realize how much Windows software will not work? Ever since I upgraded to Win2K, I have made sure to never run with admin privileges. From my Unix background, this was the only sane way to run.

      Then, you being to realize how much crappy sofware wants to write logfiles inside of its directory or other random places about the hard drive. It took me forever to figure out what files the apps wanted to fart around with, and either move them into a writable "home" style directory or add the right bits so i
  • ...that we're definitely wasting time *every* day due to the current state of Microsoft Windows desktop software.

    Crashes, fixes, updates, patches, security updates, spam (due to insecure Outlook email clients, etc.) and the like are a daily issue for Microsoft Windows users. In fact - no lie - I just rebooted my machine due to Windows XP "detecting and recovering from a device error". All I was doing was using my computer.... (sigh). BTW - if XP did "detect and recover" from it, why did I have to reboot
  • Unfortunately for me, I am the tech savvy person in my family. I have a brother who is certainly not dumb, but when it comes to the compter, he regards it as a "magic box" or something. On more than one occasion, he has felt the need to box it up and ship it to me. So, not only do I get the priviledge of repairing his PC on my oown free time, I get to pay to ship it back to him.

  • It's not just Windows (Score:5, Interesting)

    by AntEater ( 16627 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @08:59AM (#7872498) Homepage
    Reading through this article I noticed that a lot of his time was spent on problems specific to windows (pop-up, virus, etc). I've been using Linux on my home computer since '95 and I probably still spend a comparable amount of time on computer related maintenance. Thankfully, it's not system crashes but chasing down the occasional weirdness with hardware compatability or situations where an application's features are not 100% functional. At least with free software I don't pay for bug fixes (generally) but there are still problems and the 100% functionality can be very irritating.

    I found it interesting that he noted the absurdity of having to "agree" with so many legal documents just to maintain the system.

    I probably spend a comparable amount of time myself.

  • SIRCS (Score:2, Informative)

    by Aging_Newbie ( 16932 ) *
    Mentioned at the end of the article is the question of what SIRCS was during startup. It would appear to be the Sony InfraRed control system USB driver.

    While perusing the Google results, another writer in another blog was pondering whether SIRCS was responsible for mysterious behavior in his PC. When nothing seems to make sense it is easy to blame what is visible.
  • How is fixing your computer wasting time? If anything your computer lets you do things a hell of a lot faster than if you had to do it with a calculator or god forbid in with a paper anc pencil. Computers do have errors now and then and like all things occasionally break down, unless someone designs a crashproof bugproof computer, that will do all tasks you need it to do (internet, e-mail, word processing, whatnot). Its an unavoidable existence.

    That is like saying eating is a waste of time because it preve
  • ...Is that the time isnt actually wasted as he could be doing other things at the same time, e.g.

    Repair #2 -- summary: Random error in Window's Media Player, had to reinstall -- time spent: 20 minutes

    Is he saying he cannot do anything else whilst it is installing?

    Repair #6 -- summary: Had to load motherboard-specific XP drivers on kids' machine -- time spent: 4 hours

    Why not just start it off and then leave it - The little blue bar won't go any faster if you sit and watch it!

    • Re:What he doesn't take into account... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Malic ( 15038 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:11AM (#7872752)
      This isn't quite the same thing but I have a story/illustration to tell...

      I was asked at my old job to help out in a pinch to burn *30* DVD's of an agency presentation for a big client pitch the next day. Now, yes, the workstation burning an image took only 20 minutes to do so (burn plus verify - we were quite paranoid), but I didn't have a "robot" to re-load the burner with fresh media - I was the robot.

      What was I to do? I needed to be careful - nothing could go wrong or get mixed up like sending a blank disc out the door because of mixed-up of media, for instance. I feel that the more monotonous the task, the greater the risk of blowing it. So it wasn't something that I could pay half-attention to.

      What could I usefully get started on and accomplish in 20-minutes before I had to get up from my desk and walk over to feed the burner again? Anyone that's read Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's "Flow" will know that it really can't effectively be done. So I spent an 8-hour day burning DVD's, assembling cases and got no coding done.

      This is something that some managers and people who "just have never done something like it themselves" don't get. Interleaving work isn't always possible or effective.

  • None... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by autopr0n ( 534291 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:13AM (#7872544) Homepage Journal
    And not because I run Linux. I simply don't mess with my computer any more. I've had the same motherboard, even the same CPU for over two years. It's irritatingly slow, yes, but I don't have any money to upgrade.

    So the box just sits there, chugging along, without any problems.

  • Enormous Amounts of Time (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:14AM (#7872553)
    The amount of actual work that gets done on computers is vanishingly small. I would guess the ratio of productive work units of time compared to [reboot/reinstall/reconfigure/restart/find/lose/fi nd again/corrupted file/driver missing/hardware failure/wrong version/broken fonts/where's the
    install instructions] units of time is perhaps 1:100 and that's being very, very liberal.

    Problem ONE with computers is the total lack of adequate backups. Yeah yeah Norton Ghost and tar and yeah yeah yeah. Back up a 120GB hard drive with Ghost and a CD-R. My ass.

    Then try to restore it. BWAAHHAHAHAAAAA!!!

    And yeah, I use Linux too. It installs great, and it runs great and then you start configuring things, and about 47 weeks later, you have lost all interest in working on anything.

    Every time I'm walking through the computer store looking for some obscure item absolutely necessary to make yet another attempt to get some fucking work done I walk by them Mac G5s...

  • But.. (Score:3, Funny)

    by skinfitz ( 564041 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:17AM (#7872563) Journal
    It's not "time wasting", it's called "utilising expertise".

    If things never screwed up we would all be out of a job.

  • Nowhere near that! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by annielaurie ( 257735 ) <annekmadison@nosPAm.hotmail.com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:18AM (#7872566) Journal
    Our home network consists of three Macs and a PC running XP Pro. One of the Macs is a two year old G4. Two are older--much older G3's.

    Our chief time waster is the router, a Linksys. It maintains a dynamic IP connection over our DSL and has four internal connections. Occasionally, for reasons that are probably external, that connection slows to a crawl. We "refresh" it by rebooting the router. Let's say 20 "person-minutes" per week on that one (the five minutes it takex to reboot and reconnect x 4).

    Our shared printer, an insignificant HP Deskjet, probably isn't up to the task. It's getting old, and it jams every couple of months. I attribute this to wear on the rollers. When it goes, it's a time waster, usually involving my son and/or myself cursing, scratching our heads, snatching out shreds of paper, burning our hands, and printing out test pages. I'd figure an hour every 2-3 months.

    The G4 has a quirk in its file system that necessitates repairing it weekly. Ten minutes. I could resolve it by re-formatting. Monthly virus update runs in the background and other utilities (backup, virus scan) run at night. Updates from Apple about monthly, no expenditure of time, an occasional reboot.

    The two older G3's never cause a minute of trouble. The desktop had a "carry in" upgrade about eighteen months ago.

    The PC is locked up in my son's room where it never sees the light of day. My guess is he keeps it well maintained and spends some average amount of time each week applying patches and updates.

    We could probably total up an hour a week if we tried very hard.

    Anne

  • 11 hours? feh! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) * on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:24AM (#7872584)
    It once took me 36 hours to install Gentoo, KDE and Xfree. Does that count? (the GRP has brought thta down to a nice and comfortable 45 minutes or so).

  • A time sink people won't acknowledge (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pvera ( 250260 ) <pedro.vera@gmail.com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:27AM (#7872595) Homepage Journal
    I read about his experiment yesterday and I could not agree more. I got two very different extremes of his concern:

    1. I am a Mac switcher. A little bit after I switched to Mac I noticed that, once the euphoria of the new computer wore off a little bit, and OS X stopped being a novelty to me, I was running out of things to do in the computer. I thought I was hallucinating, because as far as I could tell, and this includes many years messing with every flavor of Windows plus SuSe and freeBSD, I seemed to be spending at least one hour less per day in front of the computer. Then I figured it out: I was too used to spend about one hour a day just doing things to keep the PC running.

    The Mac was pretty much maintenance free and updates don't come out every day, so unless you are a tweaker, there is not a lot of stuff to do to mess with the OS itself. Most apps I use check for an update on startup, and on my daily list of websites to visit is versiontracker, which will tell me any other of my apps that needs to be updated.

    2. At work I wear many hats: I am the lead programmer, but at a moment's notice I have to switch gears and become the CIO/CTO/Director of Technology/Mac guy/Windows server Guy/Network Guy/Printer Guy, etc. I work for a 14-employee company, and I am the only technically-oriented person (everybody else is either a biologist or a statistician). I kept having trouble because even if I only spend about 50% of my week working on programming tasks, I was always working 60 hours weeks because of all the odd jobs that had to be done around the office. Worse, there was no way to track these, so my timesheets for a week would show 20-30 hours broken down between a few billable projects, then another 20-30 hours clumped as "IT."

    I started using Issue Tracker (issue-tracker.sourceforge.net) and forced myself to write a trouble ticket for every stupid little request I was made. It did not matter if it was a 5-minute job: if it was not a "billable" task, it would go into the issue tracker. After a couple weeks, I got to the same conclusion as Marshall. All these little jobs suck in a hell of a lot of time. The 5-minute printer clearing job is actually a 15-minute job: 5 minutes for somebody to come to you to interrupt what you are doing, explaining the problem, then 5 minutes to fix and test and a final 5 minutes to explain the problem was fixed and to return to work.

    The worst thing was that the boss acutally had the nerve to tell me that the reason I was working 12-hour days was because I was goofing off 8 hours at the office and then catching up from home. Now I can show him the issue tracker log and show him that no, even with 14 Macs at the office there is just too much crap that has to be dealt with thru the day.

    The Macs at the office run fine, thank you. Even the ones still on OS 9 (*cough*cheapskate boss*cough*). Most problems we have with the Macs are due to programs we run in classic mode (have I hinted at how cheap my boss is?\): once these lock up there is no way to kill just one classic app without restarting the classic mode itself. The two Windows servers are cheap and sturdy but require constant TLC. Thanks God the mail server is freeBSD.

  • Not that bad for Windows (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jd142 ( 129673 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:34AM (#7872612) Homepage
    Ok, looking through the log there are a minimum of three computers. His computer, Mom's computer and the kids' computer.

    Of the 11 hours and 20 minutes, he includes 30 minutes of a cable blackout. Now unless Bill Gates went over to the cable company and snipped some wires, that's hardly a Microsoft problem. It isn't a tv or light fixture problem if the electricity goes out, so I wouldn't call it a computer problem if the internet provider is down.

    We're now down to 10:50:00.

    He spent 5 minutes helping a friend with Word problems, 10:45:00.

    That takes the time spent *per computer* down to 3:36 and a few seconds per month.

    Of the remaining problems, a very small amount of user education can take care of a large chunk of the time. Let's start with Windows updates. 6 clicks automates this whole process and you get all the critical updates you need to stop the next worm. He devoted 1:20 minutes that he never should have to that problem. That takes the total time down to 9:25, or approx. 3:08 per computer. While this is a problem, the fix takes literally 10 seconds and from then on you spend no time keeping your computer up to date. It just happens automatically. I think this may even be turned on by default in XP now, but I could be wrong.

    I've seen a lot of posts that didn't read the article and just started bashing MS and Windows. Of the remaining problems, a couple were from third party software. In fact, he even counts the time spent consoling his child when a game doesn't work as part of the computer problem time. While there are few things as sad as a Christmas toy that won't work on Christmas day, it simply isn't fair to allocate that time to the computer.

    So we're down to about 3:05 per computer over the course of a month. This includes what is probably a one time event -- the 4 hours spent determining that motherboard drivers were needed and installing them. If this is a one time event, then the per computer time drops to 1:45 per month. Because this is such a limited time frame, it is unknown whether the average time spent per month is closer to 3 hours or 1 3/4 hours.

    Yes, there are plenty of things wrong with Windows, Linux, OSX, and computer hardware and software in general. But this is not the article to use to get an accurate picture of how much time is wasted on poor design, bad programming, and out right errors.

  • I dont' waste time fixing computers.... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by amichalo ( 132545 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:52AM (#7872685)
    ....I have a Mac

  • No, I will *not* fix your computer. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hanji ( 626246 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @09:55AM (#7872699)
    No, I will not fix your computer. [thinkgeek.com]

    'nuff said.

  • The Power User's Lament (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ashtead ( 654610 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:06AM (#7872735) Journal
    I have now RTFA...

    Many of these problems he describes seem to come from the use of IE where better alternatives exist.

    And of course, we who are in the know about alternatives to Microsoft's products could holler and rant forever about our preferred alternatives. That would not keep Marshall Brain or anyone else of his fellow power users from wasting time as he has just documented.

    The problem isnt just a debate of MS or alternatives, it is rather that a lot of people expect their computers and internet connections to function about as reliably as any other comparable appliances. And MS and all the others are failing miserably in that regard.

    His remarks about having to wade through kilobytes of EULAs are spot-on. Nobody requires you to read and accept a one-sided document like that when you buy a new oil filter or new tires for your car, why should an equivalent fix for some utility software have to be radically different? Many of these exclusive-rights software are things that it doesn't make much sense to copy and distribute, I mean, is there anyone that even would care about warez-sites offering "printer driverz", considering that they're rather worthless without the actual printer?

    Really, the state of computers today bear strong similarities to what cars were back in the early 20th century. The difficulties with reliability, the need for frequent maintenance, and the requirements of the operators were a lot bigger than they are today. A driver had to be a fairly competent mechanic as well; similarly, people using computers can still not get anywhere close to optimal use from them without the knowledge about how to fix the internals.

    Thus, like many of the above posters note, we who know more about computers than our friends get requests from them to fix theirs, as the ones that don't know how to fix their computers ask someone they know that does. The point remains that all this need for fixing and maintenance is indicative of a more fundamental flaw.

    It is time to try and move forward, from the present-day sorry state of affairs. Abandoning certain flawed designs would be a good place to begin.

  • My mom doesn't do sysadmin... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by joestar ( 225875 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:06AM (#7872738) Homepage
    Neither do I. Neither does my two brothers.

    My aunts , uncles and many friends spend more and more time to fix issues in their system, find anti-viruses, repair damaged files, and even sometimes reinstall the whole system. They run Windows XP.

    We run Mandrake and have no such issues.

  • Wasted time fixing computers. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Codifex Maximus ( 639 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:09AM (#7872748) Homepage
    Your wasted time is exactly why I run Linux. Linux may take a bit of initial configuring, but after it's tweaked the way you like it... just sit back and enjoy.

    I rarely spend more than 30 min a month fixing my computer.

  • Family IT support (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Matey-O ( 518004 ) * <michaeljohnmiller@mSPAMsSPAMnSPAM.com> on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:22AM (#7872793) Homepage Journal
    There are certain family members that I don't support anymore. Mostly because 'Could you take a quick look at my computer? The scanner isn't working' turns into a 8 hour tarbaby reinstall of windows 98 se because they can't POSSIBLY upgrade to anything newer RIGHT now with business being the way it is. This is the computer that you told them NOT to buy because, while it _is_ 5% faster and $100 cheaper than the computer you TOLD them to buy, it's made with crap components with non-existant drivers. (the fact that it also has three virus checkers, three 'system performance enhancers', and four pieces of hardware from companies that no longer exist notwithstanding.)

    • Re:Family IT support (Score:3, Interesting)

      by borgasm ( 547139 )
      Neighbors are even worse at this...

      Its easy to reject your own family, but its worse when your family tells people that you'd be happy to come over and fix the 40 spyware programs, full harddrive, and bad drivers on somebody else's computer.

      Oh, and of course you have to do this on your own free time.

  • Not all Microsofts fault. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:33AM (#7872849)
    This is not all Microsoft fault. It is just a process of having a hodgepodge of different computer equipment, mixed together. If he settled on all the same type of equipment then the issues will be reduced. Still if there was linux or an OS with actual security features then the ordinary family member will not have the ability to mess-up anything that screws up the computer (Hence not run as root). But it is also an issue of people and education officials afraid to teaching people to be computer literate (Using Word and Excel and IE IS NOT COMPUTER LITERATE)

  • I used to be in the same endless cycle... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by clifgriffin ( 676199 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:34AM (#7872861) Homepage
    I used to run Windows 2000 Pro on my mom's computer and the kids' computer. The result? Endless problems. They seemed to be absolute wizards at prompting BSODs. It was not uncommon for me to spend 24+ hours every month trying to figure out how they were able to so efficiently ruin a Windows 2000 installation.

    I was so desperate one time that I even ventured to install Windows Crap 98.

    I've since upgraded to Windows XP, bought/installed Ad Aware 6 Plus (w/ Adwatch), turned on automatic update/install, and blocked programs such as Kazaa. The problems I have now? Almost none. I probably average 2 hours a month at most. Some months may have more, but my average fix time is probably 5-10 minutes. XP is just much better for computer illiterate users. It's harder to break and when it does break...there is usually recourse that doesn't involve an installation CD and late nights.

    Spend the 100 dollars. You'll reap it in the time you save.

    Clif

  • It could be worse. (Score:5, Funny)

    by dsb3 ( 129585 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:42AM (#7872905) Homepage Journal
    I once spent a month tracking how much time I was spending at /.

    This guy doesn't have ANYTHING to worry about ...

  • wtf... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Transcendent ( 204992 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @10:58AM (#7873013)
    umm... some of the time taken for some tasks is rediculous. Loading motherboard drivers for 4 hours?? Fixing a printer driver for an hour? Windows update for an hour?

    Either he's on a really slow computer, or he's just stupid.

  • No admin time on Solaris! (Score:3, Informative)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @12:48PM (#7873536) Journal
    I run Solaris, Linux, and Windows at home. After a year of Solaris being my most heavily used platform, I find that it's also the lowest admin-time-cost platform of the three. Upgrades and updates are fast and painless, and fairly infrequent. Versionitis is a non-issue, except when it comes to applications (which have generally been developed on Linux, curiously).

    I find that Linux is still a horrible mishmash of interdependencies, some of which are mutually exclusive. apt-get makes it MUCH easier to deal with, but you still do have to deal with it one way or another. Windows is worse--they have a very nice driver install/upgrade system that no vendors in existence seem to use; and entropy forces a clean reinstall of Windows every 12-18 months, no matter what you do.

  • Symantec sucks just as bad (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Sunday January 04, 2004 @02:47PM (#7874226)
    A friend brought by a computer the other day to have me "fix" it - of course it was riddled with pop-ups and worms, and had about 3 dozen autorun programs that took over the whole system. We backed up critical files and then re-installed Win XP Home. A basic install of XP took about 3 hours, then I had to remove some of Microsoft's spyware. Then we decided to install Norton Internet Security 2004 on the machine. In the middle of the install, Symantec's program hung up, and we couldn't remove it, if was half-way installed and took the computer's neworking capability down with it. The only clean solution was to reformat and reinstall Win XP over again. Due to the nature of Windows, there is no easy way to clean up the system once it gets screwed up, and this is the final straw for me relating to Symantic software. I will NEVER use their crap again. We've constantly had problems. I wish I could bill them for the wasted time due to their crappy software.

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