Wasting Time Fixing Computers

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?"

Comments

worse

[3dLuke]

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

[Bas_Wijnen]

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), 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

[October_30th]

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

[October_30th]

If the market leader can't get it right, why do you think Mac would be all that much better?

Non-techs (composers, graphical artists, housewives, arts students,...) use Macs extensively and they seem to love the OS/computer. It's quite a contrast to the burning hatred with which most Windows users speak about their platform.

Re:worse

[John Courtland]

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

[danila]

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 system, so I just made a boot disk and edited the config files to point it to the correct partition. The problem is that the first boot attempt after power-on just doesn't work. I am told that because of hardware problems blah-blah-blah Windows can't boot. Ctrl-Alt-Del and this time it boots correctly. Insane.
2) The battery in my cordless Logitech mouse died and I replaced it with the old mouse (which actually works better). I changed the mouse sensitivity (pointer speed) for this new mouse to the comfortable settings (same as for the old mouse - max speed and not acceleration). But for some reason the sensitivity just drops sometimes to about half of what I want. Changin the focus (clicking on desktop or another app) sometimes helps. Switching back sometimes lowers the sensitivity back. Restarting the app where this happened always helps. This happens in different applications including console windows and explorer windows. Insane.

This is the reason why I hated Sun Solaris stations and many Linux machines that I had to use - things would always work in stupid ways (not stupid because I am used to different ways, stupid like in two examples above).

My next computer just might be a Mac.

This is why I don't fix for family

[Amiga Lover]

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

Re:This is why I don't fix for family

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:This is why I don't fix for family

[Tim C]

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

[BenTheDewpendent]

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....

Re:This is why I don't fix for family

[Brandybuck]

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 parents on the opposite coast, you had fix and maintain the plumbing over three to four hours of your limited time with them? If it were me, I would start to resent it. Are there no plumbers on their side of the country? Or what if you were a professional automechanic, and three to four hours of every weekend with them you had to change their oil, tune their engines, and wax the cars?

I don't mind helping my friends and family out when they have computer problems. But I am starting to get very annoyed with some of them when each and every time I visit I am immediately presented with a long list of things to fix on the computer.

When I haven't seen my mom in six months, and the first words out of her mouth when I visit are "oh good, you're here, I've got a list of computer stuff for you", I get just a little bit peeved. I'm not being petty. I get peeved in EXACTLY the same way she used to get peeved when I arrived home between college terms with half a dozen loads of unwashed laundry.

Not to nitpick...

[Fortunato_NC]

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.

How is it wasted time?

[KingDaveRa]

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.

Re:How is it wasted time?

[Dreadlord]

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.

Re:How is it wasted time?

[khallow]

A little context would have been helpful here. I surfed your site a little before I was able to find out that you are indeed a "Computer Support officer" and hence your job is indeed fixing computers.

Its just nullified my entire job by saying all I do is a waste of time.

If all you do is fix problems that Microsoft and other software companies unnecessarily introduce into their products then your job is indeed a waste of time. Even in that case, you have to consider whose time is more valuable. Yours or the professors and secretaries at the university which hires you? In that case, it's far better to waste your time than theirs.

Re:How is it wasted time?

[CraigV]

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.

Linux has the great disadvantage that the manufacturer of the computer usually doesn't test their machine with Linux and doesn't prepare the install disk. The linux distro must anticipate the wide range of hardware that might be encountered. On top of that, proprietary drivers or undisclosed hardware hooks put artificial road blocks in the way. Its amazing that the distros do as well as they do!

PEBCAK?

[qmrq]

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?

[Hanji]

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.

Is it really wasting time?

[gotpaint32]

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 prevents me from doing things I need to do. Whereas in reality, logic would show you it is what allows you to do things you do.

Bill for your time

[chigaze]

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:Bill for your time

[Jedi Alec]

Indeed. Where would this world go if one were to use his or her skills to help those around him/her instead of solely for material gain.

On a side note, when relatives/friends/folks I know ask me to fix a computer, that generally means a free meal, an invitation for a couple of drinks at their expense, or some other sort of reward that may not have been in crispy bills but was substantial instead. There was a time when I referred to my fixing PC's as "having to play doctor again"...

Re:Bill for your time

[Tim C]

It's called "being nice". I personally have no problem helping people out with PC problems from time to time. Sure, if it started getting to be too regular a thing, they'd probably start finding that suddenly I'm busy an awful lot. I can't imagine charging friends or family for that sort of thing, though, unless it was actually business-related (eg I was setting up a server or network, or writing some code, or something, for their business).

Re:Bill for your time

[WNight]

I think it's fair to ask sixty-second questions. Or rather, to ask questions expecting a sixty-second answer, even if that ends up being "That's a complex question, I can't answer it here."

You could ask you doctor relative if a shortness of breath while walking was a "bad thing", or just the cold you had two weeks ago not going away. He can say A, B, or "Go to the clinic and get a checkup."

Ditto with computer stuff. If someone is about to purchase a CD burner and wants a recomendation it takes me longer to explain my fees than it does to simply say "The Lite-On 52x". If they want me to write out the procedure for something that happens to be complex, I explain that it'd take a while and without a computer in front of us it's a problem. If they persist, this is where they are rude - not for asking what they thought could have been a trivial question.

Besides, much of the advice I get asked for is in the form of hobbyists who want to chat up a pro. I install Linux (etc) for a living, so when a friend installs Mandrake to give it a try they chat me up to see what I think of it and what stuff I'd recommend doing. While technically advice, it's more hobbyist chat. Like when photographers chat about lenses and stuff. They don't charge the newbies who are around, even though their opinions are the result of a lifetime of valuable experience and could save the newbie tons of time and money.

Re:Bill for your time

[16K Ram Pack]

The problem is, if I didn't fix my family's PCs, they'd go and see a cowboy operator somewhere.

My limit is family and friends. NOT friends of friends. If I don't know you, you're paying.

I also don't help a family member when stuck in a work situation. One member of my family works for some lawyers. I'm not going to subsidise a company that don't do their own tech support.

Re:it'll get worse i'm afraid

[Cartridge P. Grover]

It should not be the responsibility of the user to keep their computer "clean." People buy computers because they want to accomplish something. Yet they spend more and more time doing the meta-crap of keeping their computer running, and keeping criminals from taking the thing over. There is NO LIMIT to the number of viruses, spams, and pieces of Microsoft software that may conspire to bring your system down. I don't use Microsoft VirusPlatform Pro, so I don't get their viruses, but I do get spam. Today I got 100 spams. Tomorrow I may get 100 billion. My computing experience could end in an instant. Spam is already illegal throughout the world (since it's plain old theft) and yet, what, 3 people? have been prosecuted. Get used to it. Your 11-hour odyssey can (and I think will) become a full-time job. 100% percent of your time troubleshooting and cleaning. Especially if you are willing to believe that you alone are responsible for "fixing" the malicious behavior of countless others.

Not that bad for Windows

[jd142]

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.

Good grief

[Anonymous Coward]

Apart from time spent backing up user data, I've not spent much more than that over 21 months on my current home machine (Dell, midrange laptop, W2K etc). Lemme see:

1. Run initial installation procedure, set up non-privileged and privileged but non-Admin user accounts: perhaps 3 hours.
2. Set up internet access with pay-as-you-go phone company ISP: half an hour.
3. Download and install Opera & Cookie Pal, make Opera default browser: an hour or so
4. Download and install Eudora email client: ditto.
5. Install driver for printer (Lexmark inkjet, admittedly not a good choice, but it's worked well enough so far): <30 minutes.
6. Configuring access to a better ISP: 10 minutes.
7. Investigating problems with CD/DVD combo a few months after purchase, phone calls to Dell support, shipping defective drive back, checking replacement fixed problems: maybe 3 hours.
8. MSBLAST worm: it didn't succeed in infecting the machine, but it did get far enough to kill cut&paste a couple of times before I downloaded and installed one of the personal firewalls recommended by MS on its support pages: probably over 4 hours.
9. Switching to Norton Ghost for backups: a couple of hours.

So almost half the one-off maintainance time was due to MSBLAST. All in all, backups and keeping virus definitions up to date have used up more time. And I suspect that with my pattern of use I could probably dispense with the virus checking: it's not yet found anything in any email or other downloaded data, but then I'm pretty careful about where I point my browser.

I dont' waste time fixing computers....

[amichalo]

....I have a Mac

The Power User's Lament

[Ashtead]

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.

Re:11? more like 110!

[AllUsernamesAreGone]

"how much time a average computer joe spends installing, configuring, tweaking, a linux distro"

Simple - 0 hours. Average Joes don't install Linux - they either give up, get a friend to help or they aren't average..

Re:Hmm...

[anon*127.0.0.1]

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.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[t0ny]

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:none at all

[renoX]

>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 less likely than with Windows but only because Linux market share is much lower than Windows..

Recent security problems on Linux servers have shown that hackers are targetting more and more Linux, which is quite logical: as Linux usage grows, the cracker's threat will grow for unpatched Linux servers..

Family IT support

[Matey-O]

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.)

Skewed results

[t0ny]

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 minutes

Repair #21 -- summary: Time Warner Internet blackout -- time spent: 30 minutes (blackout lasted 8 hours)So there are some other ones (like his PC-cilin problems, the CNET download manager, etc) which were really problems caused by neglecting his PC (rather than doing 'routine maintenence' and resolving issues before they become problems). But the case is, in the examples cited above, he 'spent' 3 hours and twenty minutes doing things which either are/ can be automated, or else werent really 'fixed' by him (like the blackout! was he out there helping Time Warner get things resolved? No? Then what exactly did he do during that half hour?)

Well, he made the page at Slashdot, so I guess his sensationalism worked. But if this guy were a consultant, I would accuse him of padding his bill, big time.

Re:Skewed results

[Stinking Pig]

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 support for i810 chips in their last update. There went thirty minutes diagnosing it and looking for a workaround.

Just now, I sat down to look at /. and found my laptop locked up and spewing IDE subsystem failure messages to the console. Why? Something screwy in Mandrake Cooker. What? Damned if I know -- if it happens over and over again I'll be able to reproduce it and get hardware fixed or write a bug report, but that doesn't seem likely based on past systems behavior.

Not all Microsofts fault.

[jellomizer]

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)

Are all people on /. ungratefull bastards

[Anonymous Coward]

Or am I just naive.
I'm allways very happy when I can help my family with something, and I can allways count on them to help me when I need it. And to be quite honest fixing a computer (which usually isn't really broken), is a lot easier then say looking after my kids.
I would feel quite offended if people I care about would try to pay me money for something like that.

Re:Get used to it.

[TheRaven64]

I used to run Windows 2000 on my desktop. Well, in theory I still do, but it hasn't been booted for a few months, since I got a PowerBook. Since then, I have spent almost no time tweaking OS X, since everything works out of the box (except, for some reason, mod_php4 in Apache. I had to uncomment a few lines in httpd.conf to make that work). Now, when people ask me for help with their Windows problems, I give them some simple advice which will save them a lot of time and therefore money in the long run:

Get a Mac

Sadly, not many of them seem to follow this advice, and keep coming back with new problems.

Re:none at all

[squiggleslash]

I have a bunch of Linux machines, OpenBSD systems, and a couple of Macs on my home network (I never throw hardware away...) and, in all honesty, I wouldn't say I've saved a lot of time avoiding Windows, I've just been able to do things I doubt I'd have done if I had a (consumer) Windows-centered network. And because of being able to do those things, I've wasted a lot of time in the process.

Everything's now driven by a DNS server and DHCP server which does all the configuration of network information centrally. Cool, but it took a while to realise it could work and how to do it. I have an OpenBSD NAT box that does the PPPoE to Earthlink - which is nice, but that took a while to get going too, and I've wasted a fair amount of time trying to fix problems due to Earthlink's vendor network here reimplementing PPPoE and screwing it up. I have various servers so that I can keep most of my files centrally located and back-upable, but that took time to do and still isn't finished. And I'm not counting my anti-spam system which I've had in place in one way or another since the late-nineties.

And then there's the frequent experience of wanting to play with something and discovering I just don't have "just the right" hardware to get it going, or to get it going in a usable configuration. AROS, NextStep, Darwin, Solaris 8, all bombed on my machines here.

Or alternatively there's the things that do "just work" in the Windows world that never quite do in the Unix world because of dependencies and other nasties.

On the other hand, I reinstalled Windows 98 for a friend yesterday. We formatted, went through the installation, removed disks like it said, and ended up with a system that demanded we supply drivers and DLLs - but wouldn't let us - every time you tried to boot up, with it bluescreening after a little use. We tried again, this time never taking the CD out of the CD drive (which we'd done before when it had told us to "remove all disks", something it hadn't explictly complained about but I had a hunch was the problem: we probably wouldn't have bothered but the PC was configured to boot from a bootable CD if there was one so it was easier to remove it when Windows Setup told us to.) and it worked - except no soundcard, no modem, and VGA graphics. Remind me, isn't it Linux that you can never get drivers for? We will not even know which drivers to download until I attack that box with a screwdriver.

I think you end up wasting time at a higher level with the better operating systems. This probably says something.

Re:Lie or exaggeration?

[DavidinAla]

I run far more apps than the typical Mac OS X user, and I can guarantee that your father's Mac was not forced to do three or four updates/patches per day. Either one of you is lying or else it's an exaggeration to try to support a position.

I just checked my software update log, and I received a TOTAL of seven updates for the month through the Mac OS X software update system, the last one of which was on Dec. 19. If you want us to believe what you're saying about your father's system, show us the update log. But you won't do it, because that number of updates just don't exist.

Re:Heh

[Anonymous Coward]

Yikes. How can you stand 4 hours of "I run Linux so I rule and you all suck" posts? I'd say Slashdot has about 20 minutes of worthwhile reading per day at most. It used to be much better, but the downward slide continues.

A good thought drowned in hyperbole

[Anonymous Coward]

Brain's fury at inept computer and software construction is well founded, and certainly is something I share. However, he forgets that modern life is becoming an impossible hassle everywhere, not just in the computer realm...

There is nothing else in my life where I am told I have to read dozens of legal documents (license agreements, privacy notices, legal notices, etc.) simply to buy and upgrade things. Remember buying a house? There's a lot of real legal paperwork involved, things that are more likely to land you in court than a Microsoft EULA or PapPal's privacy policy. Try understanding your neighborhood covenants, sometime when you and a good lawyer have a few days to spare. You can't use that paint--it's tan, not ecru!

There is nowhere else in my life where a manufacturer can force me to upgrade something I have legitimately purchased (for example, the maker of my refrigerator cannot force me to buy a new refrigerator, but I was forced to upgrade both PC-cillin and MSN messenger this month). Ever had your car recalled? There's a forced upgrade you'd better no ignore!

There is nothing in my life where I am exposed to so much unmitigated crap - spam, pop-ups, viruses, etc. TV. Any TV, including PBS and DVDs that spew out ads before the "play" menu opens.

Re:11? more like 110!

[Alan]

Tweaking != Fixing.

I may tweak my desktop to look better, write backup scripts, and screw around with software RAID for 1000 hours a month, but that's not the same as making a computer work or dealing with driver issues, etc.