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

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now I'm too old..."

I don't know why, but for a moment there I thought you were Ben Kenobi. :)

Need more coffee...

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

[t0ny]

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

[joestar]

> 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

[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

[t0ny]

What do I do on my network? I experiment with things which I do not want to try in a production, corporate environment. I have an active directory, exchange 2000, I play with profile settings, and also test my network security. I also have IIS and an outlook web page (OWA on exchange). Pretty soon I am going to test out different conversions with Win2003 and Exchange 2003, Im just waiting on getting licenses and media for them.

As far as home networks go, this is a very high tech one, and is often set up far better than places I work at.

BTW, I have Windows NT servers with over a year of uptime, excluding time spent afterhours applying updates (which you can bitch about all you want, but the fact remains that MS doesnt have no reboot patches), and I have Win2k servers with at least that long. A month uptime is long? No way, only a month of uptime is weak, and there is either a hardware issue, a third-party driver issue, or caused by a non-MS program you are running. So can a Windows box run for over a year without crashing? Hell ya. Easily.

But as for using Windows as a router or whatever, no, I wouldnt do that because it isnt what Windows was designed to do. I use routers for routers.

Each client runs Zone Alarm for a firewall, McAfee Virus scanner (which I like because it can be set to fetch its own updates), and Ad-Aware (I would like to get the version that runs and updates itself, but at the moment there are other things to spend money on). I used to use History Kill to block pop-ups, but now I use the Google Toolbar, because its both free, and because I used it before as well. Its always good to eliminate the amount of applications which are installed, and HK was also kind of buggy and caused the computer to lock up (I believe there was a memory leak).

Re:worse

[t0ny]

No, what I said makes sense, but you are a troll.

You dont put a linux machine on the internet, naked to the world, do you? No, you set up a firewall, and/or you have it running behind something running a firewall and NAT.

System management is about managing your systems. You use each piece to do what it does, and use other pieces to do what they do. Its not about sticking your head in the sand and thinking your ub3r-boxen is a do-everthing swiss army knife.

And no, I wasnt vulnerable to that remote RPC stuff (as you so eloquently put it), because my systems are up to date on their patches, and because they are protected behind a firewall. I talk more about my network here. But honestly, you are way trolling. Either that, or you just dont know what you are talking about. Or both, because they arent mutually exclusive.

Re:worse

[wfberg]

BTW, I have Windows NT servers with over a year of uptime, excluding time spent afterhours applying updates (which you can bitch about all you want, but the fact remains that MS doesnt have no reboot patches), and I have Win2k servers with at least that long. A month uptime is long? No way, only a month of uptime is weak, and there is either a hardware issue, a third-party driver issue, or caused by a non-MS program you are running. So can a Windows box run for over a year without crashing? Hell ya. Easily.

You're kind of cheating there by disregarding the restarts due to necessary patches. Sure, your average linux distribution needs to be patches once in a while as well, but rarely (kernel) to the point of having to reboot everything. Simply rebooting NT will actually solve a lot of problems because every dinky piece of software running on it will be started anew, and memory leaks, stalled/locked/deadlocked software and such disappear..

Still, Microsoft understands very well that as long as it's scheduled downtime, nobody cares about it, as it's after hours.. And, most people don't realize this, but 99% uptime means 14.4 minutes of downtime every 24 hours. If you save that up over a month (an attainable uptime even with NT 4.0) you get over 7 hours to go down at your choosing.. And if High Availability actually matters to you, they'll gladly charge you for it.

BTW a lot of patches that tell you to reboot don't actually need the system to reboot.. Simply stopping and restarting some services will do nicely if that's even needed at all - just like most patches on linux or a BSD. It seems to me that Microsoft views the "forced reboot" as a maintenance chore, much like defragging your hard disk.. Software installs will often prompt you to reboot as well - even though it's totally unnecessary.

Re:worse

[SoupaFly]

That's *exactly* why I got an iBook 9 months back. My Windows based system kept giving me problems. Anymore, I don't like having to deal with all the little details of why something isn't working. If I choose to dig down and explore on my own, that's one thing. To be forced into it to resolve some error or other irritant isn't what it used to be for me.

I've found the Mac to be really simple and well designed. It really does just work, for the most part. I bought w/o an Airport card and added one in about 4 months ago and it was the easiest computer upgrade I've done in 15 years. The biggest problem I've had was figuring out why the wireless was working one day and not the next at a different location. (It was software setting that just needed to be changed)

Incidentally, the Mac seems to be a great platform for SW development. Apple provides all the tools needed at no charge.

Haven't decided to completely abandon my Windows desktop for a Mac though.

Re:worse

[Raffaello]

You're conflating Apple updates, some of which need to be applied for security reasons, or bug fixes, and third party application vendor updates, which are almost always feature enhancements, or minor bug fixes, but just about never security related.

In fact, the only updates that *need* to be applied to a Mac OS X machine are the security updates, and these are issued, on average, every two weeks, to once a month. Many of these security updates do *not* require a machine restart.

You father is becoming a slave to his dubious "update alerter." There is no reason for a machine in a production environment to do this sort of silliness ("iBelch by Indigestion software has been updated to version 5.4.1 - your installed version is 5.4.0. New in this version: added support for controlling iBelch via a Bluetooth phone. Do you wish to upgrade? - restart required") Anyone without a Bluetooth phone and with a lick of sense doesn't apply this application update.

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.

Re:worse

[Dixie_Flatline]

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.

Re:worse

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, the only updates that *need* to be applied to a Mac OS X machine are the security updates, and these are issued, on average, every two weeks, to once a month.

Actually, the true average is less than once per month. :-) I just counted mine the other day to make a point with some troglodyte XP user.

Between 9/20/02 and 12/19/03, Apple released 13 security-specific updates for installs of OS 10.2. Two of those were for included applications (one for IE, one for Stuffit Expander). So that's a grand total of 11 security updates in 15 months. Anyone running Windows want to check their install history and count their security updates between those two dates?

Re:worse

[LO0G]

That's likely to be the case. But many of Marshall Brain's updates and patches would have been covered in the same manner. This entire article is about the downtime required for a Windows PC - downtime from apps, from motherboard firmware updates, from printer driver updates, AND from windows. So the original topic (11 hours of downtime in the month of december) ALSO conflates patches from various sources.

He doesn't pick every patch, but he complains about the NUMBER of patches that his auto-alerter complains about.

Many of the products he's got installed are open source binary releases with bug-fix-of-the-week changes (most of which are on the order of iBelch v5.4.1), many of them are from commercial products.

Re:worse

[Bas_Wijnen]

I didn't plan to be trolling at all, but perhaps I was, I'm not really good at recognizing trolls :-)

You dont put a linux machine on the internet, naked to the world, do you? No, you set up a firewall, and/or you have it running behind something running a firewall and NAT.

Of course, and I expect you to do the same with your boxes, independant of what OS they are running. But I don't claim that my computers are bug-free. It would be nonsense to do that. All I say is that in the case of non-free software, the only solution to an exploitable bug usually is to block the service and wait for it to be fixed. I admit, that's what I usually do with free software as well, but I like the idea that I actually have a choice: If it's really important for me, I could just fix the bug myself.

or you just dont know what you are talking about.

My statement was that it is nonsense to claim to have a bug-free system because of good system management. And it's nonsense to claim to have a virus-immune system if you haven't seen the source (and actually, if you have seen it, too.) Those things would be very nice, but have nothing to do with system management. Unless you count choosing the right OS as system management, that is, but in that case Windows isn't quite the choice for both bug-freeness and virus immunity.

Really, you didn't convince me that I don't know what I'm talking about. I get the feeling perhaps you don't... Although it seems more like a misunderstanding. Or I could be missing the fact that you're a troll?

Re:worse

[freeweed]

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.

Dear god, what do you do with your computer?

AFAIK, the NT(5) kernel has pretty much clobbered memory leaks, barring applications that refuse to be closed because they run in kernel space. I've had my 2k box up for months (yes, plural. Like 4 or more) and it's my daily-use computer. As in, I do everything on it. I've never once seen anything resembling a memory leak in explorer, except on people's machines that have 50 different spyware apps on them taking over willy-nilly. Somehow this manages to get explorer up in la-la land memory wise.

Beyond that, I haven't had to reboot my machine in over 3 years, barring hardware changes and patches. Not once.

Re:worse

[longbottle]

Amen brother. If you know how to maintain it properly, then just about anything can be made very stable and reliable these days.

Re:worse

[rikkards]

What's funny is that I have found my machine is less stable since I just upgraded. I went from a stable machine of a VIA KT266 mobo, EIDE 80G, TI4200 and Athlon 1700 to a KT600, ATI9800 Pro and Athlon 2600 and SATA 120G.

My TV card has stopped working with the sound card (had them both before on the other board and they worked together but if I disable the sound card (an Audigy 2) and use the builtin sound it works fine).
Also the machine will lock up once in a while.

Quite frustrating..

Re:worse

[mrmez]

Perhaps because Macs already are all that much better. I use a Mac and service Windows and Linux users - and use Windows and Linux sporadically at work. The Windows and Linux systems - particularly Windoze, but also Linux - have many more problems which take much more time to solve than OS X (or the OS 9 systems I still serve at a couple of clients' offices). When similar problems do arise on the Macs, they're more quickly and easily resolved. My boss has been providing tech support for Windoze for the past 8 years, used it as his desktop for over 8 years, and still wound up having to replace his computer to resolve Direct X issues. He and another full time Windows-servicing employee couldn't fix problems on an office box, even after multiple OS installations (and upgrading from 2k to XP), but installing Linux on it resolved what had appeared to be a hardware issue. As I move from Perl and PHP applications which can run with no changes on my OS X laptop to GUI apps and scanning applications which must be run on their destination OS, I use the Intel test box at my house much more often and am plagued by the sort of problems/issues/patches with which I've never previously had to deal at home and it's a major pain in the patootie.

Re:worse

[Geek of Tech]

>> 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

[t0ny]

You're kind of cheating there by disregarding the restarts due to necessary patches. Sure, your average linux distribution needs to be patches once in a while as well, but rarely (kernel) to the point of having to reboot everything. Simply rebooting NT will actually solve a lot of problems because every dinky piece of software running on it will be started anew, and memory leaks, stalled/locked/deadlocked software and such disappear..

Im really tired of hearing this. You need to reboot the OS after you apply patches, so get over it. In a few years they will be making no-reboot patches, but for now, thats the way it is. Find another dead horse to beat.

Still, Microsoft understands very well that as long as it's scheduled downtime, nobody cares about it, as it's after hours.. And, most people don't realize this, but 99% uptime means 14.4 minutes of downtime every 24 hours. If you save that up over a month (an attainable uptime even with NT 4.0) you get over 7 hours to go down at your choosing.. And if High Availability actually matters to you, they'll gladly charge you for it.

My servers are down far less than 7 hours a month. If it is three I would be amazed.

BTW a lot of patches that tell you to reboot don't actually need the system to reboot.. Simply stopping and restarting some services will do nicely if that's even needed at all - just like most patches on linux or a BSD. It seems to me that Microsoft views the "forced reboot" as a maintenance chore, much like defragging your hard disk.. Software installs will often prompt you to reboot as well - even though it's totally unnecessary.

This is true as long as it isnt modifying dll files or other components which need to stay in memory. In that case, it needs to change the files during restart. A little knowledge of the system processes goes a long way. But anyhow, Im a follow the instructions kind of guy. If recipe says bake at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, I bake at 450 for 30. If they say to restart, I restart.

Re:worse

[Geek of Tech]

Same here. I haven't had to reboot my computer since about 98. Except for the times I've had to turn off my computer.... Uh.... Okay....

Re:worse

[t0ny]

No, you are missing the fact that it is possible to have a secure network AND use Microsoft products. The only viruses which can get me are undiscoverd 'in the wild' ones, and then only if they chance upon me. Also, since I am behind a firewall, they would essentially have to hack my firewall, then hack thru the personal firewall on the machine, an then infect the computer with a virus which the virus scanner cant detect. If it can do all that, it can have my network.

You need to take a risk management class, because this is all simple stuff. You are basically saying something which essentially isnt true, then cover it by citing something which is extremely improbable.

Re:worse

[John Courtland]

Naw, no spyware, I have a dedicated machine for Kazaa that actually works fine most of the time, until the stupid thing opens so many IEXPLORE windows that there's no RAM left...

I think what really does it is that I program, and play video games on the box, while running dual view, and I like to alt+tab out of directx applications as well. I usually crash when task switching, especially from or to a game. It's actually rather annoying and kind of defeats the purpose of having a multitaking OS...

Usually, after about 2 weeks, explorer.exe will absorb 90-100MB out of my precious little 768MB. Granted, I could just restart the process and probably keep going, but if I'm gonna do that I may as well refresh all the other services too with a reboot. I have an uptime right now of about 5 hours, give or take, and explorer is already eating 25MB.

And now that I look at it, I disabled virtual memory... Why am I getting page faults? My RAM should not be paging, unless I'm not understanding what paging is. Explorer is page faulting about every second, it's really kind of disturbing, considering this computer is devoid of swap space.

Re:worse

[freeweed]

And now that I look at it, I disabled virtual memory... Why am I getting page faults? My RAM should not be paging, unless I'm not understanding what paging is. Explorer is page faulting about every second, it's really kind of disturbing, considering this computer is devoid of swap space.

Disabling virtual memory on a Windows machine is the kiss of death. The OS just isn't designed to run that way, regardless of your 2gb (or whatever) of RAM that should otherwise be enough. I suspect your page fault issue may be a side effect of this. I haven't tried it since the NT days, and that was spectacular, the errors you could get. Keep in mind though, page faults are perfectly normal, and healthy on a paged-memory system. It's the lovely "invalid page fault" that Windows reports that is an error. To my limited knowledge, Windows will always try to access virtual memory of some sort. Maybe it's faulting on a page that it thinks it swapped out to disk, finds nothing on disk (of course), and boom?

Oh, and as for the issue with spyware, if you have Kazaa installed, and it's popping up "IEXPLORE" windows, that is precisely the spyware I was referring to. It isn't really explorer that's using up all of your memory. It's Kazaa. Even when you think you've closed it. Buggery little thing, it is.

Re:worse

[operagost]

Virtual memory should not be disabled because, as you said, it's designed to require page files. Processes will page out when they are idle. What confuses some people is the fact that Windows uses a single file to handle two tasks, paging and swapping. Paging allows efficient memory usage, while swapping is used to overcome memory shortfalls. This distinction is more obvious in operating systems that use separate page and swapfiles, like OpenVMS.

Re:worse

[John Courtland]

See, the whole point of the purchasing the amount of RAM I have is so that Windows did not have to touch the disk unless it needed to load DLL's. I guess I can't get around it though. Back to virtual mem we go. Glad I didn't pay for this kludge.

Re:worse

[John Courtland]

Hmm, maybe I wasn't entirely clear about Kazaa. I built a dedicated machine, seperate from this one, to use as my "Kazaa testing ground" of sorts. In fact, the only times I use IEXPLORE are when I'm doing Windows Update and when I use those .CHM HTML-imbedded help files and I have no choice. I run (and bought!) Opera for my browser, because it's just that good. As I said in my other post to the other child, I'm gonna turn virtual memory back on, as begrudginly as possible, however. I said it once and I'll say it again, I'm glad I did not pay for this software, because it sorely disappoints me.

Re:worse

[m_pll]

I think what really does it is that I program, and play video games on the box, while running dual view, and I like to alt+tab out of directx applications as well. I usually crash when task switching, especially from or to a game. It's actually rather annoying and kind of defeats the purpose of having a multitaking OS...

OS crashes or application crashes? If you get blue screens switching from a game it's very likely a video driver problem.

Usually, after about 2 weeks, explorer.exe will absorb 90-100MB out of my precious little 768MB.

Do you have any plugins (like shell extensions) installed? If there are any 3rd party dlls loaded into explorer process they can be leaking memory. Run 'tlist explorer' to see what dlls are loaded.

And now that I look at it, I disabled virtual memory...

Don't do this. Most of the time this either has no effect on performance or actually hurts it.

Why am I getting page faults?

If you mean the 'Page Faults' column in task manager, this includes soft faults, like when a page is moved from an in-memory standby list to a process working set. These are relatively cheap.

If you're seeing hard page faults (that is, pages are actually read from disk - you can check perfmon counters like Memory\Pages/sec to see if this is what's happening) then it could be code that was paged out (executables are normally paged to their own file on disk instead of pagefile) or pages from a memory mapped file. The fact that you set pagefile size to 0 doesn't mean there will be no paging.

Explorer is page faulting about every second, it's really kind of disturbing, considering this computer is devoid of swap space.

Are you seeing these in Task Manager? That's a side effect of running task manager - the cpu usage icon in the taskbar is animated, and whenever it changes (1 sec by default) there's a soft pagefault. If you quit task manager, these pagefaults will stop. The perf impact of this is minimal so you can basically ignore it.

Re:worse

[mentin]

All I say is that in the case of non-free software, the only solution to an exploitable bug usually is to block the service and wait for it to be fixed.

Interesting argument. Now for free software, how many users have any other option? 100, maybe 500?

Microsoft has probably 100 million users, so this difference between free and non-free only matters to 0.0001 percent of them.

It is just a current situation: unless you write your own OS, you have to wait for patch and damn patch your box. Unfortunately, most users are not capable even of this.

Re:worse

[afidel]

The problem there is that neither Creative labs nor VIA understand the PCI 2.1 spec. That's why I've made my last 4 PC's with SiS mobo's, I can change the chipset but there isn't another sub $100 soundcard with ASIO drivers that is well supported under the various sound tools I use.

Re:worse

[thynk]

Sometimes it's not the software's fault. A very good friend of mine is the tech lab instructor and decided to install Win2k Server for his students and lab (it's a prision, so security is a main concern). His server crashed over the break, with just days left until the end of the cycle for his students to get their work done.

After over 22 man hours, 6 machines, 2 hard drives and 5 CD-ROM drives, we pretty much decided it was a bad install CD.

It was simply amazing when he decided to take the CD back down to his lab, install it on one of the new dell workstations his lab had, instead of the "spare" donated computers and it installed the first time, with no glitches.

Lesson learned, Many times the support time of an older PC costs more than a new PC. Probably why they were donated to his school in the first place.

Re:worse

[Bas_Wijnen]

Still, I feel much better with a system where there are 100 (although I think 10000 is still a low estimate) people who care and write a fix for a bug when they find one, than something where the people who care can't fix things because they don't have the source, and the people who have the source aren't allowed by their boss to put much time in it.

Of course I'm not sure if the latter is true, but if it isn't then the coders at MS are really bad at their job, and I find that unlikely.

Waiting for bugs to be patched isn't as bad if you trust on the bug being fixed soon. ;-)

Re:worse

[Bas_Wijnen]

If you actually want to do something with that machine, then you must open a connection to the evil outside world. That is a connection directly from your computer to the internet, since a masquerading host/firewall will send everything through unchecked if your host requests it. If there is an exploitable bug in the program that opens the port (say, KaZaA), than the computer you connect to can exploit it and get direct access to your computer.

Of course things are even worse if you actually want to give a service to the outside world, such as remote RPC. In that case you will specifically make a hole in the firewall, otherwise the service will not work. If I understood you well this specific hole was fixed before it was exploited, but you shouldn't count on that the next time.

In any case, if malicious code gets into your machine, a virus scanner is of course no use, because this would be a worm, not a virus, and the code which is sent over the connection would not be scanned. Only if it infects files, you have a chance to detect it, but even then it would already have had the posibility to damage your system.

Some posts in this thread seem to think that I say all this can't happen with free software. Of course it can. I just don't trust Microsoft with respect to security, and I do trust the free software movement. That means that I think free software programs have less bugs, and that they are fixed faster when found. A firewall is a good thing to have, but your programs can still open the door to crackers and worms. With free software I believe there are less doors open.

Re:worse

[John Courtland]

Well, usually it just hammers the application. Usually. Sometimes an ALT+TAB will spontaneously reboot the machine. Not that big of a deal I guess, it's to be expected.

Thanks for the page fault info, I didn't know they had a soft paging area, seems kind of worthless since I can put all of Windows into RAM, but I guess there's nothing I can do. And yes, that was in Task Manager.

As for 'tlist explorer', I can't find anything on my machine besides a Perl library with the name tlist. Is that a 3rd party program? I'm pretty sure explorer doesn't have any plug-ins, I try to run a tight ship around here, with no fluffy foo-foo themes or any of that junk.

Re:worse

[wfberg]

Im really tired of hearing this. You need to reboot the OS after you apply patches, so get over it. In a few years they will be making no-reboot patches, but for now, thats the way it is. Find another dead horse to beat. ...
This is true as long as it isnt modifying dll files or other components which need to stay in memory. In that case, it needs to change the files during restart. A little knowledge of the system processes goes a long way. But anyhow, Im a follow the instructions kind of guy. If recipe says bake at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, I bake at 450 for 30. If they say to restart, I restart.

The vast majority of patches do not need to restart the entire OS. Most security patches only affect "windows networking" filesharing (SMB), so you could easily net stop workstation and net stop server, replace the files, and not restart the OS. Same for IIS patches. There are really only a few pieces of code that cannot be stopped without shutting down the OS entirely (that darn COM thingy for one, which contributed significantly to the worm spread of last year).

A DLL only needs to be in memory if it's being used.

Microsoft is already making a lot of no-reboot patches, but people reboot anyway. A lot of the patches for windows 2000 and XP, even those that "must be installed separately", do not require a reboot.

Now, if I were claiming that it's somehow "unfair" to stop the IIS service to patch it, that would be kind of inane. But downing the entire OS to upgrade some services or applications is totally unnecessary. And you simply don't know what your uptime would be like if you didn't reboot as often. Keeping an unpatched stock NT 4.0 system (no service packs!) operating smoothly is easy as long as you reboot every day - as long as it takes less than 14 minutes to restart, hey presto 99% uptime. Never mind that if you didn't reboot it regularly it would crash and burn.

Having to reboot to patch stuff totally unrelated to the real purpose of a server (say, DNS/web/ftp/smtp server) is what keeps me from using windows servers on any servers I really care about. The only thing I need to down my ol' reliable linux server for is for kernel upgrades; up2date/rug takes care of the rest with no steenking reboots.

Now, the patch situation on windows is getting better, but it still seems to me rebooting is just another chore to Microsoft.. Kind of like how sometimes when you blink your eyes you totally miss how explorer.exe (the one that's your start menu) crashes and is restarted automatically..

Re:worse

[log0n]

This is exactly why I switched back in mid 2001. I got tired of fixing/tweaking/maintaining/correcting/etc/etc/etc and not creating (imaging/digital art).

Re:worse

[operagost]

That "kludge" is the way all modern operating systems work. I gave OpenVMS as an example because I am most familiar with its internals, but it's not the only one. And it's certainly not a half-assed architecture. Your system won't be hitting the hard disk all the time because it uses page files - that's why you have a disk cache, and why on Windows NT-type kernels and OpenVMS it will use a large percentage of free RAM for the disk cache.

Re:worse

[m_pll]

tlist.exe is from reskit. If you don't have it, you can check loaded modules using built in debugger:

c:\>ntsd -pv -pn explorer.exe

then in the ntsd window type

0:000> lmf
0:000> q

By the way, soft pagefaults are not 'worthless'. This is how virtual memory works - basically textbook OS design stuff... Fairly well documented in books such as Inside Windows 2000.

Re:worse

[John Courtland]

Hmm, ran the debugger and that spelled doom for my Explorer process. Anyhow, there are 4 DLL's that are not part of the standard set, 2 are for NView, 1 is for SmartFTP and the last is for Adobe Acrobat.

I realize that soft page faulting is a good idea for machines with less RAM, when mixed with disk caching. I guess I'm just stuck.

Heh

[metlin]

I spend half of that time reading Slashdot everyday :-/

Re:Heh

[n0nsensical]

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!

Re:Heh

[aardwolf204]

Yeah I'll admit I spend about 4 hours a day on slashdot. Scary isnt it. Although, I dont watch TV anymore so something's gotta fill the void? Exercise you say, bah, I'm on the /. diet!

Re:Heh

[PacoTaco]

The first step is admitting your addition somewhere other than here.

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.

Re:Heh

[aardwolf204]

Yeah

I'm that boared.

none at all

[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

[einhverfr]

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 year. Even including those, I probably put less time in a YEAR than this guy does a month.

Basically it means that my time gets sucked in by another annoyance: Slashdot ;-)

Re:none at all

[Realistic_Dragon]

"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)

Re:none at all

[JamesTRexx]

I was about to say the same, except I run FreeBSD, and I haven't upgraded my mail, web, dns, ftp server in ages... I only toy around with the firewall, so that's not really forced work, hehe...

Re:none at all

[Perl-Pusher]

Actually no, I don't. I install a cron job that checks the logs for me and only emails me if somethings not right. Patching? No I just do Mandrake update once a week. Install new programs? That I don't do, all I do is install a new version of Mandrake once a year. Besides, installing a new program you found is not your computers fault, you wanted to install it right? I'm of the mind that if a program doesn't easily install with a quick urpmi or ./configure, make it's not worth it and I move on. Seting up a machine usually takes about 3-4 hours because I setup iptables, install my scripts configure everything (NVIDIA),additional stuff like mplayer. And Mandrake seems compelled to break at least something. I usually skip releases. After the initial setup,it's pretty much ignored for another year. The idea here is it's my home network I don't want to work on it. I do enough of that at work.

Actually, I have an ibook, 2 linux machines and a Windows 2000 machine. The windows machine takes far mor time than the others combined, mainly due to things like xupiter search, gator, bonzai buddy you name it! My wife and daughter have downloaded it. Then their is the fact that there always seems to be some problem, can't print or some other peripherial does't work etc. It amazes me that I have to install a special driver and software for my Kodak camera in windows, but it just works in linux and OSX.

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..

Re:none at all

[Transcendent]

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

Yea... cool thing is that my XP computer I use "just works". Same with my family (with 2 Win98 SE machines mixed in there).

Everybody has their horror stories about an OS, and everybody has good stories about an OS. It all depends on who you talk to.

What does that inconsistancy tell me? The problems (or lack of problems) is mainly the fault of the hardware.

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:none at all

[longbottle]

Ironic... I've wasted more time with Linux then I have with BeOS, OS X, and Windows combined. The problem is that issuses are so much harder to sort out on Linux than other platforms. I was able to troubleshoot a video driver fairly easy on windows, but on linux, the same problem could have been indicitive of any number of things. XWindows, KDE, the driver code itself, even. Other platforms are even more simplified than winodws... classic Mac OS and BeOS both have the concept of a driver as a single file. That makes troubleshooting much easier.

It's all about god design... other platforms have it, Linux is kludged,

Re:none at all

[Geek of Tech]

Or the different software running, or the way the software interacts with the hardware... but from what I've seen, most of the time the problems lie in the way the user works with the computer.

"You just did what to C:\Windows\System"

Re:none at all

[operagost]

Do you really expect an OS to support hardware that didn't exist when it was released?

The reason you ended up with no video or multimedia support on the second attempt is because you did a complete install instead of an upgrade. It has nothing to do with leaving the CD in the drive.

Re:none at all

[squiggleslash]

Well, actually, to some extent, yeah. The display card supported VESA, and my other major problem was that Windows provided absolutely no information I could use to find out what drivers to use.

And no, if you reread my message, you'll see the problem I'm refering to that involved the CD in the drive had nothing to do with drivers, it had to do with the first install resulting in a system missing critical drivers and DLLs, with no error messages to indicate that it was having any problems installing them.

My mother ran into this problem

[fataugie]

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

[fataugie]

Sorry, I hit submit too fast and I forgot to add the reason she kept calling tech support back.

The driver disk never showed up. She would call back, reorder, and get promised it would show up on such and such day, the day would come and no disk. Everyone she talked to apologized, offered to resend the disk but it never came. She even talked to supervisors who would offer to move the process along....nothing.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[giberti]

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

[Spoing]

I've had OK experiences with Dell support, though usually it's only to report known-defective hardware and to ask for someone to drop off a replacement. Not a big network of Dell systems, and there were quite a few spare systems as replacements; swap and drop when something went wrong.

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:My mother ran into this problem

[fastidious edward]

Dell only moved some of the business support offshore, they never moved consumer support. Doesn't mean they won't sometime, but not right now. Infact for most of offshore things Dell move the support to Ireland.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[shyster]

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.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[Hubert_Shrump]

heh. we had this happen, and when all was said and done, ALL the drives in our RAID were hosed. we figure the backplane went tango uniform and fried them.

hope you have better luck.

back your RAIDs up to a separate machine! the power of tom clancy compells you!

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[mabhatter654]

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, than waste even 2 hours on the phone with them! After all, I'm cheap as far as IT goes but 2 hours is still $60+ for my employeer...and unpaid OT for me because of what I'm NOT getting done while playing with their "support". It may be a "cheap" PC, but if a single support call costs you 8-10 hours, you could have bought half a new PC for what you're paying your IT guy to sit on the phone. That's not cheap at all!

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[iantri]

The thing is, your local computer store will likely not be able to provide you with an identically configured PC in a year or two.

I don't know how large the company you work for is, but in many cases they buy from big names like Dell or IBM because they can get huge quantities of standard configuration machines (just image the hard drive and go), and don't have to worry about not being able to get another of those same machines in a year when they need more.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[karnal]

Actually that's not altogether true, at least for the company I work for and the Compaq's they used to buy.

Once they end of lifed a machine, you could no longer get that machine. As well, they'd do things such as use a different motherboard in a similar model, and send us that when we requested a standard part (so that ghost loads could work across the board...)

All in all, we had to keep up with imaging etc because computer hardware was in such a boom, and no one wanted to keep old hardware around in case a problem arose (for quick solutions.) I think nowadays, since computing advances have slowed a tad, there's not as much worry about this, but back then, hoo boy.... To give a timeframe, this is about 3 years ago....

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[ssstraub]

Are you kidding?! Dell is constantly changing their machine line up. Go look at their website support options where you choose your machine type. Look at the long list for each "Optiplex" or "Dimension".

Optiplex GX150, GX240, GX260, GX270 (plus two variations on the 260 and 270). Those were ones I've had to deal with in the last two years.

In other words, no, they will absolutely NOT be able to provide an identically configured PC in a year or two. Depending on how generic your image process is, you might have to change something every time they change the configuration.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[t0ny]

Well, in my case I already did the troubleshooting and was calling for a replacement part. But the phone support guys want me to do their troubleshooting, making me repeat something which was already done (by me). So they can either accept my word for it, or wait on hold while I pretend to be doing what they ask.

Also, we get a different level of on-site support than Joe Homeuser gets. Im sure you didnt talk to people like me, because I actually know what Im doing. As far as troubleshooting and experience goes, Im way overqualified for a phone support job.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[pizpot]

Neither will Dell! I ordered 10 Dells with the highest level of support (3 years ago when they were still reputable) and when a 3D Labs vid card broke a fan, they sent a consultant in to install a whole different brand of card. Boy was I pissed, but could not fight it.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[Mikey-San]

We don't take your word for it because we have to be sure the bases are covered. It isn't because you're dirty liars, it's because if we jumped up every time someone said, "Yeah, I've troubleshot it down to the motherboard," we'd lose TONS of money and waste TONS of time.

Why?

Because 95% of users couldn't troubleshoot their way out of a wet paper bag. You can, sure, but most can't. Going over all the steps with everyone ensures that Company X, through policy, provides the best service it can. Everyone is treated equally, and gets the same level of service that guarantees it covers all the bases, no matter the conditions, rain or shine.

If you don't like it, build your own box and support yourself.

If you don't agree with the thinking that you really need to make sure--through telling the person to do it, even if he or she has done it already--that steps X, Y, and Z have been performed, go take a tech support job for a few months. You'll learn that enough people don't do all the steps they need to do to make it worth telling /everyone/ to do the steps. Heck, some people just say their HD is bad after having done nothing to verify it. It happens, I've seen it, it's easy to spot.

You might not do it, but enough people do to make it worth the policy. (That, of course, coupled with some people just not being troubleshooters for a living or hobby.)

So yeah, two choices:

Take everyone's word for the matter when they say something, and run the risk of wasting time and money on an on-site appointment;

Or spend some extra time on the phone providing leak-proof service.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[cdegroot]

Thanks for the story. Now I know again why I buy IBM (no 'on hold', support within contractual time, and they just dispatch an engineer instead of asking me to fiddle around). More expensive? Well, if every call I logged with IBM during the last three years would be a call to Dell, it'd cost me probably a full-time job ;-).

Predictions are, by the way, that Dell will continue to keep growing and service quality will continue its decline.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[thynk]

After spending 6 months working phone tech (sub-contracted company doing HP Tape drive support, left for a less stress more money job), I had more than my fair share of customers that wanted a quick hardware replacement, usually the tech or IT guys were the worst.

I almost got into phone fight with one tech who "Knew it was a hardware problem." and didn't want to "waste his time" going through the troubleshooing procedure again. Finally having enough (he was to the point of yelling at me) I asked him "Sir, I've fixed 300 tape drives this week, how many have you fixed?". Less than 10 minutes later his first full backup was underway and was simply a delighted customer.

Having seen the other side, I usually take the approach with the tech on the phone of "I've tried this, that AND the other thing, what other steps would you recommend I try before requesting an RMA?". Works wonders. I also ALWAYS ask to speak to their manager if they go the extra mile for me (used to be worth and extra $25 bonus for a call or $50 plus an atta boy for a letter or email). Had one gal tell me that I made her entire day, made me feel great to hear that (and have my phone issues resolved).

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[permaculture]

I'd like to know if the engineer turns up or not, and what you decide to do about buying Dells.

My own experience with Dell is consistently bad. I spent months trying to convince Dell Tech Support that they should replace my CD Writer on a fairly new Optiplex. Eventually I swapped the unit with a nearby identical PC, and called in the same error again on the 2nd PC. When the quibbling began, I told them I'd swapped the part from the original PC. I got a CD Writer in the post within a week. We're meant to have onsite service, though!

Still, at least Dell apologised for wasting my time.

NOT!!

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[t0ny]

Im not disagreeing with the reasoning for wanting to make sure there was proper troubleshooting. Im also not complaining about Dell's tech support- in fact, I overall have nothing bad to say about it, because all the bad experiences are understandable given the circumstances.

Also, from the somewhat few times I have had to do phone support, I know its pretty hard. Walking a non-tech through steps they dont understand isnt very fun or rewarding.

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[iantri]

I don't know about Dell..

I do know that IBM can do this, I've seen it (in the local schools.. hundreds and hundreds of 300GL's.. and they're not getting any newer..).

Re:My mother ran into this problem

[mabhatter654]

really, like I said, I was trying to get a power supply [common accross all models for well over a year at dell] and it was custom, non-standard ATX! for a Dell machine that was still in/ just barely out of 3 year warranty....I eventually got it, but it wasn't easy...even with the part number. I'd be better off going to the local shop...because if the parts are retail off-the-shelf then you know they're compatible even if they change every year.

My point is that after a year or two if I can't fix it myself or get a hold of the custom dell parts, then what's the point...most smaller companies use 4-5 year old computers routinely!

11? more like 110!

[gantrep]

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.

Re:11? more like 110!

[aardwolf204]

Or maybe he could spend a day and a half writing up a website about how that annoying windows machine took up 11 hours of his time this month.

Hell, just for the fun of it, I'd like to see how much time a average computer joe spends installing, configuring, tweaking, a linux distro into a usable state. (ducks)

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:11? more like 110!

[ThrobbingGristle]

While it's true I usually spend quite a little while setting up a (desktop) linux system, once it's set up it generally stays that way.

That is, if there are bugs or annoyances that need fixing they stay in that state until I get around to looking at them. I spent 2 weeks off over the holidays with 3 linux and 1 openbsd machine in my house and never tweaked a single one.

As was noted, this isn't my experience with windows, stuff breaks at random and fixing it is often very time consuming. Usually involving trying various combinations of something guessing at the meaning of obscure or non-existant error messages, etc.

Which isn't to say there weren't any components of any of the systems which couldn't benefit from some TLC, but nothing serious.

However, I was just called by my wife's work and they want me to come in and fix their windows printer problems for them. Wonder what I'll get for doing that?

Well, whatever, my post is pointless, however I would like to note that giving free tech support is just painfully stupid, unless it's your boss in which case I suggest you go ahead and do that.

Someone else just dropped off their computer recently for a fix. I had visions of re-installing windows (and with all the drivers that is hours of work.) Instead the hard drive is just dead, so I'm off the hook until they buy a new one. Hopefully they'll just buy a new machine.

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.

Re:11? more like 110!

[Deliveranc3]

Cough I suggest Linux :(

Re:11? more like 110!

[Trejkaz]

Quite a while, but only once. Upgrading is either unnecessary or automated.

I think one of the true time-savers of Linux and UNIXes is that there are clearly defined places in which files go. You don't have to trash out one temp directory per user because everything is in /tmp. You don't have to worry about configuration files being in the same directory as the program (saves time in setting up backups.) When someone goes "ohhh my mail is broken" you don't have to go hunting for a different mailbox depending on what program they choose to use.

Actually at the moment Windows isn't much of a time-waster for me either. The biggest issue lately was a game which when installed, wasted about 8 hours of collective time while we tried to figure out why it segfaulted on startup. In the end we just gave up, uninstalled and reinstalled it and it worked. The side-effect was up to date drivers for everything in the computer. ;-)

waisted time: Hard drive failure over holiday

[StarsEnd]

I spent 3 days recovering from a hard drive failure over Christmas! A three month old hard drive failed, along with my OS manager (System Commander). Two disks of data were lost (partition table zapped). I spend most of the holiday restoring information. For your information, it was a Seagate 80GB drive (watch out!).

Re:waisted time: Hard drive failure over holiday

[OrangeSpyderMan]

IDE sucks for important things. it's SCSI only for me from now on.

Wrong.

Working without backups sucks for important things; it's backups only for me from now on.

Come on folks, if it breaks only backups are going to save your butt - if it really is important stuff you'll loose it once then get some backup in place and not care if your wife uses IDE or SCSI.

Re:waisted time: Hard drive failure over holiday

[WuphonsReach]

External USB drive... 160Gb 5400 rpm drives are $110, USB shell is $40.

Cheap enough that you could afford to buy 3 if your data is *really* important and then rotate them in on a weekly basis. (I mirror my files off daily using Second Copy 2000, keeping up to 5 revisions of files.)

Re:waisted time: Hard drive failure over holiday

[LaForce]

I had a similar experience. Over christmas, I had the wonderful experience of replacing a hard drive in a friend's machine, and then reinstalling win2k, every app, and reconfiguring everything under the sun to "just right" so she could use it again. Overall, I spent about 15 hours of work at her house, but I doubt that I can log all of that as "work", since much of it was spent either watching TV and waiting for the computer to install something, or waiting for drivers to download over dialup. Fortunately, all of her data was on a second hard drive, so all she lost was her system disk.

As far as my own computers go, the only problem that I remember having in the month of December is crud in the AGP slot intermittantly keeping my video card from initializing any graphics mode. I imagine there were probably little "Opera crashed, open it up again" moments too, but I don't remember any specifics.

Re:waisted time: Hard drive failure over holiday

[riscthis]

Its not unrealistic to expect that something you paid for not be defective and just plain work.

It's all about the consequence of failure, however probable or improbable the failure might be; it's worth it if the data is that important.

It's also worth noting that it's not just hardware failure you're guarding against by making backups -- a mistyped command, some malware, or lightning strike on the phone line that fries the modem, the connected PC and most of its components etc etc can all cause you to lose data too.

Re:waisted time: Hard drive failure over holiday

[silvwolf]

Ha! Second time I've been warned about Seagate drives tonight. I ordered an 80GB Barracuda from CompUSA last night for a new computer I'm building. Was talking to a friend on AIM tonight about my purchase and he told me that I should steer clear of Seagate IDE drives. Cancelled the order. Makes me feel better about cancelling now that I read about a problem with em for the second time in a few hours...

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

[lasmith05]

At least you aren't called on to do stupid stuff like register whole new screen names for online games because your dad lost too many times on the old one and doesn't know how to register.

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

[bj8rn]

Do you people who know car mechanics intimately get the same kind of fixit requests from family? damn that'd shit me

Yes, as far as I know. For instance, my father has to fix his uncle's and another relative's cars from time to time.

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

[Spoing]

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.

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

[G. W. Bush Junior]

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

[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

[chad_r]

I consider myself a typical geek, and I love fixing people computers. I have the chance to leave the house and vist someone else, yet I'm too busy working to have the agonizing social interaction with them. It's the best of both worlds!

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

[October_30th]

Do I do it for all of them? Of course not

Ok, so you do it for some of them.

How do you refuse excessive requests politely? "Come on, why not? I know you did set up your uncle's computer, why won't you do it for me?"

Giving out free service to your extended family is a damn slipperly slope.

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

[joeface]

A few other folks alluded to what I was thinking when I read your post. You have to make it clear to your family/friends that the time and skill involved in fixing computers are just as valuable as a mechanic's time and skill. I routinely run across the "repeat-offenders" who always have the same problems, and always call me to fix them. The first time, I fix it for free and tell them how to avoid having it happen in the future. I politely make it clear that if I have to come back, I'm going to charge them for it. Try telling your family/friends: "Next time this happens, I'll expect dinner and a 12-pack", or "I normally work for (so and so amount) per hour, and I'm very busy. Next time I'll have to charge you something." If they're reasonable people, they'll understand and offer you money (or something equiv.) right away. If they're not, then you need to learn how to say "no" :-)

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

[Haeleth]

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 :-/

Bill them, then. Don't try to argue them into agreeing to pay you first, just fix their problem and then hand them the bill as a fait accompli.

Either they'll pay up, or they'll stop badgering you to fix their PCs. You win either way, right?

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

[aardwolf204]

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)

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.

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

[G. W. Bush Junior]

You're probably right :) And simply learning to say no would probably go along way towards solving alot of my problems.

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

[inode_buddha]

"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."

Actually, yeah they *do* call. At least the ones that don't have warranties. And now I've got the rep for being a "computer guy" too.

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

[DivideX0]

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!

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

[zulux]

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?"

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

[CoderByBirth]

I hear you.

Next time the friend of a friend of a friend asks you to spend 2 hours fixing up their pieceofshit machinery (and yes, the '89 printer from hell must work as well), tell them this analogy :

"If I was a gynecologist, would you ask me to..."

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

[Reziac]

I think a lot of it is because they've become used to having kids around for whom fixing a computer is a fun adventure, and getting paid doesn't enter a kid's head (nor do most adults think kids are worth paying, no matter how much work they do). Unfortunately, when there is no gung-ho kid around, they expect free service from adult techs in the family as well.

It's a natural consequence of most of the experts coming from the younger generation, rather than from the established professionals' generation.

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

[hardwarecollector]

You said it all with this thread. The relatives see me as their personal mechanic (I'm an aircraft mechanic by trade), and computer guru (hobby). "Can you come look at this?", be it a computer, car, tractor or lawn mower. Especially when they tried to 'fix' it and screwed it up royally. Then they get po'd when you can't honor their wishes, "There is no way UT2003 will run on your x386", or "The only way to retrieve the bolt is to pull the intake and hope it didn't end up in a cylinder". The next time their kids thrash the system by turning off the anti-virus that I installed they can kiss my butt.

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

[sohp]

My usual response is "I used work on computers for a living, but I put away my screwdriver years ago. Now I only know how to program high-end servers." However, over the Christmas holidays my sister asked me about getting her wireless access point working. I was intrigued, and I knew from previous experience that she's pretty good about keeping her computer clean and free of junkware. I am sure it's because she works from home and the computer is all business to her.

I'm glad I did it now. I got to play with a Linksys wireless router and I learned something new, got a chance to talk with my sister while I was working, and had fun. I got a nice feeling of accomplishment when I got the connection to come up the first time.

But routine maintenance, virus scanning, adware removal, etc, I still wouldn't do.

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

[bedouin]

I fix their computers once, then tell them to buy a Mac if they don't want it to happen again.

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

[Alan]

+1

Absolutely correct. Geeks are pushovers. We like to fix things, but don't like stupid people. With computers this equates to us fixing other people's computers.

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

[morgajel]

well, when it turns into a we're coming down for the weekend" and I spend 16 hours working on my father-in-laws computers, it can cramp your style a bit.

whereas you spend 3-4 hours when you see them working on their computers, we spend 3-4 every weekend.

I like my family- even some of the inlaws, but I just get burned out constantly working on their computers when I have (seriously) 100 things to do to my own network.

not to complain, but I feel for the grandparent poster- I know how it goes. as for the parent poster, it doesn't sound like it's a weekly deal for you- it is for us.

That said, I'm gonna go fix my mailserver now.

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

[the_2nd_coming]

get your family to buy a mac or run Linux, then there will be not so many problems and when one does come up you will have time to help.

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

[Eristone]

Next time you're in a Fry's, Best Buy or CompUSA (or the local mom and pop computer shop where you really buy your parts if you can't wait for the overnight shipment) with them - take them to the repair counter and point out the posted prices for things like "installing antivirus software" and "system tune-up". Once they see what retail price is for checking something out, they are generally more appreciative of your time...

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

[supremebob]

I used to be like you, until my family started taking advantage of the situation. After being the "family computer repair guy" for a few years, I know what a pain it can become.

I've found that if you successfully fix their computer once, friends and relatives will start bugging you more often with their computer problems. And if you KEEP helping them out, some of them will start to refer THEIR friends and relatives to you. After awhile, you'll find yourself working a new tech support job without getting paid for it :)

Besides, I work as a sys-admin for a living, so fixing annoying OS, security, and driver glitches is something I do every day. When I'm on vacation, the LAST thing I want to do is something that resembles my day job.

Anyway, here's my advice... When a friend or relative starts complaining about their computer problems, say something like "Gee, that's terrible. I hate it when that happens." and CHANGE THE SUBJECT. I've used this method to get out of at least a dozen late nights fixing someone spyware and virus infected POS.

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

[shking]

dude, forget it, I'll come by your place with VNC after i finish shopping, that'll make things easier

The problem with helping out, is that quite often friends and family need help right f***ing now. VNC is a godsend. A good friend of mine installed it on his mom's computer, it saves him a trip across town whenever she has trouble with it (note: she is having problems, often the pc is perfectly ok).

I've set up VNC on my mac at home for similar reasons (via an ssh tunnel of course). My sweetie is an intelligent woman, but actively ignorant about computers. When she gets into trouble, I can look over her virtual shoulder

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

[edunbar93]

You aren't properly taking advantage of this.

When people ask you to do something for you, just because they're family doesn't mean that you can't charge for them, or even just swap services.

What do your family units do for a living? Fix cars? Sell groceries? Work for the government? Bake? In that case, you sure *can* fix their computers... if they'd be interested in changing your oil, give you a discount, cut red tape, or bake you a cake.

Either that or you can give them a cut rate on how much you charge. They would still think they're getting a great deal, and you will still be getting compensated for your time.

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

[dasunt]

Sure, fixing computers for your family isn't what you want to do with your time. OTOH, you get to visit with your family, have a few carbonated drinks, and perhaps have supper if you run late.

Doesn't sound like a bad deal, especially when you borrow their skills to do some home repairs or borrow their garage and tools to fix a vehicle.

Family should help out family.

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.

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

[Scooter]

LOL - oh you don't know the worst of it yet bud - it doesn't ever stop, even when you're the CEO of the company you work for and havn't seen the inside of a computer for 5 years.

I work as a systems architect on distributed databse, OLTP and web application type stuff mostly for a very large and very distributed corporation, and *still* the family think I should know whats up with their video card/CDROM or even - their PS/2 :)

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

[Licensed2Hack]

2) those things clearly take effort, whereas most PC problems are fixed sitting down

Tax preparation is done sitting down. Writing up legal papers (wills, contracts, articles of incorporation, etc..) is down sitting down. Do these same people expect to get these services for free also?

I think the real reason is perception. Those that perceive computers to be necessary tools, i.e. something of value, will expect to pay for work on thier tools. Those that perceive computers to be toys, game machines and the like, don't expect to pay for work on their toys. After all, it's just a toy.

Another factor might be what caused the sponges to buy a computer in the first place. If the sponge bought the computer because the computer geek in the family talked them into it, then the sponge might consider all problems with the computer to be the resposnibility of the computer geek, and therefore under implied warranty.

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

[rtaylor]

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

Ditto but with 3 extra stipulations.

- 24/7 internet connection (for routine remote maintenance)
- I'm the only person with root access (not a problem since they don't know what it is for)
- Hardware purchases are done through me. I don't charge any overhead, but it prevents them from buying a crappy product.

After 18 months, I have 0 hardware failures and generally maintenance consists of upgrading Gaim for the new MSN protocol or adding new functionality (laser printer for university projects, digital camera and related software, etc.).

They're happy because things generally "just work" and I'm happy because it cut maintenance down from tens of hours / month (another virus? another reinstall) to about 30 minutes per month.

They're also using the computer for more than they were before.

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

[WM_NCDESTROY]

This reminds me of when I was "The guy with the truck", and everyone at my office who moved would ask me if I could help. I had volunteered to help someone once, and the word must have gotten out. I swear I must have moved 6 or 8 people in a 3 year period. I finally started telling everyone that the truck was broke down, and I just drove my RX7 to work from then on. Now of course, I have the same problem with computer repairs for my family and friends, but most don't really bother me that much.

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

[silvwolf]

I'll help mom out with computer problems, and that's about it. Sis lives with her computer geek boyfriend, so he can fix all her problems. Mom's brother will call about once every six months, but he helps mom with stuff around the house all the time, so I don't mind it at all.

Grandma will call me with AOL problems of some sort, and I'll ask her if she's called AOL yet. I explain that I just don't know how AOL works so I wouldn't be of much help. Recently, she tried to pull a guilt trip -- "But I need to get in to my bank account so I can see how your inhieritance is doing." Didn't work. Partially because I hate AOL, and partially because it was right before my final finals week and she was just getting over the flu.

My cousin is a mechanic here in town.. when we have car troubles, we take the car to his shop and pay to have him fix it. He'll usually try to give us some sort of discount, and will diagnose check engine lights for me for free (and I'll usually stop by his apartment later with a case of beer.) But, we all expect to pay for his services each time we visit.

But, my sister is a hair dresser.. Whenever she comes to town, one of my cousins will always ask her for a free hair cut or something. Sis did it a couple times, but since 9/11 she's been able to use the excuse that she can't take scissors on the plane (nevermind that she has a pair at mom's house, she was just tired of cutting hair on vacation for free). Me, I wouldn't trust her with a sharp object near my neck ;)

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

[log0n]

Heh, 'computer guy'.. I got a call this weekend from an ex-girlfriend (she's now married) while I was at the beach with my current girlfriend (of 6'ish years) asking for me to help phone-fix her laptop which she purchased *after* we broke up (so not even a hint of sentimental value).. running Windows 98 (original Compaq install).. and she called around 10:40 p.m. ..

In retrospect, I wish I wasn't as courteous as I was in trying to tell her 'no thanks' :'(

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

[SmurfBoy04]

In my family and circle of friends I'm both the "computer guy" and the "car guy", so I can say that car mechanics get quite a few requests for fix-its, but nearly as many.
As the computer guy I go through the same thing, even friends of friends will at times try to hit me up with requests to fix their computer. At least some of my family, though only those that have had to pay $100+/hr for help, understand that it takes time and effort and will pay me something for my time, being a poor student $20/hr is something I'll jump on.
As for cars and such I will generally help just the people I know well, though they have to buy everything in advance and bring their car to me. As for everyone else they'll get advice and verbal help, but that's about it.
From my experiences people expect far more from their "computer guy" than from their mechanic. Many find the thought of bringing their computer over to you is absurd and expect you to go to them, without even having the proper tools, yet they will gladly bring everything to a mechanic.

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

[volve]

No no, you have to be much more subtle than that.

Firstly, to back-track a little, people not realising how much effort you're going to is related a lot to the age of the Expert in question. A lot of computer people are much younger than the average mechanic, electrician, plumber, and most likely haven't earned formal qualifications/degrees in said subject, etc. so people tend to think it's just some hobby, much like trading cards, gardening or something. This contributes to the "Yes, I can help you with that data recovery, but it will take XX hours of work." not being 'understood' as politely requirring compensation; technically it is understood that you are not lying per-se, but it will not 'click' that XX hours is translatable to $$, and doesn't the 16-year-old look pretensious when they actually verbalise their lack of willingness to help without agreeing to payment?

In this type of sitatuion, where you don't run a professional data recovery house and can't pull-up quote sheets, one must be subtle.

After spending tens of hours recovering data, put it on a CD/DVD and go visit the customer. Say something along the lines of "This disc contains all of your old data. Now, I think I may be able to recover your important documents but it could be tricky and involve some quite a lot of work..." At this point, the customer will either CLICK and ask about pricing or they still won't have a clue.

So, you now have 2 options; agree upon a price and come back a day later with the same CD and give it to them, or, leave and conceed that the work you did restoring the data was a lost deal-closer and better luck next time.

-VolVE

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

[4of12]

get the same kind of fixit requests

I think MDs get this kind of thing all the time. You know, at a party, "You're a doctor! I've been having this pain in my abdomen..."

But it is bad with regard to the badness of the IT support situation. I'm only peripherally related to genuine IT desktop support, but mentioning the words "programming" or "computer" triggers new acquaintances to veer off about their latest PC mishap. I'll usually listen to the whole 45 second explanation before kindly deferring to ignorance about that particular area.

BTW, if you are an expert in astrophysics you might be able to help me. I've been having persistent problems with a broken universe that behaves in ways I don't like....

Waste?

[kamawell]

C'mon, it's not a waste of time. If it all ran without a hitch where would the fun be? Every problem resolved is another notch on the headboard. What doesn't kill me makes me stronger etc etc

Re:Waste?

[Zathraskun]

Untill you're late for a date because of your damned router.

Re:Waste?

[n0nsensical]

Since when have Slashdotters had dates?

Re:Waste?

[The_Bad_Bob]

Although I don't think its fun, this does raise a good point. If everything worked like it said it does, a lot of tech people would be out of a job. If anyone could set up computers, and there never were any problems, what would I do for a living? And besides, what doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable.

Re:Waste?

[Zathraskun]

Crap! They're on to me!

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.

Re:Not to nitpick...

[RestiffBard]

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.

Re:Not to nitpick...

[gobbo]

(although I still have to force quit an app once or twice a week, Apple doesn't go completely blameless here)

Force-quitting a crashed application generally means that the programmers of that particular application erred, so Apple may in fact be blameless in such an instance. More, if you've had to use pre-OS X macs, then you'll be grateful they moved to a stable platform that doesn't require reboots after a badly programmed app craps out. MSWord dies? Don't reboot, just run Word again... the difference is 3 seconds vs. 3 minutes (or 6 minutes if, like me, you have 13 applications open in the background).

Re:Not to nitpick...

[CausticPuppy]

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.

I think "availability" should only be defined in terms of when you want to use your computer. If it's a home computer, that may be 3 hours a day.

The 43,200 minutes includes the time you're at work, sleeping, eating, etc.

So, 3 hours a day on average for the month means 5400 minutes. Doing the math, this comes to about 13% of that time required to fix problems.

Imagine if you had to spend that amount of time per month fixing your own car that you use for daily transportation!
(well, some people do, but you gotta know what you're getting into when you buy a 1982 Oldsmobile)

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?

[Ed Avis]

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, most things are included on the CD so you don't need to manually step through a dozen slightly different installation wizards to get your applications back.

Besides, if your time is worth more than $5/hour you can simply buy supported, good-quality hardware, install Linux or BSD on it, and still make a net saving compared to Windows. (Assuming that this blogger's total of 11 hours per month is representative, and that a non-Windows system would avoid most of it, which is true.)

Re:How is it wasted time?

[Spoing]

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

Well, some (many? most?) admins could work more effeciently. I'm helping one company now automate as much as possible, focusing on deployment issues.

The second stage is to take that freed-up time and actually monitor the network for problems instead of the current react when someone complains model. (6 months ago, everyone used "administrator" and no password. Now, things are better but not by much and it's not organized.)

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?

[TheLink]

But once you've installed Windows 2000 and set up things correctly, 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.

OK the stupid IE update that broke the scrolling was annoying, and shows how crappy MS is. But W2K is not too bad by itself.

If you stick to using secure software on Windows 2000 you'll be fine. I mean, on Linux/FreeBSD yo could easily spend 11 hours a month if you were running crap like PHPNuke/PostNuke/Sendmail etc.

Just make sure that your Local Computer security zone and other zones are set to a reasonable security levels and IE starts becoming significantly safer. Or use some other browser.
Use some other email client other than MS LookOut.

Actually Windows 95/98 is pretty much easily securable (can easily turn off all services) but due to bad design you tend to have "out of resources" problems which makes it flaky. Windows 2000 doesn't have this resource problem, but you can't turn off all services.

So far I've spent only about a 1-2 hours on unscheduled maintenance in December - due to HDD problems. As for scheduled maintenance I spend a fair bit of computer time - it takes 1 to 1.5 hours to make a full compressed snapshot/backup of 40GB hdds, but I don't really need to spend much of my own time doing it - since I use Knoppix to do it the computer is still somewhat usable - can still browse the web, ssh etc, whilst doing the snapshot/backup.

There are tons of nice games that run on W2K that don't run on Linux/*BSD. I also find managing 30+ different windows easier on Windows than on KDE/GNOME. The GNOME/KDE taskbars seem to have limited space for quickly identifying and selecting the window you want to bring up.

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!

Re:How is it wasted time?

[vadim_t]

It's wasted time because it's time that things aren't working properly.

For example. You have a car to save you time and carry stuff around. Would it be worth using your car if on average every day you had to spend an hour messing with it, and it would break randomly in the middle of the highway? Probably not. You'd probably just take a bus, or walk if you could instead.

So, the time you spend fixing your car is wasted - because you could be doing something much more interesting with your time instead. Working on your car so that it looks nicer, or works faster is one thing. Spending an hour messing with it so that it will start is another.

Re:How is it wasted time?

[Ed Avis]

In my experience, even Win2k does deteriorate and need reinstalling - after the reinstall the machine is much snappier but then it starts to slow down again. I was mostly thinking of 95/98/ME though. Since Internet Explorer comes with the OS it's fair to count its failings as failings of Windows, especially since we count any security holes of exim or sshd or bind as weaknesses in Linux.

Re:How is it wasted time?

[MrWa]

There are many things in life that people do for a living that others would classify as a waste of time. In your case, the job you need to do is fixing computers so of course it isn't a waste of your time to do it - it is a waste of someone else's time, though, because that isn't their job, or isn't what they want to accomplish. Having to fill up my car is a waste of time. When deciding if something is a waste of time you need to consider what you are trying to do: if filling up your car is an activity you want to get done, all by itself, then you aren't wasting your time. If, on the other hand, you have to fill up your car so that you can accomplish something else (like get somewhere in the car) than the time spent filling the car up was time not spent accomplishing the task at hand, hence wasted time. It may have been necessary, certainly, but that is only because you don't have a car with better gas mileage.

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.

That was wasted time - especially because it wasn't even necessary to actually fix your problem. You may have enjoyed the investigation and troubleshooting, though started getting frustrated near the end, but you were not using the computer at the time or even fixing it - you were wasting time. If what you want to do is needlessly troubleshoot, then it wasn't wastsed time - if what you want to do is write something, edit a picture, create a spreadsheet or actually get the computer running then you did in fact waste two days.

The biggest problem with IT related issues is that, as another poster pointed out, the 5-minute fix is never only 5-minutes of your time. This goes for most things in business that are not directly related to getting your job done. Combine this gross misunderestimate with the fact that the interruptions occur so often and you can have a real problem.

Re:How is it wasted time?

[Ed Avis]

Yes, and I've had NT 3.51 systems running for years (not continuously, but regular use) with no problems at all and no crashes whatsoever. There are always anecdotes about 'good' Windows installations, but you have to take the big picture. Ask anyone who spends their time looking after Windows user desktops (and hasn't locked them down to the point of making it impossible to run any new applications or do any programming). And these people have not done anything especially odd or stupid to make their machines unreliable. It just goes wrong mysteriously by itself, or at least the default settings and philosophy make it seem so.

Re:How is it wasted time?

[Dun Malg]

In my experience, even Win2k does deteriorate and need reinstalling

I have two win2k boxes I administer. One is used as a simple web browser and email reader (with occasional Excel and Word use). It's been running 24/7 for 3+ years now and hasn't slowed down a bit-- and yes, it gets all the automatic windows updates. I have another win2k box that needs a clean install every 4-6 months. I use it as a test machine. Every crazy application, freak-out codec, and monkey-ass piece of hardware (with monkey-ass driver) gets installed on that machine. There doesn't seem to be so much a problem with win2k by itself; it seems more a problem with 3rd party crap that doesn't uninstall properly.

Re:How is it wasted time?

[Ed Avis]

I'd say an OS that can't run third-party applications without gunging up the machine is faulty OS. It's the operating system's job to isolate applications from the effects of each other. Bad drivers, okay, that's a good reason for a box to become flaky; but there is no reason at all why installing a new instant messaging program or video codec should screw up completely unrelated things.

Re:How is it wasted time?

[qtp]

How could it be classed as 'wasted'

I believe that the article is refering to the time wasted by the software vendors who do not make the effort to create a robust product. Of course there are many support personel who view this as a good thing, as they are dependant on poorly written apps, continuous patching, and forced upgrades to ensure thier employment.

it'll get worse i'm afraid

[spectre_be]

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

Re:it'll get worse i'm afraid

[dbirchall]

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 widgetry... bastards.)

Re:it'll get worse i'm afraid

[spectre_be]

Well i guess it aint gonna stop until finally we start hearing stuff like 'Try Desktop Linux Now!' and people actually dare taking the step towards OSS
If i just think about the lost productivity cuz of outdated unstable software which is way overpriced *without* the extra costs of fixing stuff
Hell even lindows would be satisfactory :)

Re:it'll get worse i'm afraid

[spectre_be]

Well of course it's about the users but it's for a fact i think microsoft just couldn't care less for the IE-users (i mean, i doubt they use it themselves to browse the internet)
my point is most people professionally using the computer are running windows and it's just for work what do they care if its not up to date or insecure? They just want to get their work done asap and go home
it's not about bashing microsoft, just simple facts and consequences of its marketshare
you'd think in a timespan of two years they'd be able help users surf secure...

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.

Waste #22

[gspr]

Summary: Writing all this stuff -- time spent: 2 hours.

I've been screaming this for years

[realkiwi]

And it is unbilled time!!!!

Microsoft TCO figures were written by father christmas himself. And the tooth fairy will be here any day now with a check for all those hours I could not "Bill" because it wouldn't work as advertised...

Lies, damned lies and Microsoft marketing...

Re:I've been screaming this for years

[thinlineofsanity]

Microsoft TCO figures were written by father christmas himself. And the tooth fairy will be here any day now with a check for all those hours I could not "Bill" because it wouldn't work as advertised...

This makes me wonder why I haven't had to spend more than 2 or 3 hours last year "fixing" my system running Windows 2000 - quite a low TCO, really. Which is about the same amount of time I spent that same year "fixing" my Debian box. Heck, even at work, where I manage about 40 XP boxes, 10 Linux boxes and a few Macs running OS-X, and users have full control over their own machines, the average attended maintenance time per Windows machine isn't much more than 8 hours a year. I may just be really lucky, but any half-decent sysadmin plans, audits and anticipates.

Windows is guaranteed to run on hardware listed on the hardware compatibility list. If you pick any other hardware, it's pretty much your own responsibility to get it to work (and rightfully so). You'll find the same goes for pretty much any flavour OS.

This is pretty ridiculous...

[mOoZik]

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

Re:This is pretty ridiculous...

[criquet]

I agree.

I have six computers in my house running 24/7 and spend basically no time maintaining them. They are always doing what they do and doing it well.

three Linux
- one for work (development)
- one as web/db server
- one as PVR
one OS X for video, web surfing/editing
two Windows XP
- both fo games
- one for music and file services (only because it has the disk space, otherwise it would be one of the Linux machines which are all small form factor so can't hold more drives).

Re:This is pretty ridiculous...

[Sentry21]

I would like to see how much time one spends every months getting Linux to function. :D

When I moved into this apartment, I wanted to get a Linux server set up to make use of my TV-in card. I installed Debian, which took about 5 hours altogether (the Debian discs I had were either netinst discs that couldn't use pppoe to install or full install discs that didn't have pppoe either; after I got one that worked, Debian screwed up the networking by putting in some arbitrary route that I told it not to have). After that, I upgraded everything, which took about 6 hours (the machine is quite low on ram, and was swapping like mad), then went to install the kernel. 2.4, 2.5, and even the 2.6 test releases, nothing would compile, and whatever did compile went fuckery on boot. After about 3 hours of fix-compile-reboot-recover I gave up on it.

I'm not a Linux newbie - I've used Linux (Debian) almost exclusively for around 7 years - but I guess Windows XP has spoiled me. Putting in the install disc, letting it run while I read a book, and then having everything work (and look good doing it) - it can ruin a guy on Linux. It's just not worth my time anymore.

I'd originally intended for it to be a small TV and ssh box, and instead I bought a TV and a PS2, and turned the tower and monitor into a set of bedside tables. Now I don't need it to watch TV, and I have no desire to go online anymore. Oh well.

Go Linux.

--Dan

Re:This is pretty ridiculous...

[Stinking Pig]

About this much time. In my home network, there's the Linux system which locks up if its user enables DPMS in the KDE screen-saver, the Linux system where hardware detection keeps helpfully switching from the wireless card to the un-connected wired Ethernet card, the Linux system where OpenOffice gets wedged with dead files in /tmp and won't start, and all of the Linux systems where multimedia plugins may or may not start, may or may not crash Mozilla, and will almost certainly be unable to play any sounds unless artsd is killed and esd is used (which produces a burst of static at the beginning of every sound).

Re:This is pretty ridiculous...

[Kymermosst]

I would like to see how much time one spends every months getting Linux to function.

About one hour every couple of months.

The last thing I did to this machine was install the latest nVidia drivers (which work fine for me, don't know what other people complaining about).

It went like this: switch to vt 1, go to runlevel 3, log in as root, then "nvidia-installer --update", answer a couple questions, and let it go.

After it finished downloading and installing, I went back to runlevel 5 and logged back in.

Every now and then I install security updates on this box, and the server box. Time spent is usually less than 30 minutes.

My server has been running for 67 days now, and I've only done a few minor things, like install the latest patches to pdnsd, sshd upgrades, and such. That took 10 minutes each for download, configure, make, and install.

Re:This is pretty ridiculous...

[Doppler00]

What? How much time it takes to get Linux to function? Take the time for Windows XP and multiple by about 10. That's my experience. I add a single CDROM drive to my system and Redhat fails to detect the network card. Yes, the network card.

Not to mention the time I've spent setting up a firewall, database server, web server, etc. Yes it takes a lot of time, but it's fun and that's the only reason I work with linux, not because I believe it will save me any time.

Re:Network Crap

[lasmith05]

What the hell kind of router did you buy that can't handle ten computers online?

The one minute pick up line

[StarBar]

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 ;-)

Re:The one minute pick up line

[Anonymous Coward]

They ALL have Windows problems. 50 - 60% of the girls just don't want to see you again.

Re:The one minute pick up line

[Denver_80203]

Where the hell do you hang out? You're saying you get all the Linux chicks and leave the Windows chicks behind????? There's a statistical advantage. Expecially considering 70% of the girls I meet are likely to spin on their heels and move on at the mear mention of "computer stuff".

Get used to it.

[mellon]

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. :')

Re:Get used to it.

[X86BSD]

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.

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:Get used to it.

[Ohreally_factor]

It is for precisely this reason that I bought my dad an eMac for christmas. My sister, who lives 200 miles away, thought I should buy him a Windows machine (for all the usual reasons), and my response was to ask her if she wanted to be his tech support. That quieted her down.

Anyway, my computer isn't trouble free, but it might as well be. What few problems do crop up are trivial and easily fixed.

Re: your dad's problem. Check the RAM. Might be a loose stick or even out of spec. The OS and firmware have gotten a lot more finnicky about 3rd party RAM spec.

Re:Get used to it.

[bandy]

Does he have any FireWire devices [e.g. iPod] attached on a semi-permanent basis? If so, he needs the latest updates - it would freeze the Finder and ultimately the machine [bad finder!].

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.

Re:PEBCAK?

[Sax Maniac]

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 it could write to them.

Forget trying to run anything if you're not a "Power User". Gave up on that a long time ago.

Then there are the few that don't won't work at all unless you have unfettered access to everything.

I mean, I can run this way, but there's no way in hell my sister or parents could. It has to be wide open, otherwise nothing would work for them.

One hopes that with XP getting popular apps will become better-behaved. But as long as the default remain "I'm an admin, he's an admin, she's admin, wouldn't you like to be an admin too?" I suspect not.

Apples the answer

[xirtam_work]

Should have bought a Mac. I got my iMac (17" flat screen) last summer and I haven't had any problems at all. No freezes, unexpected reboots, automatic spam handling in mail.app, loads of software available, no driver 'issues', nothing. Plus, it's all BSD underneath, neat.

I have to use PC's everyday at work and I'm less and less inclined to do so. I'm looking for a job with a publishing company or something so I can administrate Mac's instead at the same time as studing for the ACTC/ACSA exams.

Re:Network Crap

[fireboy1919]

I'll have to agree with the other poster on this. Your router is dying on ten users?

That should be a piece of cake if they're all browsing.

I Think It Goes Without Saying...

[sipy]

...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? That's not "recovery", that's "hanging on by a thread, and allowing me to reboot". (sigh, again).

It'll only get worse for Microsoft Windows users.

Solutions? A) Switch to a Mac - my mother hasn't crashed her Mac since she got it, two years ago. B) Switch to command-mode - it is incredibly hard to crash a server these days from the command-prompt. (I guess it's incredibly hard to do any *actual work* from the command mode, if all you've ever used was a GUI.) For us Unix stalwarts, it's much much much faster than using a GUI. C) Switch to another O/S (i.e. Linux). Since Microsoft illegally killed all it's O/S competitors, that leaves just a couple. Go to eBay and pickup an old copy of DR-DOS, or DeskView, OS/2 or the like. You won't crash nearly as often. D) Toe the line and grin and bear it. Sadly, that's the most likely outcome for Joe and Jane Doe.

Re:I Think It Goes Without Saying...

[aedan]

>>Switch to a MAC?

That's a brand of lipstick, a network card or your shift key is stuck.

aedan

It's a pain... Sometimes it costs more than time

[GeckoFood]

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

[AntEater]

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.

Re:It's not just Windows

[steveha]

I spend a fair amount of time on my computer hobby. I tweak my setup of my computer. I update my Debian packages several times a week (I run Debian Unstable). So I understand what you are saying. Sometimes I have problems after I update my packages.

But the Linux computer I set up for my wife just runs and runs and runs. She never tweaks the settings. She just uses it, day in and day out. That computer has an uptime of three months now. In that time, she has had a few issues (a browser crash, or something else minor that didn't require much time to fix). If we add up my time for maintaining that computer, it's just a few minutes, spread over three months. Even if we count the time I spent updating her packages, that's still not very much time (I love DSL).

Part of the secret: I built that computer, using quality parts. I got her a really good power supply and top-quality memory. I provided good cooling, and I didn't overclock anything.

So I have fun hacking on my computer, and she has fun just using her computer, and we're both happy.

Linux on a quality computer can be very stable.

steveha

Maybe

[lasmith05]

He isn't doing a good job of maintaining his systems. I have a similar family used network environment, and I find that by ignoring all "problems" other than showstoppers (ie internet doesn't work) I find that I waste very little time.

SIRCS

[Aging_Newbie]

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.

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.

I wouldn't call it wasting time

[p51d007]

Heck, I wouldn't call it wasting time. It's a "LEARNING" experience! Everytime I fool around with my computer, mess it up, then fix it, allows me to fix my friends computers even FASTER. Others ask me why I try to break my computer. Easy answer....if I can fix what I break, odds are I can fix what they break.

Re:I wouldn't call it wasting time

[paranerd]

Absolutely.

If my computer hadn't broken I wouldn't have upgraded it. If I hadn't of upgraded it I wouldn't have given it to my daughter. If I hadn't have given it to my daughter I wouldn't have bought a new one. Then I wouldn't have discovered the joys of multimedia beyond listening to music. The new machine came with WinME which if it hadn't been crap I wouldn't have had to mess with it to find out how much spyware Microsoft had put on it, I wouldn't have gone 100% linux, I wouldn't have picked up additional kudos for my resume, and I wouldn't have had so much fun wasting my time polishing my OS. Then I wouldn't have discovered gentoo and what it means to craft an operating system that was what I wanted and not what someone else wanted.

Waste my time some more.

Re:Well duh, looking at what he's using.

[ocelotbob]

I hate to be one to defend to microsoft here, but get off your high horse. The main reason that Macs seem so relatively bug-free is because the platform is so obscure and tightly controlled. You don't have the variety of hardware that you have on a PC, you don't have the variables PCs have. And before you try to get off acting like a mac is immune to viruses, think again. It's entirely possible to write a virus for a mac, even OS X that can be quite destructive. Probably wouldn't take more than a few hours by a bored enough person. I'd do it myself, but I have better things to do with my time, like sex, than to write viruses. Also, last time I checked, the near-month service packs that Apple puts out for their OS take longer than 5 minutes to download and install.

In conclusion, please share whatever pills you are taking to get to that reality, because they seem like they're pretty fun.

Hmm...

[autopr0n]

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...

[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:Hmm...

[gmhowell]

That's kinda why I fix my parents' computer without too much grumbling. And they're still paying for it. I needed to build a train table for my son. Rather than buying hundreds or thousands of bucks worth of tools and wood, I went to my father's house yesterday, grabbed some scrap wood, etc, etc. Nice 3x4 foot train table. Then I spent about two hours working on their network (and gave up. It's got me stumped. I recommended a new bit of hardware.) Sounds about even to me. Oh, and I got to raid the fridge for leftovers to bring to my house as well.

Re:Hmm...

[the_2nd_coming]

which is why I now have one machine I upgrade every so often, but hate it and have a Mac that I love......after a while it just gets Boring.

Re:Hmm...

[rampant mac]

"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"

Ah ha, I've found you! You're that cocky, smug nerd from the Encyclopedia Britannica commercials.

Re:Hmm...

[millette]

"I got to raid the fridge"

Who wouldn't want a redundant array for a fridge :)

Re:Hmm...

[gmhowell]

Who wouldn't want a redundant array for a fridge :)

You *do* know my parents then. Unfortunately, there's so much cruft stored in the array that it can be a bit frightening. There are entire partitions that need to be nuked from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

Re:Hmm...

[millette]

I guess a lot of parents would also wish for such a raid fridge - raising teens takes a lot of nutrients! :)

Re:Hmm...

[Op7imus_Prim3]

I'm about to graduate with a CS degree.

You can get a degree in CounterStrike now?

What he doesn't take into account...

[prewashedironman]

...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...

[ptr2void]

You don't suppose he was sitting there for four hours and watched the progress bar advancing? I had a terrible time (a complete day, about 20 hours) when getting my shiny new ISDN card and Windows to cooperate. (That's what you get for using proprietary software which requires ISDN card X manufactured by Y which makes sloppy drivers...) And I'll tell you, I wasnt just watching progress bars there.

Re:What he doesn't take into account...

[Malic]

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...

[autopr0n]

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.

Re:None...

[jcoy42]

Here, here. I have a box I undersized the C: partition on a windows 2000 machine and havn't been able to install any service packs beyond SP1. It's been over 2 years since I've updated, but everything works.

I have another box running RedHat 6.1, which I havn't updated in over 2 years. I'm sure I have older installations I havn't fiddled with, but those are the 2 machines that spring to mind.

Of course, running things behind a NAT'd firewall helps, but common sense about clicking on attachments, running thigns as a privledged user and whatnot help a lot more.

Re:None...

[Accipiter]

What do you do that's causing things to be so slow?

My box is a PIII 500, the same machine I've been using since I built it in 1999. The only things that have changed are the video card (now a GeForce 2) and the RAM. (currently at 512MB) Works perfectly for me.

Re:None...

[autopr0n]

What do you do that's causing things to be so slow? Using a 3.0ghz machine at work. I don't think it's any slower then when I got it, but in comparison...

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

[October_30th]

I fully agree.

I don't understand why other people - the extended family in particular - seem to think that if you're a doctor/lawyer/expert they're qualified for a free consultation.

I have both lawyers and doctors as friends but I wouldn't even consider asking them for a free advice. It would be... I don't know, so utterily vulgar. If they volunteer an advice, that's perfectly OK, but I'd never ask them.

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

[October_30th]

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.

So you don't think it's fair for a doctor to charge a fee for his/her services?

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

[Jedi Alec]

Nuff said

Re:Bill for your time

[October_30th]

It's called "being nice"

Yeah, I know. I was once one of those nice guys who got taken advantage of all the time. At some point you just have got to learn how to say "no". The best decision of my life, actually.

Re:Bill for your time

[Tim C]

At some point you just have got to learn how to say "no".

Agreed; hence my comment about people who started taking the piss suddenly finding that I was too busy to help out (or possibly finding that I was telling them to stop taking the piss, depending on what I judged to be the appropriate response, of course)

Re:Bill for your time

[dsplat]

That's an excellent policy. There are times when you do help family and friends for free because of who they are. There are others where it is a paying gig. Know what you expect before you start. Make sure they know it too.

Re:Bill for your time

[eggnet]

You're taking advice from someone who you don't value enough to help out occasionally?

If your parents moved, would you help them? Is your family that worthless?

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

[big!theory]

this works sometimes. but consider the person in a earlier post, who can do hardware hacking, but is really (or soon will be) a software engineer.

yes he can fix the machine for Cousin Billy. but the fact is , this work is worth 30-50 bucks per hour. much less than his software engineering is worth.

to make this in the least bit worth while, our engineer needs to charge Cousin Billy 80-100 bucks an hour.

Cousin Billy is saving the expense of a trip to compusa, or whereever. but the real expense is borne by our software engineer whose time is worth a lot more than compusa guy's time.

i try to help Cousin Billy whenever i can. but the fact is, the compusa guy could do a better, faster job than me because he does it every day. if i was going to charge for it (and make it worth my time) i'd have to charge Cousin Billy 100 bucks an hour.

Cousin Billy probably would happy to pay me the 25 bucks the job is worth. but i wouldn't accept money if only to avoid the misconception that 25 bucks is what my time is worth.

maybe i should tell Billy that i need to bring it home to work on it. and then drop it off at Compusa. ;)

Re:Bill for your time

[Deliveranc3]

It's tough though, I don't think it would be possible for me to turn down assistance if they are going to have to pick up a phone and call Dell or AOL or god forbid Rogers. They are family, Socrates says take your familial bias and run with it :)

Re:Bill for your time

[zora]

It's sooooo easy, Just keep putting it off for a week or so, and eventually whomever is trying to take advantage of you will get out their restore CD's and try it themselves and low and behold. They realize that they can do it.

I will bet that everyone who does tech support for their friends/family has installed any operating system hundreds of times but there always was a first.

Works for me. es and low and behold. They realize that they can do it. I will bet that everyone who does tech support for their friends/family has installed any operating system hundreds of times but there always was a first. Works for me.

p.s. The above is applicable to everyone except Works for me.your mother. Anyone ignoring their mother is a cold bastard.

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.

Enormous Amounts of Time

[cubicledrone]

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...

Re:Enormous Amounts of Time

[nih]

all you need to do is set your system partition to the size of a dvd-r(or more, 4.36gb x n) and just backup that with ghost, you can then do incremental backups(i do once a month), then when your computer starts to 'act strange' just restore the partition, i've had zero problems with this approach, its obviously a different story if you want to backup hundreds of gb's, but the main problems are with the os, hard drives dont exactly fail that ofter, in my experience...

Re:Enormous Amounts of Time

[jamespharaoh]

Um, why not just buy another hard drive and backup to that?

Re:Enormous Amounts of Time

[cubicledrone]

You'd have a realistic complaint if the operating systems didn't already come with the software required to back up your data.

But they don't. I wouldn't use MS backup for a grocery list. Tar is great if you have a half-terabyte tape. Ghost is great if you're using Windows and only Windows (and nobody has explained adequately how Ghost reinstalls your disk image without Windows, since even Windows can't do that).

There should be a big green button that says PRESS HERE TO BACK UP YOUR ENTIRE SYSTEM that actually works. There should be a smaller button next to it that says PRESS HERE TO MAKE AN INCREMENTAL BACKUP A hardware device for each would be even better. It's been what, over 20 years since the PC was introduced and this still isn't included as a standard option on all new computers?

I haven't used OSX yet, but I'd guess there is precisely such a feature included with new Macs.

- Only backup your DATA, or better, only backup your irreplaceable data. (Bet you could fit that on a few DVDs, unless you're a multimedia developer.)

Reinstalling and reconfiguring the operating system takes weeks, possibly months, during which time little work will get done, if any.

- Tape drives exist for the larger sizes, but they're darn expensive for home use.

But I'd guess they work, unlike the currently available systems.

Re:Enormous Amounts of Time

[darrylo]

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.

You're using the wrong tools.

Put the OLD Drive Image 2002 (not the latest version) onto a bootable CDROM with network drivers (using Bart's network boot floppy as a starting point), and you can do disaster recovery by booting the CDROM and backing up to a network share (samba and FreeBSD/linux work well for this). This works unbelievably well. The only thing not backed up (I think) is the drive SID, but there are other tools that can handle this.

(You'll probably also have to tweak the samba config, like " socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=4096", to get around slow dos network transfers.)

Of course, even with compression, you do need to have a large samba share to back up 120GB disks. (If the samba share has a DVD+/-R/RW drive, you can also back up the images to DVD, but you should probably have drive image auto-split the backups into manageable-sized chunks if you do this.)

Re:Enormous Amounts of Time

[ErikZ]

Maxtor makes external hard drives that do that.

Re:Enormous Amounts of Time

[Darth_Burrito]

I agree with you and think this is one of those problems that is gradually going to move to the fore front of personal computing as we become more and more dependant on the data stored on our drives.

Some examples:

How may people do we know with massive collections of digital only photo albums?

How many of us have stopped purchasing music in cd form, instead using services like iTunes and storing all of our music on our hard drives? How long before the same sorts of things start happening with video?

And of course there's all that other data too.

It's not going to happen overnight or all at once, but gradually more and more people are going to have hard drive failures (like I did). Once that happens they will never accept a solution without some level of redundancy. With serial ATA out, the four device limitation is gone and I wouldn't be surprised if we see raided (or oterhwise redundant) home systems in the core market in the next 5 years.

Re:Enormous Amounts of Time

[Fencepost]

nobody has explained adequately how Ghost reinstalls your disk image without Windows, since even Windows can't do that

It uses the DOS bootable floppy that you created, or that you create on another system when you need to restore your backup. Other drive imaging packages use the DOS bootable CD that they ship with, or the Linux bootable CD that they ship with, or something similar.

Not only do you not need to have Windows running when you need to do data restoration to a hard drive, in some cases you *can't* have Windows running while you're doing your restoration.

Tool for the Job?

[jimicus]

I'm going to stick my neck out on this one: If we assume that the best operating system is not Linux, not MacOS and not Windows, but instead "the one which does the job required", this leaves a number of possibilities, none of which are particularly nice:

1. He requires spending 11 hours a month fixing Windows issues. Ouch.
2. He has to use Windows, but also uses cheap hardware, with all the headaches that can cause. So he's daft enough to set up a number of systems for the entire family and in doing so picks up the cheapest hardware he can find. Ouch.
3. He has to use Windows, he buys perfectly good hardware but is crap at administering it. Ouch.
4. Hardware, software and usage are totally out of his control. But he is still lumbered with fixing any problems. Ouch.

But..

[skinfitz]

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!

[annielaurie]

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

Re:Nowhere near that!

[WuphonsReach]

Our chief time waster is the router, a Linksys

Are you sure that you have the latest firmware updates?

My Linksys router has been up and running for at least 2 months (maybe 3) without a reboot. With the latest firmware, those are pretty much "no touch needed" devices.

Re:Nowhere near that!

[Thing 1]

Thank you! I've been having the same problems -- it would drop from 80 KB/s to about 5 KB/s and I'd have to reboot the Linksys (BEFSR41) router.

From reading your post and one of the responses, I have upgraded my firmware and hopefully my problems are over. I hope you upgrade your firmware and have good results as well!

Re:Nowhere near that!

[Thing 1]

Just wanted to thank you (already thanked parent for mentioning the same problem I'm having) -- I just upgraded the firmware (it was Sep 2002, now it's July 2003) so hopefully my slowdowns are a thing of the past. Thanks!

Re:Network Crap

[Malc]

Get used to it: this is what it is like in the corporate world.

Besides, if you're so upset, why don't you replace the router at your expensive instead of leeching of your parents and expecting them to pay for your whims and hobbies.

11 hours? feh!

[Richard_at_work]

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).

Re:11 hours? feh!

[Deliveranc3]

How about the time it takes me to just figure out which Linux applications I need does that count? /me cries

A time sink people won't acknowledge

[pvera]

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.

Re:A time sink people won't acknowledge

[aardwolf204]

I know how you feel, I wear just as many hats. I sure wish reading /. was billable though.

Re:A time sink people won't acknowledge

[jeffkjo1]

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.

I too have noticed this happening to me. I am not a Mac switcher, but I dual boot SuSE 9 and XP, and have noticed that at least once per day, I get the distinct feeling that there should be something to do on the computer, but there isn't.
It took me a few weeks, but when I went looking for a defragment utility in linux (This despite knowing that defragmenting is not done in linux), I knew what it was.
It amazes me that I must have (and still do on the occasion of loading windows) spent so much time fixing windows that it became a regular task, and now that I don't have to anymore, I feel like I still should.
So, to make up for it, I run WINE a lot and occasionally compile programs with unsolved dependencies.

Glad to know I'm not the only one who was mstified as to where all this extra time came from.

Re:A time sink people won't acknowledge

[October_30th]

I started using Issue Tracker and forced myself to write a trouble ticket for every stupid little request I was made. ... Now I can show him the issue tracker log and show him

That is an excellent idea.

I've always suspected that it is these small, fragmented and seemingly menial tasks that suck in a lot of time and effort. For me, the fragmentation is actually the worst: having to switch from one task context to another all the time. It would help a lot if there were a way to "defrag" these small random tasks into larger more coherrent tasks like "weekly network checkup and maintenance including the printers".

Re:A time sink people won't acknowledge

[pvera]

I tell you what, Issue Tracker felt like a nuissance for the first day or so, then I saw how I had gone thru 16 trouble tickets in less than four hours, each of the 16 issues were insignificant and I would have forgotten about them before the end of the day, which would have resulted in just putting 4 hours of generic IT work in the timesheet!

Now I am a believer. The extra effort to document all this work is well worth it.

Re:It's a pain... Sometimes it costs more than tim

[casehardened]

The other way to look at this is: "Gee, a free PC arrived in the mail! I've always wanted an extra server box." Soon, requests for your time will disappear.

mac

[the uNF cola]

I got a mac. The three of them I've setup out of the box were pre-setup. So it was a matter of setting up the nic and user accounts.

Redoing the machines, since I didn't like the base install took about 2 hours, not including the copy-from-cd issue.

Each app required tending to and what not. Other than that, the only maint i have to do is when the drives get full. :\

Re:Two similar logs missing.

[beaverfever]

Log 1) Time wasted on /.
Log 2) Time wasted on pr0n

Time is not wasted on pr0n. /., on the other hand...

(On the other hand? That's why we have two.)

Anyone on /.

[RPoet]

Anyone on /. is experiencing the same thing.

That's a pretty unfounded claim. I'm sure there are people on slashdot that are not experiencing the same thing.

Correct myself

[beaverfever]

Time is not wasted on pr0n. ...barring hirsute pr0n and other acts of barbarism, of course.

Re:Correct myself

[dipipanone]

barring hirsute pr0n and other acts of barbarism

Come on, there's no need to pretend with us. You're among friends here.

The truth is, most people haven't ever even *seen* hirsute pr0n, and you obviously didn't pick the name 'beaverfever' for no reason...

Re:Correct myself

[beaverfever]

You're correct that there's a reason why I chose 'beaverfever', but there's also a reason why I always keep an electric hair trimmer fully charged and ready to go.

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.

Re:Not that bad for Windows

[pellaeon]

Note that he talks about 'computer problems', not 'Microsoft software problems'.

> Of the 11 hours and 20 minutes, he includes 30 minutes of a cable blackout.

This is computer related and does therefore count. No, it's not Microsoft's fault either. We're still at 11:20.

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

I'll grant you that one :) 11:15 it is.

> 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...

Personally I wouldn't want updates from Microsoft to happen automagically. They have a well-documented tendency to break things. That means having to do this manually, so we remain at 11:15.

Any third part software causing problems is still 'computer problem time', even if this software failure forces you to console your child. But let's deduct that 10 minutes. We're now at 11:05.

The 'one time event' still counts though. He's not talking about 'expected regular computer maintenance' but 'total time spent keeping systems working'. Per computer this works out to 3:42. Perhaps it's better to put is in this light: if you have a computer, you'd better be prepared to spend at least some hours each month keeping it running. Compare this, if you will, to the amount of time you spent last month keeping your sound/tv equipment running. I bet it's quite a bit lower :)

The author also never claimed this to be an authoritative scientific study.

Re:Not that bad for Windows

[jd142]

This is computer related and does therefore count. No, it's not Microsoft's fault either. We're still at 11:20.

Just out of curiosity, if the power did go out -- say he plugged in a hair dryer, a blender and a space heater on the same circuit, blew the circuit breaker to the computer room and then spent an hour tracking down fuses (pretend it is an old house) and replacing them -- would that still count as a computer problem?

Re:Not that bad for Windows

[pellaeon]

If the hair dryer, blender and space heater are driven by his computers, then yes, I would say it's a computer problem :-)

Otherwise, no. He's fixing a problem that only indirectly involves computers (after all, if he blew out a different circuit he'd have no computer downtime but would still have to fix the breakers). If you notice you don't have any more power in a widespread area in your house, do you think your computer is at fault? Probably not. But if you can't connect to the internet, what else but your computer or your IP can it be? And most people think that the IP is better at 'computers stuff' than they are and so assume it's their fault they can't connect.

That's why I count the time.

Re:Not that bad for Windows

[jd142]

Fair enough. I was specifically thinking of the following true story:

I come home from work about 4:30, which is earlier than I normally get home. I turn on the tv, but alas no cable. I turn on the computer. No internet. I call the cable company and tell them I can't get any channels or an ip address.

Luckily they have someone in the area and he comes out and fixes the problem (the guy in the next apartment complex got a little too aggressive mowing and severed a cable).

In my mind, this is not a computer problem, even if I had turned the computer on first and diagnosed it that way. For one reason or another, my IP was down. But I first noticed it because the cable tv was out.

You are probably right -- most people do assume it is a problem with their computer if their ISP is having problems. I work with computers, and I know how mine is set up. If I can't get an ip address, my first thought is that they've had an outage or something, not that my computer has had a problem.

Re:Not that bad for Windows

[pellaeon]

Being a sysadmin gives me a different perspective to that as well :)

I guess some of the truth lies in perception of the problem itself. In your story, I wouldn't think of it as a computer problem either, but that would probably change if I had been using the computer at the time the cable was cut... At least some time would have elapsed with me trying to diagnose the problem on the computer and network itself.

Some tips for better management

[oosid]

I remember the days of heavy lifting to maintain the home network. They are all but gone now. Our primary boxes are my wife's XP Pro workstation, my Powerbook, and a Linux mail/web/listserver/Samba/whatever I need server in the basement. We have a little firewall appliance with the server directly connected, and the other stuff using wireless. We have almost no down/maint time...certainly not 11 hours per month. Here's how: 1. Spamassasin 2. Auto download of updates and a couple of clicks a month to install the ones I want. 3. Occasionally check for and install new firewall updates. 4. Virus and system checker run on the XP box nightly. 5. Automagically back up system files on the Powerbook with a third party system maint utility. Once you have it all set up, your home network can hum along pretty smoothly with very little work. Even if you add a couple more machines it shouldn't really impact your maint time...unless you're doing some serious dinking. But that's fun, not work.

2-3 days to reinstall OSX & apps? VERY fishy.

[jpellino]

"I have a friend at this moment who is reloading OS-X and all her applications on her Mac for the third time this year (a 2-day to 3-day process)."

This is way out of line as far as I can tell, and I manage a few dozen macs under OSX. Anything from RevA iMacs to current iBooks & G4s. Except for upgrades, reinstall has only been needed once on two machines, and it's more like 2 hours to backup, install, and restore.

There needs to be a massive undiscovered problem on a Mac under OSX that needs three lobotomies inside of a year.

Even if so, get a cheap FW drive and simplify the whole thing.

I bet it was running netware....

[einhverfr]

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:I bet it was running netware....

[operagost]

Check this out.

Re:Network Crap

[Zathraskun]

Its some belkin piece of crap, and after chirstmas expendatures I have no cash for a decent router. Although that might change when if I can manage to convince them to upgrage to 802.11g for my old man's notebook, and I beleve :angst: ist the term "yyyyy" was looking for.

It is wasted time in terms of $$$, people, health

[politicalman]

Well...
if you spent the same amount of time in overtime at work or
if you spent the same amount of time doing home improvements or
if you spent the same amount of time with your kids or
if you spent the same amount of time working out or
if you spent the same amount of time in night courses
you would be better off (BIG time).

Buy a computer with the wireless features built in.
Buy a Windows laptop (so you won't be tempted to open it up)
or any Apple computer (you won't open the laptops but you'll open the desktops just to gawk)
and give yourself you life back.
Either way don't touch a thing inside - if it doesn't work take it back.

IT people that actually become more educated playing with (ahem, maintaining)
a network at home or a plain old enthusiast should continue to
spend their time breaking and fixing stuff at home.

Everyone else should realize that they paid enough already and that they shouldn't have to do
anything more just to be able to use their own machine.

I'm also wondering about...

[MadAnthony02]

He listed Windows Update, 1 hour as one of the things. I'm guessing that includes download and install time, where he didn't actually have to do anything.

Aside from not being able to use the machine, it's hard to think of spending five minutes navigating to windowsupdate.microsoft.com, a few minutes for it to scan and for you to select the patch, then reading a book or watching TV for an hour until it's done downloading/installing, as wasting an hour.

yes, it is wasted time.

[themusicgod1]

however, much like energy lost to heat, there is always going to be time lost to necessarry events. the advantage of science, and to a lesser extent the open source movement, is that we can appreciate these events as they are, and attempt to work around them.

can you imagine the process of getting a picture of somewhere in china a thousand years ago? it would have probably meant travel by foot or horse, through warring states, to arrive and pay a local painter to do a pseudodescent version...now its a matter of getting on an airplane, and bringing a digital camera. everything takes less time, and it should...why not expect to reduce further the time that is lost.

especially when you consider that we are all going to die...and unless you don't want to be alive (which makes sense...), you should be aware of at least most of your time alive so that your entire life does not just flicker past in a bunch of boring television sequences.

and it looks like you are attempting to get around the "wasted"ness of the time by multitasking and interpreting your time-events differently(as benifit instead of loss)...but you could be doing more stuff, at once...imagine, doing three or four obscure freebsd installs instead of just that one at one time...why not? why let your time be taken up by one?

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

O.O

[Saiai Hakutyoutani]

TIME SAVED IS TIME DOUBLED!

If you're that worried, though, you could always install Gentoo or Debian.

No, I will *not* fix your computer.

[Hanji]

No, I will not fix your computer.

'nuff said.

Re:No, I will *not* fix your computer.

[Reziac]

No, no, no. The T-Shirt should read:

"Sure, I'll fix your computer -- for $50 an hour, plus parts."

ABSOLUTELY

[Infernon]

I just got into a discussion with my girlfriend about this subject exactly!
I told her that she needs to keep her family at bay. I don't ask her brothers to do my electrical work or my taxes so I don't think that they have a right to ask me to work on their computer problems. I also used the mechanic analogy:)
Anyway, a bigger problem is that most of her family lives very far away which requires-- you guessed it-- PHONE SUPPORT!!! AGH!
My buddy and his wife have a perfect gig. If someone calls him for tech support, she tells 'em to piss off! I guess all of the good ones ARE taken...

Re:ABSOLUTELY

[MrAngryForNoReason]

you guessed it-- PHONE SUPPORT!!!

There is nothing worse than phone support for people who have no idea, the strain of putting your mind into 'LUser mode' just so they understand you. It isn't the start button, it's that thing in the bottom left, etc etc

Oh actually there is one thing worse, doing phone support for idiots when you don't have a computer in front of you to follow the steps through on. Its incredibly hard to break a simple task down in to tiny managable steps when you can't remember the exact layout of every menu and dialog box.

I often find it is quicker to jump on a train than try and talk people through something over the phone. I generally carry a small toolkit, installation cds, essential drivers etc in my bag most of the time, because I know I am going to be asked to do something and it is so much easier when you have your own tools and all the software to hand. Otherwise you get the nightmare of asking someone for their win95 install cd and them handing you a stack of 50 floppies, I actually almost screamed.

Re:ABSOLUTELY

[Kumochisonan]

I happen to do phone support for idiot users, and seem to have no trouble getting into luser mode anymore, you just have to start the call with the assumption that the user hasn't got a clue.

Also after a few months of fixing the same problems over and over, you know exactly the steps to take, and if you forget where you are, just ask the user to read out what he can see.

It can be frustrating at times, but I get a kick out of the relieved and happy voice on the end of the phone after I've solved the problem.

Admittedly, you can only do so much over the phone, and a lot of problems users call up with require redirection to another support service.

In our company (A large broadband ISP) we have a rigid support scope that means we only deal with things that are our responsibility. No firewall issues, no virus removal and no reghacks.

The job gets quite easy after a few weeks, but the main drag is that you are solving the same problems over and over again, like a stuck record.

After a few more months in my current role, I'm going to see if there are any openings in Internal support.

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:The Power User's Lament

[Tom]

a lot of people expect their computers and internet connections to function about as reliably as any other comparable appliances

And that's the fundamental mistake. Repeat with me:

A computer is not an appliance.

When your assumption is false, nothing you derive from it has a reliable truth value. No wonder these people get confused and fed up.

My mom doesn't do sysadmin...

[joestar]

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.

[Codifex Maximus]

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.

Re:Wasted time fixing computers.

[repetty]

I use Linux at home, too (a server and a workstation), so I'm also a Linux fan. However...

I suspect that if each of us kept an accurate log we would be surprised at how we actually spend our time.

For instance, being techie-types, I'm sure that you and I both "fiddle" with our systems, tweaking them. That counts, I think. Fiddle, fiddle (break!), fix, fiddle.

On the other hand, there is absolutely no doubt that this guy is getting exactly what he deserves by running Windows.

--Richard

Re:Wasted time fixing computers.

[Samrobb]

For instance, being techie-types, I'm sure that you and I both "fiddle" with our systems, tweaking them.

It's all willpower, and recognizing that a system is set up the way you need it, and that it doesn't need tweaking. I've got a Linux webserver that I built and configured 3 years ago that I'm now looking to update. In the past three years, I've made one change to the system - applying a security patch. I expect the update will take a couple of days - a few hours to install, a few hours to set up, a few hours to tweak. When that's done, I'll probably leave it alone for another 3 years.

Lest you think this is an unusual situation, I have a Linux box at work that's used for app development. Same thing, haven't made any major changes (aside from installing updated versions of Java and Ant) in the past two years... and this on a box that sees heavy use daily.

Goddamned computers.

[Conor Turton]

I feel the pain of many on here as I too am the local "computer guy". Its amazing how many friends and family members you suddenly gain once they find out you know a bit about PCs. It got to the point of stupidity where I'd end up with three or four calls/visits a day. Doesn't sound much but when you do a 12hr shift at work it takes up a massive amount of your downtime.

It has now got to the point that when someone comes to my door I don't even answer. I open the window next to it and tell them to sod off as I know exactly why they've come. I no longer answer the phone either. The wife will answer it, say who it is and I tell her to tell them if it is anything to do with computers I don't want to know.

Slowly they're getting the message but unfortunately I'm now know as someone with an agressive attitude and no manners. It's a real pity they don't realise how much its been stressing me out.

Isn't it interesting though how these people suddenly disappear when large sums of money per hr is mentioned?

Re:Goddamned computers.

[October_30th]

I hear you.

Did you see this thread already?

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.)

Re:Family IT support

[borgasm]

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.

I have beeing keeping a log for life!

[Wonderkid]

Being a Mac user, who probably had LESS problems than those using a certain other major OS, I have kept a log of my calls to Apple technical support, along with just about every other company, including (in the USA, Pacific Bell) and here in the UK, British Telecom. I would say that I have lost thousands of hours to technical problems, and spent 25% of my phone bill trying to resolve problems, of which 99% are a direct fault of the company. This is all down to two simply issues: a) Those that put profit ahead of customer service. b) Poor design. That is it!

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

[panker]

I think the point was that all he was trying to do was use his computer. Why do you have to be a network administrator to use your home computer? My suggestion is to buy a Mac :)

Re:Skewed results

[uncleFester]

Repair #3 -- summary: Windows XP security updates -- time spent: 1 hour
Repair #4 -- summary: Another Windows XP security update -- time spent: 20 minutes

Consider if you find/do this update while doing 'real' work with the PC. Throw in the time to save/close out, patch, reboot (and my reboot can take 6-10 minutes with the systray deathmarch I have going on :), and to get back to where you were.. I don't see this as padding. Remember, 'time to patch' is not simply the time to apply the patch. Factor in all the other required stuff (like reboots) and this is not out of the realm at all.

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

Hell, I'd say this is GENEROUS. Between random app crashes, Explorer craahing/restarting (or failing to, forcing a logout/login), etc.. this is kind.

Repair #21 -- summary: Time Warner Internet blackout -- time spent: 30 minutes.. { snip } .. Then what exactly did he do during that half hour?

Probably a combination of network troubleshooting and TW on-hold time. Hey, it counts. :)

-'fester (yeah, i suck dual-booting Win(x).. but Grand Theft Auto don't work on Linux :)

Re:Skewed results

[beebware]

was he out there helping Time Warner get things resolved? No? Then what exactly did he do during that half hour

Probably the same thing I, and many others, do when we lose internet connectivity. First check if it's isolated to one machine, if not check the router. Restart the router, check router is reachable and routing correctly. Check it's connected, attempt pings (to multiple locations: you need to have memorised IP addresses). Rule out "internal problems", call ISP tech support to lodge problem - go through the "diagnostics speal" (even though they'll be talking about "Single User Windows XP" machines and you are running a Linux based multi-machine network against their TOS) and then, finally, get acknowledgement it's a problem their end(!)

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.

Re:Skewed results

[Talez]

Let's not forget:

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

4 hours?!? You've got to be kidding me. I've never encountered a motherboard thats required more than an fifteen minutes of my time to install chipset, sound, network and onboard graphics drivers.

Re:Skewed results

[Talez]

you literally have to sit there so you can click all those damned "ok", "I agree", and "next" buttons.

Back the fuck up. Thats funny. I just installed my machine from scratch, ran the autoupdater and I had to click "I Agree" once. The rest downloaded in under half and hour and installed itself without incidence.

Just to be sure, I checked for updates on my g/f's machine and no "I agree" there either.

Re:Skewed results

[Raffaello]

Well this is merely hearsay "I have a friend..." Moreover, we know that this hearsay is false, because It could never, take 2 to 3 days to load Mac OS X (any version) and all of one's applications. That figure is simply preposterous.

Loading Mac OS X, and doing a fairly complicated customization (such as installing a couple of open source lisps, slime, and configuring emacs to work with them), in the worst possible case, takes 4 or 5 hours. Loading applications is much quicker - you just drag and drop them from your backups. Very few require that they be installed with the installer again. I just did a clean install on a G4 of Panther, and restored over 50 apps from backups, just to eliminate any unnecessary frameworks etc. that may have accumulated on the machine, before installing Panther. The whole process took about 4 hours, and most of that was writing the backups to an external firewire drive, and copying them back to the G4's internal IDE drive (I have a large CD collection, and a correspondingly large iTunes library).

The hearsay about "2 to 3 days" is simply false - period.

Re:Skewed results

[Alan]

Gotta agree with the other poster. I have two macs (though I'm not a "mac person"), an old iMac (rev a) that I got to play with os/x and a powerbook from work (they are an educational company, so everyone is on a mac). I had hard drive problems on the 1Ghz powerbook and I had to install a couple of times before I had it sent back, and the install takes maybe 30 minutes, an hour tops. Even if you "customize" the install there's not a hell of a lot to customize. Even with the 200mhz iMac it's still under 2 hours for the install.

After install there's customization and installing other programs. Sorry, but it doesnt' take that long. You could drag it out that long I'm sure, letting photoshop install and forgetting about it, and coming back to check later, that sort of thing. I'd like to ask this "friend" what took so long.

Re:Skewed results

[511pf]

Why don't YOU try reading the F-ing article? The guy explicitly said he has 4 machines. Repair #4 took 5 minutes times four. Repair #3 took 15 minutes times four. Neither of those numbers is out of line. None of the others is out of line. When Outlook crashes, you could easily spend 15 minutes to a half hour per crash trying to fix/update/patch/reinstall so it works right. When your ISP goes down, it could be a broken DHCP problem on your internal network, bad NIC, bad NIC driver, bad network cable, broken router, broken firewall config or broken personal firewall. It takes time to figure out whether the problem is you or them. Sensationalism? You obviously know absolutely nothing about consulting or about how long it takes to fix a machine.

Re:Skewed results

[WNight]

You're full of it. Anyone who claims WinXP has never crashed is a Microsoft shill or never uses it.

The first day I installed WinXP on my desktop machine Explorer (the file browser, not the web browser component) died when I double-clicked on a zip file without WinZIP installed. This was before anything could have broken it, I hadn't even connected to the LAN yet, this was simply trying to unpack video drivers off a CD I made.

Sure, the whole OS didn't die, but explorer barfed less than ten minutes after boot. This is a machine that routinely has 45-day uptimes in Linux and that ran Win2k fairly well. (As well, I think, as Win2k can run.)

Then there's the issue with it locking up during installing Age of Mythology. No weird drivers, no weird software, just an Athlon XP, nVidia chipset, graphics, and audio with nVidia drivers, and AoM. Locks, and alt-ctrl-del doesn't work, when it starts reading disk 2. It didn't do that in Win2k. But, yeah, I could still ping it, so I suppose it's kinda still running.

Yeah, that's your super-stable OS.

Re:Skewed results

[WNight]

If you don't let auto-update run it requires a lot more clicking, even past just starting the process.

I did an update on a WinXP machine a few days ago and it required three seperate 'I Agree' clicks during the SAME UPGRADE, though there were like twelve patches involved. Then it spun for a minute and asked me some routine question, and finally proceeded to patch. But then I had to reboot before any other patches.

I didn't consume twenty minutes of clicking and reading, but those were twenty minutes (or so) when I had to be available to click buttons. Not a fire-and-forget process.

Yeah, it easier if you let auto-update do it all. But that doesn't strike me as a very good idea. I'll trust my firewall and lack of net-visible services to keep me safe until I get around to patching, more than I'll trust an MS-run auto updater. Hell, I wouldn't even auto-patch my Linux box like that.

Re:Skewed results

[Sigma 7]

Throw in the time to save/close out, patch, reboot (and my reboot can take 6-10 minutes with the systray deathmarch I have going on :), and to get back to where you were

Even so, the times listed are not exactly accurrate for installing Windows XP security updates, unless you are a dedicated system administrator installing patches over a wide area of work.

The amount of time required that should be recorded should only include the amount of time spent reading the patch descriptions, the time spent reading the EULA, time spent clicking on a few widgets for the patch, and the reboot (if necessairy.)

The amount of time spent waiting for the patch to finish downloading is considered "slack" time, which can easily be filled by performing another task (e.g. Reading Slashdot.org, or playing Minesweeper.) Since I'm on a 56K, I kind of have to do this anyway.

Sorry

[tedgyz]

I would reply, but I'm too busy chasing down a driver problem on my wife's Win2K box.

Let Me Tell You About Last Night

[thelizman]

Three freaking hours. You see, I wanted to connect to MSN with GAIM. To do this, I have to enable SSL. So I set the flag, and run configure, and it silently fails. After a few minutes I realize it can't find the mozilla-nss packages, so I download and install them. Then I run configure again, and it fails because it can't find some declaration for certain functions. I pour over the GAIM source code, and no luck.

Now the precompiled RPM has SSL enabled, so I d/l it to install. But, it also has GTKSpelling installed, but I can't use it unless I install gtkspell which requires opencdk and aspell and lib-crypt and about three other packages. I download and install all this crap, and I run configure for gaim, and I get the same damn error.

Now, GAIM doesn't have to use NSS for encryption, it can use (somethign else). I download something else, and the 10 packages it depends on, and I still get the same exact compile error. Long story short - I don't have MSN enabled yet, and I don't htink I will.

I won't even tell you the pain in the ass that is realplayer, which I should have known would be a mistake to install.

Re:Let Me Tell You About Last Night

[caseih]

That's why things like binary package managers exist. Even on windows, things like this can be hairy. Granted it's probably easier to find a windows binary. But on Debian, Redhat, Fedora Core, Yellow Dog, or Gentoo, apt-get install gaim or yum install gaim or emerge gaim work well, and work as fast as your connect is (except gentoo, but even that's pretty quick).

Your build problems can't be used to as an idicator of general wasted computer time, as much as I feel you pain. However, it still wasted your time. But that could have been mitigated had you either used the binaries, or perhaps checked with other users of the same distro to discover potential problems.

Having said all that, all OS's waste time to a certain degree, some more than others. Careful planning and use can reduce that, even on Windows, to the bare amount of time needed. I've found as others have found that OS X is indeed cool and stable and just works. However, for me it is no better than windows in that there's practically nothing to tweak. Many of us thrive on that kind of thing (not fixing, but breaking and then fixing). For us, Linux and BSDs will always be infinitely more fun, but not necessarily more time conservative, but the time wasting is from completely different sources. And there are masochists out there who love to reinstall windows every month.

Please Help....

[gmby]

I have a few that need help....
A laptop with a wireless problem.
A multimedia box with a video card problem....
A serveer that's at the end of it's redhat life....
A firewall that needs some review/attack/work/love...
A game machine that needs a new driver.....
Some guest box'es that need everything!
uuummm i give up.. too much to fix...
let them all die...except the game box... he he....

Oh! Did I mention the TV that keeps crapping out and the washer that needs a new clutch and the car that needs a new clutch and the drier that has a bad thermistat and the washer that's agitating instead of spinning and the 32inch TV with 18volts power rail instead of 12volts and the house wireing that has a bad ground (but not the servers on their own circuit) and the truck that has a bad carb... oh yeah did I mention the pile of old computers waiting for a job to keep them busy just like me....

Oh yeah... I have a job and a house but I'm still hungry... Please help....

Oh yeah and I need a girl friend...

Oh Foo...
I just gave away the real problem...

SWM.. Looking for a SWF..GEEK!

All aplications accepted and reviewd...

talk gordon@gordon.mossweb.com

gramer aces need not apply...

um.. wait.. all acceped!!!!!!....

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)

This dude doesn't know software from soft drinks

[p3d0]

Personally, I feel that a good bit of this waste and vulnerability is caused by Microsoft. Even more frustrating, as mentioned in repair #20, is that Microsoft has the resources to fix the problems. Microsoft is sitting on $50 billion in corporate cash reserves and could hire 100,000 American programmers with that money. 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. Microsoft could make just one change - it could eliminate the need to reboot after installing many different types of software - and save the nation millions of man-hours per year. It could create one-click installation procedures and save millions more man-hours. It could build a system that automatically finds and loads drivers over the Internet and save millions more. And so on.

I think this fellow should try writing some software before he makes pronouncements like this.

I happen to agree that Microsoft (and practically everyone else) writes flaky software, and the situation would be improved if programmers were legally liable for their software (just like practically every other industry). However, the claims this guy is making are absurd. For instance, anyone who has read Fred Brooks knows you can't solve software problems by throwing 100,000 more programmers at the problem.

I used to be in the same endless cycle...

[clifgriffin]

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

You mean back-- right

[way2trivial]

I'm sorry, this is just incorrect.
Consumer support is largely out of india

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worldbiz/ar chives/2003/12/09/2003078952

Re:Well duh, looking at what he's using.

[Ohreally_factor]

I don't know what damaged your credibility more, saying you could write an OS X virus in a few hours or that you have sex. Oh, you didn't mean with anyone other than yourself! OK, just one thing damaged your credibility, then. =) Seriously, you don't think it would be a real coup to write and release an OS X virus? You don't think others have tried and failed? What makes you think you could succeed? Unless you can substantiate your assertion, I'll consider it a hollow boast.

Anyway, the obscurity argument has been discredited. Apache is by far the most common webserver, yet the MS product is 3 times more prone to problems.

Less hardware choice is a trade off, but one I accept. It's not all roses on the mac side, but on the whole, I happily trade some choice for fewer hardware headaches.

It could be worse.

[dsb3]

I once spent a month tracking how much time I was spending at /.

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

Re:It could be worse.

[twitter]

If that's what you want to do, great. The problem is that you can't do much of that if your computer is broken. Surfing, I'm sure, is what the other people in his house want to do while he spends 11 hours a month making sure they can. Sad, sad.

Re:This is why I don't fix for family (A solution)

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend at work has this exact same problem and his solution was to tell family that they have a choice (1) he would update Windows one last time and that was it. (2) Switch to Linux and he would maintain the systems. Since most of the family were surf/write/e-mail people and not gamers they picked (2). Also all of them had high speed access. Now he maintains all the machines remotely and keeps them updated by accessing them about once a week. He said there was much bitching and moaning at first but now that everyone is used to it things are pretty calm and simple for both them and him.

No, surely not WinXP!

[Zobeid]

I was having a little, um, debate with some of my PC-using friends a while back, trying to explain to them why I like Mac OS X so much. There's several reasons, but the big number one reason is that I spend so much less time tinkering and fixing things on my computer. However, the last Windows PC that I ever used had Win98. . .

My PC-using friends explained to me that WinNT doesn't do any of that bad stuff. It doesn't have driver problems anymore (no more searching for video drivers on websites where all the text is in Korean), doesn't have configuration problems, doesn't make you reboot after installing software, doesn't ever need to be re-installed, and even if you did need to re-install the OS it wouldn't take long (unlike the tortuous process I remember from Win95/98). WinNT, they assured me, is just as solid and trouble-free as Mac OS X on all these points.

For some reason, though, I have a little trouble believing all of those things.

Follow the advertisements way and your home free!

[Deleriux]

Setting up an email client from uncle bob- 10 minutes

Cleaning computer of viruses and various other crap- 3 hours

Reinstalling o/s when it slows to a crawl and resetting it back up the way they like it- 4 hours

Installing linux- Priceless!

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:This is why....(the selfish geek again!)

[cuteface]

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 installing crap without knowing what it'll do to their PCs and just exercise some plain common sense.

Lastly, our lives on earth are short. No matter how much $$ you work to get, it's not going to double/triple/x times your lifespan. But good karma follows you into your future lives.

Computer prices going down

[Donpedroni]

With computers becoming cheaper and cheaper, it is beggining to become far easier to replace a computer than to fix a broken or older one.

Re:I spent that much time trying new distros yeste

[netsharc]

Try Gentoo, no your computer won't have to compile everything from scratch, but I find it's the best distro I've used. You can find almost everything in its Portage system, and no broken dependencies, something apt has tortured me about. "Gee, let's upgrade X." "To upgrade X you have to install glibc 2.3 and gcc 3.3"... fun, how do I know the system will still work afterwards?

Knoppix comes a close second, With X and OO.org running straight out of the box. It's Debian based, and it has less software, IMO. MPlayer isn't an official package, whereas in Gentoo, it's as easy as typing "emerge mplayer". :)

wtf...

[Transcendent]

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.

Re:wtf...

[Reziac]

I once spent 4 hours just looking for the video driver a client needed -- finally found a near-miss (but it works, if not quite correctly) on some abandoned FTP server in darkest Russia.

If it weren't the middle of the night, the middle of nowhere, perforce a wait til morning and a four hour round trip to get a different video card, I'd have bagged it and replaced the card instead.

Re:wtf...

[xdroop]

I'd love to live in your world.

Installing drivers? That's the easy part.

Figuring out that's the problem? And then _finding_ the damn drivers? Not so easy -- especially when you have a budget $50 piece of crap that you bought because it was theoretically good in the price-to-performance ratio...

Right now I have a problem with a brand new opteron motherboard that won't see it's Gb interface. I assume that the fix, one I find it and download it, will be precisely 5 minutes of work -- but I've pissed away 8 hours looking for the answer and trying non-fixes. This is why for my own machines I buy Dells. Say what you want about them, but you can usually find the up to date drivers relatively quickly and you are on your way again.

It's The Upgrade Treadmill

[nightwing2000]

Most problems seem to be a cascade of interdependent upgrades. The fix is only available when you go to the latest OS. Yje latest OS is incompatible with this, this , and this. Oh, these are upgradable, but there are issues with the supplied drivers. Go to the internet.

The other interesting issue is with intermittent electronic problems, which being erratic, are hard to diagnose. I don't know how many computers we had in the 286 days where the solution lay in a new power supply (and a surge suppressor from then on!). Sometimes diagnosing these is not worth the hassle - it is easier in a business environment to replace!

But do we need all these upgrades? No! The established Windowing environment of choice works fine. The major changes seem (are) deliberately engineered for incompatibility to force updates on us; but the average Joe, who can't fix these himself is frustrated. Cosmetically, he doesn't see a difference between W98 and XP, and doesn't see why the latest stuff shouldn't run in either environment.

Re:This is why....(the selfish geek again!)

[October_30th]

Because relationships matters to me.

I don't think you've read some of the posts in this thread properly. What kind of a relationship is that when the family's "computer guy" feels exhausted by the constant stream of help requests? Already a bad one.

The fact that you still feel good about helping your acquaintances just shows that you're not overworked. It's not selfish to start charging for help/refusing to work fo free when your uncles, cousins and that-guy-you-met-at-a-local-bar calls you and wants you to come over and fix his/her computer.

In short, it's not about money but finding some way to stop people abusing your generosity.

I guess I do not understand this issue...

[dyfet]

The only family support I did last month was to help my 8 year old install the newest Mandrake 9.2 for the first time; 1 hour. What are all these complex hard to install desktop systems, virus's, popups, rogue mail clients executiing code, and other things I keep hearing about, all requiring this intensive support? I never seem to see them at home or at the office, where we also use free (libre) software. It sounds like I am missing a lot of fun.

OS X.

[saintlupus]

From the article:

I have a friend at this moment who is reloading OS-X and all her applications on her Mac for the third time this year (a 2-day to 3-day process).

I wonder what she's doing that's making that necessary. I think I've reloaded OS X on my Mac once -- I installed 10.0 when it came out, upgraded every time there was a new version, and I just wiped the machine to install Panther because I wanted to change some of the partition sizes.

I don't know if I'm an unusual user or what, but OS X hasn't caused any sort of weird issues necessitating a reboot for me.

--saint

Another great example of why open s. is not better

[cinnamon colbert]

The problems listed by blaine fall into four categorys: (1) MS download/software problems; (2)non OS software problems; (3)hardware and (4)helping really clueless friends. I think it self evident that open software does not have a big impact on (3), and that open software probably makes (4) worse (can u imagine helping yr clueless friend with getting updates for linux software ?) As for (2) I would suspect, after listenign to all the gripes on/. about arcane things like "make" that problems with linux software are just as bad as non; the diff is that linux people are more computer oriented, so they can solve a problem a lot faster then YCF. In regard to (1) again, just listening to all the gripes on /., I suspect linux is no easier to use then windows.

Re: unless they agree to a few simple things

[hodet]

- 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.

Re:It's a pain... Sometimes it costs more than tim

[SyFryer]

Minus all the 'nice' bits he probably will never need (or you don't want to have to explain how they work).

Not Enough Information

[TLouden]

Can't tell how much time you waste until we know what OS you have and what software is running on it. WindowsXP with Outlook, IE, OfficeXP, MediaPlayer, etc. and you might as well have someone else working full time to fix your computer.

Don't waste time, hire a pro

[Tek Tekson]

I am a professional sysadmin and my opinion is that anyone who spends that much time tinkering with their home LAN can easily make a case for having a professional set it up properly. A well designed system these days should require much less maintenance than described. Being that I sell tech support in bulk, I know what it costs to run a production machine after the hardware and software investment. Our poster's description is way out of whack with my experience in managed environments.

Many of you don't know who Marshall Brain is.

[El Camino SS]

For the Marshall Brain uninitiated, he is a loser that does a syndicated segment on how things work for television stations, kind of a one minute "whaddyaknow" segment on how internal combustion works, or how hot air balloons fly.

It is good for the kids. Ultimately, I take one look at him and I think to myself, "this man is a nimrod."

Bill Nye's retarded cousin would be the description of this dude.

I have no doubt whatsoever that he was inflating and using bogus time marks. After all, that would be his style.

I disagree

[NineNine]

I disagree. I think that things are sooo much better today than they used to be. I've got 4 computers at work, and quite literally, I don't do anything but work with them. I don't do updates (automstic updates). I don't have things just randlomly break. I don't have to randomly install drivers for no reason. I don't know what people are spending time doing, but I have to "maintain" my computers about as much as I "maintain" that hammer sitting in my closet. I set them up, install all the shit I need to install, and just use them. Honestly, would somebody explain to me how they break their computers so damn often?

Recent experiences...

[argent]

Windows 2000, son: 3-4 hours extracting spyware and lecturing offspring on NOT using Internet Explorer, several hours over three evenings trying and failing to make it print to a Samba-shared printer everything else in the house works with (even tried using daughter's computer as a proxy in case it's Samba that's the problem... no dice).

Windows 2000, daughter: two days rebuilding after Windows 2000 decided to reject a previously working nVidia card. Not as bad as it sounds, installing Windows is so tedious I was able to do a lot of other stuff waiting for it to decide what it wanted to reboot over next (this is what is known as sarcasm). Next day, Norton Antivirus wouldn't run. Finally "upgraded" to slower and older Macintosh.

Mac OS X, daughter: 3 hours explaining how to copy her music and address books and stuff over from Windows 2000 system. 2 hours figuring out the reason the left speaker didn't work was because she'd slammed "balance" over to the right.

Windows 2000, spouse: Half an hour trying and failing to solve problem with Everquest, finally call in l33t gamer co-worker to fix.

FreeBSD, spouse: half an hour converting spam filters to new format.

Windows 2000, self: Two hours looking for decent SSH implementation, finally settling on Putty as least worst of a bad lot.

Mac OS X, self: several hours reconstructing desktop after a badly written "Classic" application clobbered something important during its install. Two hours trying to get USB-IDE adapter working... system locks up after transferring a few megabytes. Try with HFS+, FAT32, and UFS, fail.

FreeBSD, self: two hours fiddling with USB-IDE adapter before realising 4.7 doesn't support FAT32 partitions that large. Eventually use Samba to copy files to Windows 2000 box mentioned above.

Moral: all operating systems^W^W software sucks.

Re:Recent experiences...

[b1t r0t]

2 hours figuring out the reason the left speaker didn't work was because she'd slammed "balance" over to the right.

More than once, I've had this happen on my previous Powerbook. I think there's a bug somewhere that can goof up the balance setting every now and than.

bullshit.

[twitter]

But once you've installed Windows 2000 and set up things correctly, it normally stays running.

This is only true if you never turn the box on. If you do, it starts to break. If you make the mistake of hooking it up to a network, you will eXPerience all the problems our blogger did: Windoze updates that break things, viruses and worms that break even more if you don't get the updates and all manner of wierd and impossible to fix errors.

Actually Windows 95/98 is pretty much easily securable (can easily turn off all services)

OK, now you are a troll or an ignoramous. I've worked in small shops and fortune 500 companies and everywhere the story was the same. If it's hard for all of those people, the forest of tabs and checkboxes is hard for anyone. They all have been hit with network disabling and performance robbing shit because windoze is easy to break. Contrast this with "services" being reasonable and turned off by default and reading a few man pages and modifying a text file to turn them on for yourslelf.

Games, yeah that's true. So the average house might want to have a windoze box around. It's going to eat your time, but you will get a few hours of gaming in before you have to rebuild it. On second thought, you might just get a play station and hook it up to your network.

Re:bullshit.

[TheLink]

Perhaps _your_ Windoze machines start breaking the moment you turn them on. Mine don't. And you call me ignoramous or troll.

Many janitors can claim extensive experience in small shops and fortune 500 companies too. Many even do windows.

Fix the default stupid filesystem permissions and do everyday stuff as normal user (restricted) and it's a lot harder for you to screw things up. gpedit.msc is your friend, use it wisely.

If you are managing lots of hosts, use Active Directory or even just windows domains and you can set policies on W2K/WXP machines so that users just do what they have to and don't give you the famous "I didn't do a thing", coz the average joe user just won't be able to with those policies in place. How'd you do that with KDE and GNOME? I doubt you can yet.

Linux isn't really that much better than Windows in terms on availability and robustness. Now if you're talking about VMS or stuff like that, then that's something. That sort of stuff stays running. Pity nowadays the lifetimes of most companies are likely to be lower than the average uptimes of such systems.

"Linux is only free if your time is worthless"

[vadim_t]

This pretty much proves that this sentence used by some people is false.

I spend a lot of time with computers, and it's consistently only Windows what makes me waste my time. Although these days I don't use Windows very often, here's a comparison:

Windows 2000:

It took me *one week* to install it. I finished the install, and decided to install SP3 that I already had downloaded, thinking to upgrade to SP4 later to save download time. Big error. It wouldn't boot after that, locking up in the logo screen. Later it turned out it was because I didn't have the "power management" driver for my motherboard. The driver wouldn't install in safe mode because it couldn't detect the hardware (well, THANK YOU, whoever had that nice userfriendly idea).

After a few days it turned out that it randomly managed to boot in normal mode, which allowed me to install the driver.

Total time lost must have been about 10 hours. Also, some things couldn't be done since I couldn't get it to work for that week.

Windows 98:

This one probably made me lose also a significant amount of time, spread over a month. I was having strange random errors with it. Things like "Out of memory" when I obviously had more than enough RAM.

Later, it finally turned out that it didn't work with more than 512MB RAM, and I had 1GB. Could have warned me about that at least.

Bye bye Win98. More time lost to make sure everything that was in the Win98 drive is backed up and moved to Win2K.

Linux (Gentoo):

reconfiguring X for my LCD monitor. Total maybe about 15 minutes or so.

In case somebody is wondering about the time lost to install it, it must have been about 30 minutes at most, because I installed it while using Debian.

After these problems and many others, I've pretty much completely switched to Linux, with Windows ocasionally running in vmware. I have a separate VM for every task, which seems the only way of making it reliable...

Re:"Linux is only free if your time is worthless"

[g_bit]

Windows 2000: It took me *one week* to install it.

No really, you ARE an idiot.

Re:"Linux is only free if your time is worthless"

[vadim_t]

So tell me, oh genius, how was I supposed to know what was wrong when it started locking up on boot for no good reason?

In the past, all the problems I had with Linux were very easy to solve, because it gave me plenty information with kernel boot messages. There was no way of convincing Win2K to do the same. /bootlog and /noguiboot didn't help at all because that gave me only logging of the drivers being loaded before the screen where it locked up.

Re:"Linux is only free if your time is worthless"

[g_bit]

What's the brand/model/chipset of the motherboard?

Re:"Linux is only free if your time is worthless"

[vadim_t]

Here you have the whole config:

Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466N-4M), 2 x Athlon MP 2000+, 1 GB ECC DDR RAM.
Terratec DMX XFire 1024 sound card
GeForce 2 MX 400 video card
CD drive(TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-6702B), burner (_NEC CD-RW NR-7900A)
Hard disks: Maxtor 6Y120L0, Maxtor 6Y080L0

AFAIK, there is nothing wrong with any of those companies. Linux works fine, Linux ECC support doesn't report any errors.

Re:"Linux is only free if your time is worthless"

[g_bit]

That's a pretty nice setup.

You're right there's nothing wrong with any of those companies. I'm sorry for calling you an idiot, but I'd probably be calling myself an idiot if I spent a solid week trying to install Windows 2000.

Tyan has pretty good support. As a nerd, I have no qualms about calling support, because I don't profess to know everything.

My main beef with this thread is that everyone does this: Oh, I had a big problem <insert problem> with Windows one time, so I use Linux because it's teh 5h1t

Have they ever had problems with Linux? Yes, but they don't pay for it (except for in wasted time), so I guess they don't care. Are they going to mention this and risk losing precious karma points? No.

Re:"Linux is only free if your time is worthless"

[vadim_t]

Nah, no problem really.

The thing I'm complaining about here is not that it's hard to install, but that it's a pain in the arse to troubleshoot. I hate doing that with Windows. It seems to be built with a "we know better than you" mentality, and as result I get drivers refusing to install because they're unable to detect my hardware in safe mode.

Linux is definitely far from perfect (I will admit I didn't like it at all the first time I tried it). However, I started really liking it after using it for a few months, while after years of experience with Windows I was hating it more and more every day. It's not that bad of an OS when it works properly though.

What gets me about Windows is the little details. How hard would it be to have detailed boot logging? Or make Win98 either work with more than 512MB RAM, or at least warn about it on boot?

Again, Linux is problematic. Say, writing a script that calls ppp was far from intuitive. But on the other hand, when it works it continues working. It is not normal that after about 10 years of experience using Windows I still have to think well about installing any application!

Here's an example. Say, I find that my IM client doesn't work, or has an annoying bug. On Linux, it's a problem of choosing one of the other 5 clients and doing "emerge whatever". I know that portage takes care of ensuring that programs don't overwrite each other's files, and that the system is managed by a group of people that while might not be saints are quite unlikely to package software that will destroy my system.

On Windows, I get an .exe installer and have to think a lot: "Will it install incompatible version of $DLL"?, "Will it come with spyware?", "Will it mess up the registry?", "Can it be uninstalled cleanly at all?" (There are Windows programs where the uninstall option does nothing!), "What am I agreeing to?" (famous Media Player EULA issue).

Ultimately, this resulted in using vmware. I keep several VMs for different purposes: developing, testing, general crap I want to try... and I have had to rollback some of those.

More and more and more ..., you get the idea?

[OldHawk777]

Simply stated ... if you ain't one of us ... you're screwed.

(00) Troubleshooting experience does help.
(01) Field troubleshooting (real-job & real-world) experience is best.
(02) Help-desk folks with good intentions are script-readers not problem solvers.
(03) Troubleshooting experienced folks are seldom help-desk developers.
(04) Most field technicians are pluck-&-chuck manual readers.
(05) Troubleshooting experienced folks don't mentor pluck-&-chuck technicians.
(06) Pluck-&-chuck technicians are a managed "totally replaceable" field asset.
(07) Management knows that pluck-&-chuck and troubleshooting are equivalent skills.
(08) Management frequently decides who they like best ... not who performs best.
(09) Revolving Systemic Virtual [not real] Problem (RSVP) for US & EU management.
(0A) "Green-card" professionals cost less, and are therefor better for profit.
(0B) "Contract-out" professionals cost less, and are therefor better for profit.
(0C) "Foreign-culture" professionals are highly exploitable and extremely profitable.
(0D) US & EU Capitalist Republic favors profit over family, friend, and country.
(0E) US & EU Capitalist Republic values profit morals, not performance ethics.
(0F) US & EU expect your children (or grand kids) to have an either-or future:
______ Either they will be well educated to manage a profitable sweat-shop.
_________ Or they will be poorly educated to work in a profitable sweat-shop.

____ Either we can disenfranchise the plutocrats of the Capitalist Republic and Religious Paradise supremacists, or have posterity (our children) suffer the fate of what we fondly call the "Third World" .... However, being as the middle-class will have been decimated to a very few "politically correct" managers ..., politicians will be able to praise themselves, business, and religious leaders for ending "Third World" poverty and problems. The beginning of a kinder and gentler "Second World" [AKA: New World Order] will provide US & EU with all we need to be good suitable workers (assets). I agree, there will be more of US & EU leading the "New World Order", but far less of US & EU citizens will continue to lead a privileged "Quality of Life" when compared to present day poorly-educated + tyrannically-lead = subsistence cultures.

____ The poor are always disenfranchised with limited education, and frequently have tyrants that threaten more than lead. EU &US Capitalist Republic and Religious Paradise supremacists as tyrants use fear and misdirection. As in fear for the welfare of your family ... if you lose your job, and/or good actions without gods' approval will damn you two hell, and/or ... you either understand at this point my point or your children will get the point later.

OldHawk777

Reality is a self-induced hallucination. I know, either I am NostraDumAss reborn, or suffering my own version of psychosis ... worrying about the future for children and grand kids that are not mine ....

This guy wasted my time

[Cyphertube]

By looking through and thinking perhaps this guy knows something about computers, I realise he doesn't.

First off, it's clear he's using sub-standard crap and installing lots of other stuff. (Note the Cheerios program, the PC-cillin errors, and the chasing of drivers.) I learned a long time ago which brands work with Microsoft and which don't. Hence I have an HP printer, and the only machine's running XP are those that came with XP. (The PII-400 is running OpenBSD right now.)

Second, he's relying on using IE and other Microsoft products. I wouldn't use Mozilla 1.5, but I do use Mozilla Firebird and Mozilla Thunderbird. Both are very useful programs and have worked great for me, with far fewer crashes and less screwing up my system.

Third, I see no sign of maintenance on the machines except when he's told to. So does he defrag his XP drive? He should if he's the kind of fool who's installed CNET's download manager, since that's a clear sign that he and his family download a lot of crap onto their machine. Plus with recording shows on a machine clearly used for other purposes as well, he's going to end up with fragmentation.

Lastly, he bitches about the time spent. He's on a cable connection. How does it take TEN MINUTES to upgrade MSN messenger? And why can't he do the downloading of these upgrades while doing something else? He counts his time like a lawyer. I swear if I hired this guy to do work for me, I could easily get billed over 168 hours in a 7 day week.

I'm sorry, no sympathy for this kind of person ranting. The clueless who think they have a clue are awful. I'd rather use my time helping people who are interested in learning than assuming they know everything about their machines and blame it on Microsoft for their incompetence. Yeah, their are a lot of bugs in the stuff from Redmond, but bad computer practices make it far, far worse.

Wasting time

[oldctosian]

You aren't kidding. When I have worked for companies that do development on PC's at least an hour a day was wasted just fixing your own PC or helping someone with theirs. I have found that for development nothing beats an X terminal hooked to a stable machine

Re:Another great example of why open s. is not bet

[argent]

can u imagine helping yr clueless friend with getting updates for linux software

Even correcting for dudspk... no. Except for security problems, I don't normally update or recommend updating until and unless something breaks, or you actually need new functionality. For security problems, turn off or remove the broken software, then decide whether you really need it. The problem with Windows is that Microsoft's upgrades are not documented... you have to be a computer guru to figure out if you really need them or how to disable the exploitable software.

Re:Well duh, looking at what he's using.

[aedan]

>> How did this man end up with "Brain" for a name?

Perhaps he is called Brian but is dyslexic.

aedan

I must be lucky

[Bruce J L]

Win 2k pro. I might have 10 minutes a month working on software updates. My computer is not on 24/7 since all it would be doing is wasting electricty. It is however on about 7-10 hours a day and I know enough not to open attachments from strangers, especially the ones that end with .exe . Last BSOD, 2 months ago cant remember what it was for. IE crashes once in a while but thats nothing restarting IE and typing the URL in wont fix, hardly worth mentioning. So, I'm either lucky or things arent that bad when you set a system up right and don't install alot of software from fly by night companies. (Gator etc) And yes, mom's and kids can FUBAR a system especially if you give them admin rights. But i guess that can be true of anything

Buy an Apple

[skrysakj]

I've found, in general, that they're more reliable. Panther is a big improvement (well worth the price IMHO) and helps with such issues as well.

2 weeks of XP uptime possible

[ThePeeWeeMan]

I just thought I should let you know that my record for uptime on a laptop (including hibernation etc.) is 3 weeks and 3 days or so.

And explorer didn't seem to have any memory leaks (the amount of memory used was fairly constant).

Re: 2 weeks of XP uptime possible

[Trejkaz]

I once had about two months uptime on XP. I had to hold off doing updates but it was around the time right before Service Pack 1. I heard it was "coming out soon", and it happened to take about two months.

Right now we would be experiencing a similar thing with our box waiting for SP2, but the machine had to be taken offline for a LAN.

Re: 2 weeks of XP uptime possible

[mentin]

I stopped worrying about uptime of my wife's laptop at all. I configured the build in firewall, made her regular user (not admin), configured windows update to automatically download and install any security fixes, and pretty much forgot about this box.

It is running in this almost zero-admin mode probably couple of years. She never reboots it, only hibernate. Box only reboots if security update (automatically installed) requires it.

The only wasted time on this box is manual installation of Office updates (two so far) - if that was automatic as well, the box would have zero wasted time in two years.

Surprised...

[Film11]

Thats a surprsingly short time. For me it is much longer (probably), since I have a crappy computer. It depeneds on what equipment you have, and your skill using computers, for example, if you had a computer with all the top of the range equipment it would have hardly any problems. Apart from the pop-ups, but they take mere seconds to destroy. And about forced to update MSN Messenger, thats just lies, you aren't forced to, and you can still chat to people who have upgraded. Rather an unfair experiment IMHO.

BS alert

[SoupaFly]

Now he uses some kind of update alerter to tell him whenever the 5 bazillion random apps he has installed on the machines has an update so that partly explains it,

I don't know what the frequency of patches/updates for 10.3 is, but for 10.2 it seems to be somewhere around one per week (if that often). There is pretty much a new MS update every day. I gave up on using Windows Update (at 56k it takes for-freakin-ever) and just look for anything serious (RPC exploit).

If your dad seriously gets 3-4 updates per day, then it's because of whatever special update tracking software he uses. Apple update is much more reasonable.

{This is based on 9 months experience w/ my iBook}

Re:BS alert

[Tim C]

There is pretty much a new MS update every day.

Well, I run XP Pro at home and at work, and there most certianly are not updates "pretty much... every day". It's not even every week, and that's including the non-critical ones.

Re:BS alert

[SoupaFly]

I run XP Pro at home too. In late '02 - early '03 (before I turned off auto-update), the updates came in frequently enough to be very inconvenient over a 56k connection. It was definitely at least once a week, and often more frequent than that. Maybe things have slowed down since then.

There's a market there.

[Moderation abuser]

Make money at it. The market's been there for years, the Sun Java thin client system was an oxymoronic attempt to capture it... Java... Thin... There's a laugh.

It isn't going to be massively profitable until *wireless* thin clients are feasible and internet connectivity is better. Who wants cat 5 trailed about their house?

Say a small silent server acting as a wireless router +web proxy/mail/fileserver makes a VPN over DSL back to home base for systems management. Customers lease a server and a number of wireless thin clients; basically just a screen, keyboard and mouse which boot off the server. The apps run off the local server but are managed centrally, including services like file backups.

Customer time required to administer the system? Almost zero. Cost? Say 20/month basic and +10/month for each additonal client beyond the 1st till the capital cost of the system is recouped and then 10/month/client for standard support. Then of course, the server is yours, not the customers so there's potential for making use of idle time.

Utility computing.

Linux...heh

[jazman]

I like the way he touts Linux as a solution to this. Bollocks, say I.

I recently got a new PC on which I planned to install Suse Linux Pro 9.0. It came through the corporate system, so was already loaded with Win2k. The screen was fine. Installed Suse - wouldn't go over 640x480 (it was a 1280x1024 LCD, so this pissed me off somewhat).

FIVE HOURS LATER I finally gave up fiddling and called Suse. TWO WEEKS LATER they bothered to get back to me.

It's a good job I didn't have to wait the fortnight. Eventually I discovered a BIOS setting - the video RAM was set to 1MB which could be changed to 8MB then it worked fine. But Windows didn't need that BIOS setting changing - it JUST WORKED.

Every time I try to do something trivial with a Linux box it's hours and hours of HOWTOs and so on, then dependencies, then making it work with the rest of the system. Figuring out Copy and Paste between applications (using KDE) took ages and I still don't think I have figured it out completely. (Oh, and I'm not a n00b by any means. Progressed from electronics to computers in 1981 with a ZX81, started assembly programming a few months later, upgraded to a C64, went on to get a degree in computer science and I've been working with computers, mostly programming, ever since. So I figure I should be able to work out how to use Linux. And if I can't figure it out, what chance has a total newb got???)

In many ways Windows Just Works. Ok, it crashes a lot, and one of the things I like about Linux is that if it dies it's because I did something stupid not because of some random glitch that can't be explained. You don't have to reboot the whole system just because you've installed a calculator or something trivial. When it is possible to install something on Linux and have it Just Work, then and only then will it make any kind of impact on Windows.

Re:Linux...heh

[BrK]

LIke anything else, you have to spend some time actually LEARNING to use linux. It doesn't all just come naturally, simply because you some experience with Windows, or C-64's.

I remember when I got my very first mouse, attached to my PCjr somewhere abouts 1984 or so. I didn't know how to copy a single file from one disk to another (the mouse.com driver or whatever it was). All I knew how to do was copy entire diskettes. I spent HOURS dorking around, trying to figure out how to copy a single file. In the process I learned quite a bit, and I had been "programming" and using computers for almost 2 years at that point.

It was the same thing with linux, when I first installed linux in 1995 or so, I could barely navigate around the shell and didn't know about make, grep, ls, etc, despite that fact that I could do just about anything in windows and had hex-edited my COMMAND.COM to be more "interesting".

Linux is different, and more powerful than Windows, and the learning curve can be steep.

Re:Linux...heh

[operagost]

You could have read the manual! PCs came with manuals back then!

Reply: Don't misunderstand - I like capitalism

[OldHawk777]

____ I like capitalism as an economic theory and model. Capitalism when strictly and correctly functioning as the economic model rewards performance and seeks to enhance performance, thereby generating profits and rewards. Today most political, business, and religion, leaders consider capitalism as a profits/rewards model which requires little performance, no responsibility, delusional belief of virtual power over citizens, elevated privileges/value of personal life, .... Their shit (via Hollywood Avatar enhancements) smells sweet to the poorly educated fools looking for a shepherd to lead them to fleecing or slaughter. The uneducated can be the tools of great evil, just as evil can look seductively good to the best educated fools.

____ Capitalism as a form of plutocratic government is as big a failure and equivalent to Communism (a social theory applied to encompass economics) , Aristocracy (as validated by Marie and Louis, Nick and Alex, and many others), ....

____ Pure Democracy, which promotes and defends the rights of citizens, and disenfranchises Capitalist Republic and Religious Paradise supremacists (institutions and special interest groups, are not citizens) is the only civilized, valid, and reasonable form of government ever to exist.

fixing computers

[Dalroth]

I spend a LOT of timing fixing my parents' and grandparents' computers. It's annoying. And it's always over vacation when I would prefer to be taking some time off and away from computers with my friends.

Thankfully, most of my friends are tech-savvy so I don't have to worry about them. My Mother has tried to pawn me off on a few people over time, but I've steadfastly refused to help anybody else (neighbors, friends of family, etc.). I explain it to my mother (who is a nurse) like this: Would you like it if I recommended every single person who has a sniffle call you at home instead of going to the med center like they're supposed to?

Anyway, at least I spend less time fixing computers than my dad spends fixing cars. Now there is a thankless, annoying, non-stop job.

Bryan

Re:fixing computers

[Forkenhoppen]

Sounds like you could use this t-shirt..

One word:

[Djinh]

Buy a Mac!

I have not had such experiences...

[csoto]

using Mac OS X and RedHat and SuSE. In fact, I rarely have trouble with Windoze 2000 or XP, but I don't *use* them as much, either. Still, for very little usage, they are by far the most "touch-needy" systems I manage.

Experiencing the same problems?

[atheken]

I own a MAC, so no.

if it would work

[kraksmoka]

It could create one-click installation procedures and save millions more man-hours. It could build a system that automatically finds and loads drivers over the Internet and save millions more

not to be anti-m$ or anything, but they have a web search system in windoze. its one of hundreds of non-working features loaded into the cruft, er, i mean system bloatware.

No admin time on Solaris!

[swordgeek]

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.

cheap generic hardware

[CresentCityRon]

I've found that I get burned with cheapo non name but tasty cheap IO cards, cases and other infrastructure. I'd build an unstable crap box and spend five hours a week keeping it stable. Once I started buying even 2nd tier hardware many of my worries have vanished.

Drivers (win / linux) are designed to work with REAL devices and not third rate knockoffs w/o quality control.

Avoid those damn computer expos!

-Ron

Linux Box

[pilsner.urquell]

No.

Windows

[Nexum]

Yeah, this must be some Windows thing, I have spent pretty much no time on tweaking my network or workstations running OS X.

Re:Windows

[topham]

I bought a Mac (1.6Ghz G5) back in November.

I've spent the last ~2 months getting to know it. I could have spent the last 2 months fighting with Windows.

I prefered learning something new. Isn't that why I had this hobby in the first place?

While I have had a few minor issues with the Mac it has been very much a pleasure compared to Windows.

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.

What a difference a year makes!!!

[almound]

I have an average karma rating of 1.2 (that's out of 24 extensive replies to /. posts). Why is that?! Many on /. are now just parroting what I said a couple years ago. What a difference a year makes?! Look at what I wrote, here are some subject headings:

*Can't really call it the "Computer Age," can you?
*I've left that nonsense (re: "Industry Standard" *Paycuts in IT?)
*Consumers will begin not to buy creative products
*All this seems moot to me (re:Oracle's Hostile Takeover Bid For PeopleSoft)
*I do believe we have struck a nerve
*Can we blame Bill for the porn now, too? (re:Bill Gates, Entertainment God?)
*When will Geeks learn the Feds can warehouse them?
*REBATES ARE A SCAM
*I do believe slashdotters are finally waking up
*I am realizing the Net cannot be private again

I'm seeing concensus about these issues now, and the opinions were mine years before others picked up on them!!!

My point? One definition of intelligence is an ability to predict the future. At best, for at least a couple of years now intelligent consideration of what has been happening to the IT industry has been coloured by emotions related to how profitable the whole IT adventure used to be.

That emotional attachment is beginning to thin out a bit and /.'s are beginning to understand alternative points of view ... like REALITY (see list below).

Now that this is occuring, will /.'s start re-evaluating such issues as professionalization and organization that I raised in this forum three years ago? (Search on the subject indices above.)

Until the IT workforce commands respect from management the following outline delineating corporate relationships will still apply.

Corporations 101
(for the new employee)

1. Management is not there to help.

2. If you actually understood what management was saying, you would quit.

3. Don't bother trying to understand what role management plays in a corporation. They don't know, and nobody else does either.

4. If you don't do what management says, everything works out just fine.

5. Excellence is the farthest thing from management's "mind." Uppermost is fooling people into believing that it is.

6. Management doesn't mind presiding over a corporation comprised simply of itself and a Human Resources department. And if push comes to shove, they can get away without the Human Resources department.

7. Stock price is the barometer by which one can tell how well management's retirement fund is padded.

8. The CEO banks upon being quietly and summarily dismissed, so to walk away with the golden parachute negotiated beforehand.

9. Every executive hopes to become CEO.

10. This is the best system the world has to offer.

11 hours? pussy

[buddha42]

He logs 11 hours and 20 minutes of crap, everything from driver problems to forced upgrades, spam overflows... you name it.

Thats just what it takes to get started in gentoo!

Time?

[djupedal]

At least 20 hours a month....more if I'm not employed. But then I have at least three computers running 24/7, and I happen to enjoy futzing with them. I mess with them even if nothing's wrong.

Re:Network Crap

[Raffaello]

Why don't you just use one of your many machines as the wireless router? You must have one box beefy enough ande stable enought that wireless routing would be invisible in the background (i.e., not be a noticeable resource drain on that box).

The month in computer repair hell

[bbmixing]

I bought a new machine for the family, an HP. It had problems shortly after I set it up. There was a problem with the hard disk. I had not burned the 8 recovery CDs so I had to wait for new ones to arrive from HP. Things ran ok for awhile, then the crapped out again. I tried the recovery CDs but they did not work. I spent two hours with HP tech support trying them again, until the tech decided it was a hardware problem. It was then another wait for the new hard disk to arrive.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I had ordered DSL from Verizon. I set it up and discovered that it crapped out every evening. It worked great during the day and after midnight, but from about 5:00 PM until midnight it would slow down to a crawl. It did not disconnect. I could ping various sites and do DNS lookups but almost no data flowed. Four nights in a row I am on phone with Verizon tech support. They were very polite, but basically I just went through power cycling the modems and taking my router out of the loop and running straight from on computer, until things improved. On the fourth night, I was told that I was too far from the office and that was the problem. I put up with the performance for about a month until cable became available.

Go to each computer and change the smtp settings for each email account to point to Verizon. On Linux I only had to change postfix's smart relay host.

During the DSL debacle I decided that DSL worked best when connected to a phone jeck in the basement away from all of my computers. I could not use my original plan of having my linux box use a wired coonnection to the router, and I had switch to wireless. I went out a shopped around the cheapest 802.11b device was a Netgear MA120. I was not sure it would work on linux but I figured I would swaped the Linksys WUSB11 that was on my daughter's Win98 box. I had it working on linux before. In the process of removing the WUSB11 and adding the MA120, I screwed up the networking completely on the Win 98 box. Windows thought the WUSB11 was still there. No matter how much I tried to uninstall devices and the netork software, I would get it to talk to the MA120. I ended up reformatting and reinstalling Win98 on that box.

My linux box is still not setting up the WUSB11 correctly on boot. I had originally gotten to work without WEP, when I was on dial up. I figured no one would want to leach my wonderfull dial up service. When I turned WEP on, it would try to associate before it was configured and would fail. I ended up modifying the source of the driver to hardcode the WEP key. Yeah for open source. It now hotplugs correctly, but I am still having problems getting it to configure correctly at boot. I have not had the time to get deeper into.

The cable modem arrived and I set it up with a phone call to tech support. I then tried to put the router in so I could share the set up. I had to clone the MAC to get it to work. It then crapped out about 30 minutes laters. Oh crap. It turned out to be a bad cable between the cable modem and the router.

Go to each computer and change smtp to Adelphia for each email account again.

Things have been relatively good since then, but I have long list. I need a real backup strategy. I now have four machines that should be backed up. I have lots of music and lots of photos stored on the computers now and the failure of the HP drive has me worried. I have sharing working between two machines. I never got the SIMS to reinstall on my daughter's computer.

Re:Network Crap

[Glonoinha]

Oh man, I feel for you - they so totally don't appreciate you. I mean why did they bring you into this world if they were going to force you to use cheap ass Belkin network router hardware that can't support ... what was it, 10 computers under the same roof? They need to learn to -appreciate- you, to take into account your elite skills and contributions to the household. Heck, they ought to be paying you to live there, because it isn't like either one of them could keep their computers running and fully operational, free of spam and virii, kernels patched and drives defragged.

Angst - it is a harsh reality for a guy trapped under the iron thumb of a couple of people that just don't understand. We feel for you, and we are pulling for you. Once you taste the sweet nectar of freedom you get in the real world, you will never want to go back. Good luck surviving next semester under such emotional traumatic conditions.

No! Really?

[KC7GR]

"Anyone on /. is experiencing the same thing..."

Speak for yourself. All of my systems have achieved a very decent level of stabili$&*!@##$..*&NO CARRIER

True, true.

[supabeast!]

This is why I hardly ever use my computers for games anymore. I got sick of fixing DirectX stuff, driver stuff, performance stuff, defragging, etc. just so I can play games. Of course, if I wasn't so lazy I'd just run them all under WineX, which is less hassle than running them under Windows, but hey, I'm lazy, so Gamecube it is...

Ahead of my time???

[3seas]

I posted This response to another earlier thread/news topic.

Without reading the article I noticed the MS icon was attached to this article. I find it interesting the amount of time I spend cussing and being generally pissed off at MS for the absolute BS (consumer frustration function) I've come to recognize is incorporated into Windows. Probably as a matter of trying to "make people need MS" so as to assist MS in extracting excessive profits from consumers.

I find it interesting that MS is becomming synonymous (sp?) with user frustration and extra work.

Just last week I concluded that my CDRW/DVD ROM was going bad so I went out and bought an Iomega external USB CDRW/DVD for about $100. After going thru the full scope of trying to get the Windows box to recognize the existance of the device (hey it says its win98 compatable on teh box) I had to return the unit to the store for a refund. As it turns out MS no longer supports Win98 and have since removed the patch from their site of which the Iomega software tries to access in order to fix the driver needed for the system to recognize the device.

Just for the hell of it, I plugged the device into my Linux box (no support for Linux is mentioned on the box) and booted the system up. I'll be damned, it recognized the device in the Gtoaster CD writting front end and I was able to access the table of contents of any cd I put in it. But I could do anything else with it. (Though I suspect I might just have only needed to properly mount the device.)

The conclusion being.... Wasn't it additional work for MS to remove the support that was already there on their update site? And it most certainly lead to a failure of the usability of an MS product while creating the appearance of an advertising deception by Iomega.

When I turn My Windows box on, I expect to be cussing MS for their arrogant ignorance within 10 minutes. To bad I have vested interest in additional software (but it could be worse, as I could have far more files in MS proprietary format).

Twice while installing competing products to MS I was presented with a warning or error message that said I had to shut down the system and reboot. I ignored the message and it eventually determined that I was ignoring it and went away. The competing software installed just fine, though MS products now (including windows itself) sometimes gives me error messages that it has to shut some program down ----- when in fact the user action that triggers off the mesage is my exiting/quiting such program. Wow! MS figured out how to build ARROGANCE into their products.Or maybe its just the manisfectation of the MS spirit into the product.

it's all a part of...

[MoFoQ]

it's all a part of the fun.

besides...it's better than the crap they have on TV.....(there are a few exceptions...I love my American Chopper and Monster Garage and Everwood).

What's easier?

[rezrov]

Really, not trying to cause a flame attack here...

The author bashes MS for his wasted time, and although he doesn't push linux as the answer, I'll ask the /. crowd this: Is a linux-based solution really that much easier for a typical home family setup? Would a mom+pop+siblings+optional grandma really be able to figure out how to setup, use, and maintain a network of linux boxes, under any gui of choice?

Without a "computer guy" (m/f), I don't think so. This is one thing that has made the Mac so beloved within its niche -- it's a much shorter and shallower learning curve to knowing the ins and outs of a Mac OS (even now, with OS X) than any other OS+hardware combination. And this is what will keep so many Win users from exploring any other option -- they don't know how to start, and starting takes *time*. Even more than 11 hrs.

You wanna waste time?

[Denver_80203]

I should do a study about how many hours you linux sheep spend bitching about MS. MOVE ON PEOPLE.

Re:What are you dribbling about?

[gui_tarzan2000]

An hour on a printer driver? What's it for, a Star thermal printer? Four hours installing a motherboard driver for XP? Geez, it only took my machine about 5 minutes to do that including the download. What wastes more of my time is reading ./ and stopping to growl at the extreme misuse of grammar and numerous spelling errors.

their = pertaining to something someone has
there = pertaining to a direction or location
they're = they are

*big cheesy grin*

There are many many other examples but I won't waste precious tech time listing them that I could be spending on supporting and updating Windoze. Despite the fact that XP seems to be running far better than 98 & 2000 it's still far less reliable than my Linux installs.

They come out of the woodwork.

[simetra]

I hadn't heard from this Aunt of mine, or any of her relatives in about 20 years. And then, out of the blue, I get this call because she's having trouble with her Windows 95 computer! She calls me, long distance, expecting free tech support, because my mom told her I was a "computer guy" and gave her my number!!!!

I do what I can when I'm at people's houses, if they're having trouble and are nice. But, my immediate family live a few thousand miles away, so I don't do much support for them. Fortunately, they're fairly bright, and have a close friend who *THINKS* he knows everything, so he gets to do most of their tech support.

One of the biggest problems, as someone else posted, is that they think that because I do *computer stuff*, I'm a techie geek who fixes broken pc's all day, and loves nothing more than to fix everyone's broken pc's for free in my free time. Where in actuality, I almost never tinker anymore with pc's, having moved on to programming and admin'ing. Sometimes, yes, it's fun to build and upgrade my own machines, but that's a hobby, for me to enjoy geekily, in my free time.

Anymore, when people try to suck the life out of me via free tech support, I think of some obscure job somewhat related to theirs, and ask them to do it for me for free. For example, if a Doctor asks me for free help, I'll ask for a teeth cleaning in return.

Re:They come out of the woodwork.

[topham]

I had the pleasure of setting up a Lexmark all in one printer/fax/scanner on New Years day. The only saving grace was I knew about it in advance.

Me, i wouldn't have bought a lexmark. I'm not a fan. And it was refurbished. Not high on my list of recommendations.

Set it up, removed the old fax, and the old printer. No significant problems setting up and installing it. But the computer was dog slow. 32Megs of RAM with a billion applets running in the system tray.

I specificly did NOT start looking into the reason it was slow. I could have been there for hours trying to clean things up.

(Doesn't help they had corel's office applications installed with their start up panel... ugh.. probably pre-loaded 30Megs of crap...).

My girlfriend almost made us dive in and start cleaning up the mess, but I got her to back off a bit before we got sucked into it neck deep...

Solution to Windows problems

[haxor.dk]

Get a Mac.

Autonomous Problem Fixing Computer

[lithiumfox]

Until someone decides to make a computer that will fix every single damn error and problematic situation, we should all just boot linux off a cd. It solves every problem.

/.'s don't like fixing their computers/networks?!

[agwis]

I'm surprised at a lot of the comments. Maybe I'm weird! I actually enjoy trying to get things working when they break, or the challenge of getting some new software to work. I generally write down the steps I do for future reference and it's become pretty common to refer to those notes later.

I do suffer from the 'computer guy' syndrome though. Everyone that knows me figures I can drop what I'm doing and come fix their problem for no charge...maybe just a beer or 2. Sometimes I do and sometimes I'll tell them it will cost...which always seems to surprise/offend them. Either way, if I've had the problem occur to me before chances are I've wrote down the steps to fix it and can solve the problem quickly.

I really thought all /.'s enjoyed tinkering with their machines/networks and would never consider it time wasted!

-Pat

Tech support for friends

[$exyNerdie]

I spend at least a few hours being FREE tech support to friends. It cant really get to you sometimes but I don't know how to say no to friends. Sometimes, people have dropped their messed up boxes at my place to fix. It gets really difficult to say no sometimes especially when you know that their boxes are really messed up or taken up by trojan horse/viruses etc....

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.

Computer Repairs

[Metex]

I do computer consulting ranging from repairing and setting up linux boxes on telecommunications companies to installing printer drivers for the technological inept.

While I agree with him that we spend an inordinate amount of time fixing computers I have come to the conclusion that it is 70% of the time a users misbelife of what a computer is that is the problem. Not the computer itself. Most users belive in the hype spewed by corperatoins or they have little of no concept of what are the limitations of computers.

I remeber a call once where I was installing a network and setting up a couple of boxes for a home buissness and afterwards he asked me to take a look at his laptop because word would allways freeze/slow to a crawl 10 minuets into the day. To make a long story short after 1 hour when the problem wouldnt replicate itself on the computer I was about 3 minuets away from wiping it because everything else tested ok. I then realized he probably wasnt going through his routine when he starts the computer. I asked him to do everything exsactly how he usually does and he then procedes to open 90 word documents in a folder each containing about 200+ pages of stock research and then it proceded to crash. He was a firm beliver that his computer could multi-task and had unlimited resources.

Anyhoo stuff like this happens to me alot actually where fixing the computer doesnt allways revolve around me working with silicon but also with the wetware of the person. I have some great stories I wish I could post but the NDA stop me =( but all I can say is imagine an administrator allways running as root because he doesnt want a normal user account for a large Fortune 500 company.

Mac example

[suitti]

My 1987 Mac II has been in operation basically every day since late September, 1987. My boot drive died in about 1995. In 1996, my laser printer died. In 2001, the battery for the clock died. Hardware upgrades on the Mac are trivial.

When Word 6 for the Mac came out, it was larger than my hard disk. So, I stopped upgrading at Word 5. I would have been just as happy had I stopped with Word 4.

At first, I upgraded the OS whenever possible. But with System 7.5.5, Apple said that was the last. This has been a blessing.

I haven't performed a software upgrade in over seven years. In fact, the only maintenance is an occasional backup. I power up an external SCSI drive, and copy one disk to the other.

In the meantime, I'm on my 4th x86 box since 1987. The PC/xt was too lame to run Linux. The 386/33 and the the PII both died after just four or five years. Feh. Hardware upgrades are driving me to Linux upgrades. It takes over a year of admin to get all the non-distribution stuff working again on a new distribution. Feh.

Upgrades suck - and it's all because of shared libraries. When are we going to learn to distribute binaries compiled statically? My oldest a.out static binaries still work. Not so with newer stuff. Feh.

Re:Mac example

[hemanman]

Upgrades suck - and it's all because of shared libraries. When are we going to learn to distribute binaries compiled statically?

You are SO right on that!

On Windows you have dll-hell, and on Linux/FreeBSD you have library-hell, due to the fact that every program seems to want a different version of shared library/dll.

More static binaries, because if you have to load different versions of shared libraries for each program, you're really not gaining anything besides making it harder on yourself.

Besides, windows already uses all the ram it can get it's dirty hands on for diskcache, and then swap out parts of programs, they could easily be have been compiled staticly without any loss at all, besides better use of the diskcache.

-H

Fiddle & Tinker vs. Patch & Fix

[Paracelcus]

I am incessantly tinkering with my machines, I enjoy it, the only real fix I have to do (maybe "have" is too strong a word) is X on my solaris box, since we have had lots of little power failures here X is messed up on my Solaris8 box (everything works fine and I really don't use X on it anyway), other than that everything's been fine for months and months! My wife's PC runs W2K Pro, it blows up periodically (two or three times a month).

Oh yeah, I don't use Windows on any of my machines.

Not me!

[pgnesmith]

I have a LINUX samba box for file server, back-ups, etc. All back-ups on my main machine (a Mac) are done by cron, no driver problems here, I can't remember the last time I had to restart my LINUX box. I have battery back-up for power outages. Everything just works fine. To cut back on fustrations use *nix.

This may help

[melted]

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/sus/d efault.mspx

"Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS) enables administrators to quickly and reliably deploy the latest critical updates and security updates to Windows(R) 2000 and Windows Server(TM) 2003-based servers, as well as to desktop computers running Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional. As part of the Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), SUS helps provide core server manageability for Windows Server 2003."

11h 20m is nothing!

[MochaMan]

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?

Call me a cynic, but I think anyone on Slashdot is experiencing a lot more than 11h 20m of wasted time per month...

he thinks it's YOUR problem

[CausticPuppy]

I used to do this kind of thing all the time, for friends and family. I've tried to get away from it (I'm even doing less tinkering with my own box) since going into programming, but people still call me up for computer problems even though I haven't done really intense troubleshooting since, oh, Win98.

Anyway, when your car breaks, it's YOUR car. Even the mechanic recognizes that it's YOUR car that has the problem, and he can fix it if you don't know how. No issues there, right?

Well computers, it seems, are different. They are so complicated and mysterious to the average joe, that any glitch must be the fault of Some Computer Person Somewhere. You see, when this friend of yours had a problem with his computer, it became YOUR problem as soon as you started working on it.

And when you're 3 hours into whatever fix you're trying to accomplish, they have the nerve to ask "What's taking so long?" Grrrrr.

A friend of mine asked me last week if I could "stop by and install Windows 2000" on her computer. She has Windows 98 right now. Right, I'll just stop by, on my way to somewhere, and spend an entire day with an OS upgrade. In return, I will probably get a free dinner. That's not worth it, IMO. As far as I'm concerned, she needs to stay with Win98 until she gets a whole new computer.

PC doesn't boot after holiday break

[amigabill]

I just got back from visiting my family for the holidays, who all live >= 300 miles away. Got back to my place and my PC is dead, won't boot, won't even get to the BIOS. :/ Seems the fan I had cooling my hard drive seized up and the motor in it burnt, but hard drive seems to spin up OK. But still no BIOS screen or even memory check, the monitor never gets a signal at all. Man, I really really hate PCs. Can't even blame this one on Windows yet, as it doesn't even look for any drives now. So I'll probably have a few hours today alone trying to revive the thing... What a freakin' happy new year this is turning out to be already!

Symantec sucks just as bad

[mabu]

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.

Re:Symantec sucks just as bad

[toddestan]

If you had that computer hooked up to the internet, it may of gotten instantly owned by any number of worms the second the unpatched Windows XP desktop came up. A lot of those worms do not play nice if you try to install an antivirus program either. I've seen things like that happen before, but either way you basically had no choice but to reinstall XP. Another bit of advice is that once you get the XP system patched, tweaked and configured, and all your software installed do a backup - that way you won't have to do another reinstall when the system gets borked again.

Re:Symantec sucks just as bad

[mabu]

I agree this is an issue, but we brought the system online on a VPN through a firewall that had most ports blocked, so there was little chance of any infection, but you do bring up a good point for those who might be going through this mess and didn't take precautions.

By the way, have you ever tried to patch-from-start a stock Win XP system? That's a nightmare in itself. It looks like Microsoft didn't really check out how well this would work. When we brought the system up there were 46 critical patches, and it took another hour to figure out the proper order in which to apply patches (which was NOT chronological) in order to even get Windows Update to complete. What a mess!

How to avoid family fixu-its...

[fzammett]

...Move at least two states away.

That's what I did. Sure, I still get almost a weekly call from someone in the family wanting to "pick my brain", but that's not really an issue when I can simply half-ass it: answer their questions while fragging away in Halo, or if I'm actually doing work, answer their questions while coding. It's not like their problems generally require more than about 5% of my concentration to solve anyway.

But, 300 miles or so very greatly reduces the amount of time you'll spend working on other people's problems, I guarantee it!

Re:I spent that much time trying new distros yeste

[sketerpot]

Gentoo is great, and a lot of fun, but it is hard to get set up. You have to do things like setting up filesystems from the command line, and editing text-based configuration files. If you enjoy this sort of thing (I sure do!), Gentoo does give you some benefits, like portage, speed & flexibility, and above all satisfaction.

Just a warning.... :-)

nope, not any more

[josepha48]

First of all I have been using FreeBSD as my router. I upgrade it probably once a month or when I see there are security problems that affect me. Alternately using a linksys, dlink, netgear router would save time as well or Linux or antoher BSD may work as well. I have had no problems with my hubs either. I don't buy cheap hardware so I don't hae hardware problems. I haven't had to mess with the network a whole lot. Linux up2date is pretty easy to run and takes not time at all. So what is this guy spending all his time on?

Printer driver -> use a mac and a compatible printer, and you will probably have less problems.

Windows media player -> you are asking for trouble there, use xine instead.

Windows XP && security? What? Windows and security is like army intelligence IMHO, I guess XP is better.

Outlook -> unless you NEED the calendar, use antoher program for your email.

Hmm all these problems seem to be that he is running windows programs. I'm sorry, but since I got my roommate to get a mac, I have had less problems. His biggest problem is that yahoo messenger broke last time HE upgraded it. Since I got him to get a mac, I don't have to deal with problems from his mac on my network. I use Linux and up2date, so it all happens in the background sortof.

I know that this is going to piss off windows fans, but I have to say that I personally have had more problems with windows and windows software then I have had with Linux. Yeah I loose some functionality with Linux, but much of Linux is gaining on Windows in that space and the loss is negligable IMHO.

Re: unless they agree to a few simple things

[mabhatter654]

To a certian extent I agree with you and try to do those things on my system but...

I don't really have to do all that to my DVD, or VCR, or gamecube, phone, toaster, etc...and that's the real issue here that this guy's making it think. simply running a computer shouldn't be all that work. Now I will admit that running a computer isn't like a DVD player...you're always changing the software & hardware for new games, web pages, security patches, printers, etc, but it should be better than it is!

Wasting Time?!?

[SkippyTPE]

What you call annoying, I call job security. At $15.50 an hour I'll fix all the bleeding driver problems you want. I'm all for better software and more educated users, but since we already know neither of these is going to happen I'm all to willing to profit from it.

Mac owners...

[wdavies]

... still get screwed with shit like this. Maybe OS configuration doesnt suck so bad, few if any viruses, but dealing with stuff like printers that have minimal Mac support, or trying to make Eudora talk to the corporate Mail Server (MS of course), can waste as much time. I am quite on the cusp of switching after 10 years of using Mac's. The one saving grace is the Unix base and the gorgeous UI, but these days the hardware sucks (my GF's $3000 al Book), and lack of stuff like Teamspeak is just a no no. As for the external hardware, well, I am now firmly of the opinion that there should be a class action suite over the Titaniums and aluminium's (mine is pitted already after 2 months).

Winton

sun, windows, linux

[lm747]

I work at a lab where we use Sun SPARC hardware running solaris for most of our simulations etc. Recently we bought two windows boxes from dell - for variety, compatibility etc.

One fine day, I was doing some experiments inside the lab. I came to my sun machine to check email - the screen was frozen. The mouse would not move, the keyboard would not type. I tried ssh'ing in from outside and killing rogue processes, but that would not work. There was absolutely no response from the machine. Finally I decided that it was time to reboot. I switched off the machine - it never turned on after that. I ended up wasting days - doing power-on-self-tests etc and finally found out that the CPU was bad. The machine was two years old - out of warranty. A refurbished cpu would cost about $550.

So my boss said that I should install linux on one of the new pc's that we bought - and get back to work.

Well, the new pc happened to have a SATA hard drive. SATA hard drives are supported only in the most recent kernel versions. After a couple of weeks of going through all kinds of forums, google searches, buying a new IDE hard drive, recompiling kernels, tweaking things - I have gotten the box to work.

Nett result - I wasted about three weeks of time, invested way too much of anxiety and effort.

The linux box works, though. It has been pretty stable so far - and hopefully I won't have to do computer repairing for many months to come.

My iBook has treated me surprisingly well, though. Two years - and very few hiccups.

Uh-huh

[blair1q]

Any chance it will take less than 11 hours and 20 minutes to install Linux to a usable configuration? No? Then I wouldn't worry about entropy elsewhere.

What if it's abuse?

[solios]

No, really. It's one thing to stop in to do upgrades or routine maintenance (a friend of mine was the happiest camper EVER when I stopped in one day and doubled her processor speed with a spare part), but it's another when the people in question are abusing your goodwill- having you do their thinking for them, coming to you with problems and questions so routine the answers are practically written on the CASE, etceteras.

I've found that Being Nice, in about 30% of cases, leads to Being Dicked. :-/

Fortunately, people in remote locations (eg off of the busline I ride or outside of a five minute walk) have realized I'm quite simply Never Coming Over without compsensation.

This is one of the reasons I'm Macintosh Only.

[solios]

Honestly. They take care of themselves, for the most part- minus the User personality type that demands the Computer Guy to stop in once a week just so they'll stop whining about $whatever.

Some people will always have computer problems, no matter how idiot proof the machine is. Just about everybody that's whined at me uses Windows- and out of all of the computers I have, not a single one is x86.

I can't tell you how much pain and annoyance that one simple fact has saved me.

My family tried to suck me into supporting their hardware once, and were not the least bit pleased when I told them, flat out, that I Do Not Use And Consequently Do Not Support Windows. Pissed them off a bit, you might say. Friends would wind up for a Power Whine about how their laptop or desktop was sucking- and their faces would redden when I'd laugh at them and tell them to buy a Macintosh. Any time anyone would start to describe a computer problem to me, I would, simply, tell them "I don't {use|support} Windows".

The only problem with that is now instead of six people humping my leg once a week with Windows problems, I've got six people humping my leg twice a year with MacOS problems. :-/

It is an acceptable ratio, though. :-)

I wonder how long a Linux network would take

[Overly Critical Guy]

Seeing as how it takes longer to install drivers, upgrade things, and set things up in general. Slashdotters LOVE to bitch about Microsoft yet again, yet disregard Linux completely in the equation, because to them, setting up Linux is a HOBBY, while setting up Windows is a HASSLE. It's called bias.

I remember the hell of just setting up APCI on my laptop until I realized that the reason the daemon kept crashing is that it just didn't work on my laptop. The evidence was when I tried two other distros and the same thing happened.

Meanwhile, Windows already works. :P

Re:I wonder how long a Linux network would take

[the_mad_poster]

It's called bias.

It's called, you don't know what you're talking about.

Binary nVidia drivers update, Linux 2.4.x kernel: under 5 minutes.

Linmodem from Netodragon, driver compile, setup, and install + setup time for wvdial: under 10 minutes.

Driver compile and installation for oddball cd-rom: under 5 minutes.

Networking problems with Linux in the last month: none.

Forced upgrades with Linux in the last month: none.

Necessary patch fixes in the last month. Rough estimate? 2 hours tops including download times, and that's without up2date or apt-get type tools.

Total estimated time to bring my XP machine up to snuff with all the patches and other bullshit that's come out since I installed it: easily 5+ hours not including download times.

Oh, and by the way: time spent maintaining my minimal Linux firewall/router: 1 hour. Compiled a new kernel. All that time is COMPLETELY rebuilding the OS to suit a changed need, something that is beyond a mere "hassle" with Windows.

Sorry, the bias is justified. Maintaining Windows is an ENORMOUS hassle thanks to all the locked down, zipped up, "it's our way or no way" attitude of the Redmond elite. Swing it whatever way you want. Spend time maintaining average Linux and average Windows distros and you'll pick up a nasty addiction to painkillers from Windows, not Linux (unless you're one of those morons that expects Linux, a completely different operating system that was derived from a completely different philosophy for computer systems, to work just like Windows in which case you'll just ditch it because you're too dumb to realize it's not the same O/S ["you" is used figuratively, not referring to "you the poster" personally]). Spend time maintaining "wierd" configurations for pretty much any system and you're in for trouble.

Re:I wonder how long a Linux network would take

[Geek of Tech]

Well, OCG, let's think about this. (I'm not trying to troll. Honestly). If you're laptop is anything like my laptop (Dell Inspiron 1100) Then it has a little sticker somewhere on it (or the box it came in) that says something along the lines "Designed for Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP". I believe the reason it "Just works" in Windows is because it was designed with Windows in mind. Making Linux work on it is just a wee bit more difficult, because most companies could really care less if it works with Linux, as long as you take the bait.

Having said that, I too frequently use Windows because "It just works", of course, I also use SuSE for the same reasons sometimes....

And yeah, I really am biased against Microsoft. I don't hate them, but given the choice of spreading one of the two I would choose Linux (unless we're talking about gaming...)

Re:I wonder how long a Linux network would take

[thynk]

I'm not sure that I agree with your views on Linux. I have both linux and windows machines on my home network (windows and HPUX at work). I'm not a Newbe with *nix systems, nor am I a guru. I'm not afriad to RTFM or work at something to make it work right.

I can't count the hours I've "tried to get it to work" in linux, usually when dealing with a sound card issue (or a sound application) of some sort or the WiFi card on my laptop only to give up after a week of frustration only to have the same machine up, running and doing actual work in windows in under an hour. After all that frustraion, I'm now ashamed to say, that any piece of *nix software that doesn't have a binary install for the system I'm working on, I want to look for a different solution before I even try it.

I would MUCH rather run my entire network on Linux, but I've found that for some tasks, using windows just saves hours and frustation. With XP, my admin time is next to nothing (once ATI started producing decient drivers), but the same is said for my linux boxes as well.

Re:I wonder how long a Linux network would take

[the_mad_poster]

If your admin time on WinXP is "next to nothing", you're either one of the legions that doesn't keep up with Windows/IE patches or you're one of the few who's crazy enough to let the procedure be automated. In addition, I assume that if you're going to be counting patches to things like BIND or Mozilla as part of "Linux maintenance", you'll count patches to Adobe products, games, etc? (sorry, but even if you don't use IE, it's part of Windows, so it's part of the patch job). Of course, I guess it's easier to patch a system when the vendor would just as soon pretend the problem doesn't exist as fix it, no?

And, if you're only going to count WinXP in "MS Windows maintenance time", then you can't count any Linux kernel older then 2.4.x. If you jump back to the 2.2.x series of kernels when there was still some issue with drivers (I've yet to find any piece of hardware, other than winmodems or the occasional RAID, that the 2.4.x kernel doesn't pick up, configure, and have "just working" automatically), then you have to jump back to the Win9x series of system where reboots were a daily occurrence, crashes were constant, BSODs were the rule rather than the exception, etc. You can't compare your experience with JUST WinXP against your experience with all of Linux.

In addition, I assume that if you're going to count maintenance on a Linux system that has an FTP server, mail server, web server, database server, etc, etc, you're going to have all the same things running on Windows, right? I assume if you use a journaling filesystem on Linux, you'll do the same on Windows? If you're compiling programs or doing heavy web/db work, Windows will endure the same stress? Do you ever defrag your disks? What about keeping the registry clean, do you do that? Do you mop up residual mess from partially uninstalled programs? Do you have to deal with clueless dolts who get things automatically installed when they browse to websites, or fools that install spyware / adware like Gator and Comet Cursor? What about viruses, worms, and whatnot? I mean... come on.. you're talking about an OS that had an integrated help system that could be used, via a standard hyperlink on any arbitrary webpage, to delete aribtrary files on a person's computer.

Nope, sorry. Keeping up with Windows patches is like trying to bike after an F-16. I'd rather be able to just download a small, simple patch within a day or two of a vulnerability being known for a program that I've chosen to run (let's see you uninstall IE once, or keep Messenger from installing), take a moment to install it, and go on about my work. Nothing like waiting for some enormous "Service Pack" to actually be able to get all the updates (since some updates only appear in SPs) and then losing half a day to download, install, reboot, and reconfigure. I'll pass.

Re:I wonder how long a Linux network would take

[thynk]

You've made some good points here, but I think you missed one of mine. My admin time for both OSes are next to nothing. I do let windows download the patches it needs, install them after I've checked the out and do a reboot. I don't remember patching running patches on the linux box, but I'd imagine that it has it's own automated update procedue. My windows XP box that was orignally going to be a linux install runs more than any other box in the house with the home automation stuff I have it do and had an uptime of 60 days before I took it down for a hardware upgrade.

I don't have to deal with idiots (except for myself), so I don't have to deal with spyware and I run industial strength antivirus after a run in with Nimda last year.

Don't get me wrong, the more I use windows the more I like linux. If I had the time to spend, and if Linux met my every need, I'd never install another windows machine. I just don't honestly have the time or the skills to get these things working right. Funny thing, even my kids prefer linux... nothing like bringing them up right :-)

It's not all wasted

[drinkypoo]

First, you're learning. Learning is not a waste. Even if all you're learning is how to learn, because learning anything keeps the ol' noodle in shape. Doubt me? Go do basically nothing but watch TV for the next five years and then go back and try to do the same shit you do today. Your brain will have calcified. Maybe literally, what with what (little) we know about dendrites and memory.

But there are also other compensations for a geek. Right now I'm working on getting PPTP working so I can secure my wireless network by disallowing any non-VPN traffic on my WiFi segment. It's tedious, and the documentation is either hard to find and complete, or easy to find and fragmentary. (Also, gentoo apparently has a version of ppp sources without the mppe patch... wtf is up with that?) So I'm doing the old run around and grab sources and patches shuffle. Hmm actually, it looks like my new kernel is built, about time to reboot, right after I submit this sucker. (The MPPE encryption patch is only current on 2.4.23 so I upgraded.)

The point is that during all of this, I learn about software packages, I learn (a little) about some protocols, I dig through assorted software repositories. It's annoying to have to do all this, but I'm learning something in the process. Actually, several somethings. I will be better suited to troubleshoot the system after going through this, than would someone who was able to just click a button and be up and running.

Incidentally, my home network requires very little maintenance, basically none until I try to implement some new functionality. Then about half the time I just have to build some new modules on my firewall or something. I have two XP desktops, a linux firewall, and a cobalt raq3 which thinks it's a raq550. I keep up with my XP updates (the automatic updates tool lets me know when there are new updates, and then I download and install them through the tool with a couple clicks) and so far they haven't caused me any problems. I didn't RTFA because my point doesn't hinge on it, but frankly, it sounds to me like a case of whining.

Cars vs. Computers (Round 1)

[CreateWindowEx]

While I agree with most of what you said, one problem with the car and computer analogy is that people who own modern cars, as refined a technology as they are, typically bring them in for service at least four times a year if they aren't able to do their own oil changes and other routine maintainance. I don't think most home users use any kind of professional servicing on their computers. Imagine how different the experience would be for most home users if they brought in their computer every two months to have their computers cleaned up! (E.g., fix configuration problems, remove spyware, apply patches, defrag disk, etc)

For a closer analogy to the typical new car owner, imagine if users didn't know their own administrative password (or at least it was buried in some manual that comes with the computer) and had to bring in their machine to make any configuration changes? (Okay, this method would be much easier on OS X than Windows...) Right now most home computer users are like the guy who tries to work on his car but just screws things up.

Having to spend four hours on hold to get tech support and then go through a bunch of steps that probably won't work over the phone discourages people from even calling help phone lines.

I think one key difference is that people need their cars to be running well for both personally safety and to be able to get to work, so if their car is belching smoke or the steering wheel is wobbling around they (usually) will take it in to a mechanic, whereas a person who's home computer is full of spyware, popups, error messages, and random crashes will probably just limp along for months or try to get some friend to fix it. Or not. For all this bitching about techies having to do free tech support, haven't you ever tried to use a friend or relative's computer and it was so messed up that you felt compelled to try and fix it without being asked?

Just as another comparison to cars, how much time do you spend crapping around with your car versus hours actually driving it? I use my work computer probably 8 hours a day, but my car less than two. For the car (non power-user), one has to include pumping gas, washing the car, filling tires and washer fluid, changing bulbs, dealing with paperwork (insurance and registration), scheduling service appointments, driving to and from service center, hanging around in the service center, etc, etc. If you own a used car and/or do some of your own work, than you have to add many more hours of crapping around with all kinds of stuff.

I think time spent messing around with computers is often more annoying because most of the "car servicing" time is fairly periodic and expected, whereas usually computers fail right when you're trying to do something important. It's rare that a car will fail catastrophically; usually most problems can be deferred for a few days (except for a flat tire, but changing a tire takes less time than reinstalling windows!) Furthermore, if your car does die, you can rent a car and start using it immediately, whereas getting a new computer to the point where you can get your work done is usually more involved.

Re:Cars vs. Computers (Round 1)

[Ashtead]

You raise some good points. If it were the norm that computers would be serviced regularly, say every 3 to 6 months, most things would have been a lot nicer, even given today's state of the art. And I have had the questionable pleasure of observing and fixing friends' computers that contained more worms than a litter of puppies...

Perhaps there is a market niche here for "computer mechanics"... but unless this job can pay enough obviously nobody will do it.

The computer-car analogy isn't perfect, though there are plenty of similarities. While both started out as fairly expensive and complicated pieces of equipment, the relative price of computers are going down whereas cars remain expensive. I am comparing fairly ancient cars to modern computers, recent cars compared to computers have different scope for DIY and different main failure modes, so expecting modern cars and future computers to be as similar as ancient cars and present-day computers I would not find realistic. They may have started out similarly but I don't think they will move in the same direction.

That is not to say that there are no lessons to be learned from 100 years or so of automobile history, for example that certain designs are found superior (in terms of safety, reliability, performance and so on) than others, and the "best" designs are allowed to prevail. A similar evolution in the face of a hostile environment will have to take place for computers as everyman's appliances. And I think that the "appliance" model is closer to the long-term goal than the "automobile" model.

Like all kinds of equipment, computers are subject to hardware failures, and the mode of failure tends to be more like what one sees in an appliance like a fridge or a TV set, that is, failure is rather sudden and catastrophic.

There is a difference here of course, that if your fridge dies, you still have access to the food inside, whereas if a hard disk dies, whatever was on it is most likely lost as well. And fridges are not subject to attacks or takeovers from crackers... so the appliance model isn't perfect either. Still, it does suggest a sensible direction forward -- the care and feeding of today's computers is made unnecessary complicated by such nonsense as EULAs, popup advertisements and general obscuration of operation. Case in point: the error message appearing when the anti-virus software needed renewal not even hinting that this was the reason. Some kind of standardized, publically known interface for diagnostics (this particular lesson learned from automobiles) would be the best way of handling this: when something goes wrong or stops working properly, enough information is generated from the event so that most anyone could be able to figure out what needs to be done. A standard code of "subscription is expired" would have been suitable in this case. Say one were to extend and standardize on the POSIX error-numbers or some such, whatever it is should not depend strongly on the actual operating system underneath.

There are some other important differences that preclude computers ever being as easily handled as appliances like fridges or tape-recorders, for example that while computers are are generally programmable, whereas a fridge or a tape-recorder are single-purpose and once sold and installed they do not need "updates" to their internal structures; in stark contrast to a computer where the software within may require changes for continued operation.

There are also some fairly obvious physical reasons why mechanical equipment like cars have to be serviced regularly, as they are subject to wear and tear, but there are no obvious physical reasons why a running computer should have to degrade in performance with normal use. I think our expectations have become too low in what we expect here. Like you say about limping along with a less than healthy computer OS. People do it and they bitch and moan about it...yet they don't seem to demand a stop to much of the nonsense.

So while we will have to require bugfixes and updates to computers, these should be made easier to perform so that the "power-user" can concentrate on getting his job done, like his automotive equivalent, the taxi driver.

Re:Cars vs. Computers (Round 1)

[CreateWindowEx]

I think one other issue is that for most home computers, there is no clear-cut delineation between user tasks and administrative tasks. One could imagine a computer that arrives with applications pre-installed and the administrative password hidden, but most people expect to be able to install software and change system settings (such as ISP) themselves--I think it is the installing and uninstalling of software and hardware that tends to make computers get screwed up over time, even without intentionally malicious software such as spyware, worms, and viruses. While most users would think twice before installing a PCI card, they wouldn't view plugging in a digital camera or scanner into an external port to be a "dangerous" activity, even though the potential to screw up your system is nearly equal.

Just to beat the car analogy to death, modern cars tend to have a clearly defined separation between "user" tasks and "mechanic" tasks, even to the point of engine covers that only expose the oil, coolant, and washer fluid dipsticks. However, it's not really clear if things like installing software is part of "operating" a computer--while appliance-style computers (with pre-configured and/or stripped-down FreeBSD or whatever that's totally hidden) are certainly stable and efficient, they are obviously unable to serve everyone's needs at least in their present incarnations.

I think Mac OS X has a pretty good model where the ideal is that applications are self-contained bundles that you can drag wherever and just run without any sort of administrative password, so even without write access to the applications folder you could drag it into the home directory--unfortunately many apps have windows-style installers that require a password and can install who knows what all over your machine. Also, the way in OS X (like in most unices) that you can authorize processes to have administrative access on a case by case basis works better than Windows, where unless you want to be constantly logging out as user and logging in as administrator, most people give their primary account administrative privileges.

I think perhaps a three-tiered privilege system might be useful for systems--e.g., have a password box popup for configuration tasks such as installing software, which would give just enough access to say add and remove folders in the applications folder, or making fairly harmless changes such as TCP/IP settings, without giving the installer root access to the machine, and then a secondary "true root" password that should only be needed for more complex tasks. Also in my fantasy world, drivers for USB (or firewire) devices should be able to run at user privilege through a secure USB API--unlike PCI devices, people are constantly plugging things into USB ports and having to load in new drivers.

Another tack would be a more rigorous OS that gives software components the same type of protection from each other as users get from other users on a modern OS. Ideally "installers" as such wouldn't exist--instead installation would be handled by the OS, which would recognize the package as say a driver or application, and it would create a folder where it could place its stuff, plus of course some sort of versioning system so that if it was installing a different version of a package, it could know how to resolve it. Instead of giving the installer program root access like in OS X, you would instead merely authorize the OS to install one thing to a certain place, so ideally you could install an untrusted application without the possibility of it messing up your system.

I would also like to see any shared modules or libraries that the installed app is dependent on be installed *explicitly*, or at least visibly, as separate steps, so that if the app needs to install a newer version of a component that other apps already depend on, the user could make a choice about whether to install the component globally or just locally to that application--I know at least in Windows you can often just copy a DLL into an

Fun

[r2q2]

But then that takes all of the fun out of computing. Troubleshooting is the only thing that us geeks differentiate us from everyone else. Because we took the time to fix/learn the system.

Oh, come on, you can do better than that...

[mosel-saar-ruwer]

A friend of mine asked me last week if I could "stop by and install Windows 2000" on her computer. She has Windows 98 right now. Right, I'll just stop by, on my way to somewhere, and spend an entire day with an OS upgrade. In return, I will probably get a free dinner.

A free dinner?!?!?!?

At a minimum, you should get

1) Laid.

2) A pregnant "friend," also known as a "wife."

3) Thirty years worth of orthodontist bills, college tuition, and miscellaneous bail bonds for resulting progeny.

4) ???

5) PROFIT!!!

And a lifetime's worth of "free" dinners.

Huh?

[pantycrickets]

I don't know how he came up with 11 hours. He must have counted his cable being down for 8 hours as "time wasted"?

He spent an hour installing a printer driver?

XP Security updates.. 1 hour? Maybe downloading and installing.. but not actual "time wasted".

Not trying to be obnoxious

[inkswamp]

I don't want to sound like yet another obnoxious Mac user, but I have spent less than 2 hours doing maintenance on the 3 Macs running OS X and the 2 running OS 9 that I regularly deal with at home and work... and that's for the entire year! I'm not trying to show off, but rather express my confusion about why Windows continues to be so popular despite the amount of time it requires from its users. I feel sorry for the guy frankly. It sounds like he should explore some other options. December is a busy month for most people. I couldn't imagine spending that much time doing computer maintenance during such a hectic time of year.

Re: Anyone on /. is experiencing the same thing?

[Kris_J]

What, a desire to waste time logging every error on a set of home PCs? Not really.

I spent a morning with my mother's PC doing a big batch of office security patches over dial-up the other day, but it's not like I wasn't also doing other stuff at the same time. As far as drivers go, I haven't really had a problem except that the drivers for my catweasel cause the machine to reboot during startup every so often -- though that doesn't appear to have been happening as much lately, so it might not be a driver thing, but somehow related to the way things are plugged into my Soundblaster Audigy.

Re:This is why I don't fix for family (A solution)

[millette]

I'd give you mod points, but don't have any...

What I feel is important in your message isn't really linux specific, but more the fact that if you're going to maintain a machine, you want to make your life easier using the best tools for the job. VNC or a similar solution would also be appreciated by your family.

Of course, that's saying nothing about the ease of use/maintaining linux versus windows - but that's not the point you were trying to make, right :)

Only Eleven Hours! He's Not Using Windows!

[Master of Transhuman]

I've wasted that much on Windows 98 in the average week.

So far on Linux I've wasted that much in the last week, so maybe I shouldn't say anything at all until next week.

Last problem was the k3b setup screen was too big to fit my screen resolution, so I couldn't click the buttons at the bottom of the screen. It couldn't be resized vertically, only horizontally.

A serious moron wrote that program.

Create a Case with Built-In Down-Time Meter

[ivi]

Folks the only way we're gonna be able to check
all these claims of lengthy up-times is, IMHO,
to design & install a secure gizmo that:

- runs from it own rechargable, battery pack
- has a unique identifier
- has its own IP address & LAN port
- keeps track of re-boots, power downs,
lockups & BSOD's (etc.)
- is secure from remote counter modifications
- can be remotely queried by
independent testing labs

What'cha think? ;-)

Perhaps these will become standard equipment
on all /.-ers Geek Boxes of the future... :-)

most?

[ishmaelflood]

...more than 50%, given that we are writing in English?

I doubt 50% of users express any particular emotions about their computers. Hating inanimate objects is one reason why Basil Fawlty is funny - we know that he is being stupid when he kicks his car, as we know that it is stupid to hate a computer.

Since most people are fairly rational, it seems to me they would not use their computers if they hated them.

Got to rebuild a winbox in the AM.

[mcocke]

I've spent the last 7 hours fighting with a Windows XP system. Restoring backups, uninstalling one stupid app (Norton Systemworks) and trying to install a newer version of the same app. 68 desktop.ini files all over the system, and something went blooey in the register sometime in the last 9 months...

I just can't upgrade this app - the install of the new version keeps bombing with various interesting error messages ("Cannot find source files"... on the CD?? Halfway THRU the install??) Cleaned out the registry, you name it. Not happening.

Trying to update one stupid expired application to the newest version, and I have to spend the next 3 days reinstalling world+dog. 11 hours is way too low an estimate. Have I told you how much I LOVE Windows?

Standardisation

[permaculture]

To reduce support time,
1) use a standard hardware configuration for each class of computers you run.
2) Install a standard Operating System and driver set, then use Norton Ghost or any similar application to back that up. Any PC problem short of a hardware problem can now be fixed with your standard image.
3) Hold your data on backed up servers or RAID arrays.
4) If you needed any hardware for mission critical work you might buy a support contract for it with a third party contractor.

But you were talking about a network at home run by a hobbyist so you may not want to apply these kind of rules or spend much money to reduce your support burden.

Why I hate Microsoft, and why that's okay

[1iar_parad0x]

Actually, my biggest gripe with Microsoft is that when one of their OSes approaches stability (after multiple Service Packs) Microsoft decides to introduce an entirely new OS. I also don't like having to re-learn a GUI every 2 years. I don't intend to get an MCSE, and I'm not a sys admin. I just want to run a home network. Frankly, I run a simple LAN with several app servers, database servers, a gateway and a firewall. I've gotten more down time because of power outages and random external freak accidents, then having to tinker with computer problems. Oh, and I use Linux.

Statistics smatistics

[sn0wflake]

Now I'd like to see some statistics on how much time I'm using at reading about bug reports.

Perhaps not smart enough.

[Inoshiro]

If you extended family is offering to pay you, take it. You should be charging a rate that is fair to them, such as 20 or 30$/hour. Where I am, the cheapest on-site fixing is about 75$/hour. I'll charge a friends and family rate of only 20$/hour for friends and extended family. Plus, I round to next half hour, something most local computer shops won't do.

You're spending your time fixing stuff, you should be paid for that.

Re:Perhaps not smart enough.

[anon*127.0.0.1]

I could, and perhaps I should, but I'm perfectly content with the way things are now. I should point out that extended family aren't banging my door down every time their computer hiccups. They usually go through conventional channels (tech support, internet, etc) and only call me if they're still stuck.

Last call was with a sister-in-law who had just spent 4 hours on the phone with Dell tech support trying to resolve a DVD playback issue. Their best advice was to wipe the hard drive and do an OS reinstall.

And this is why

[sdcharle]

Some of us leave the cell phone off.

Waste of Time

[rixstep]

Marshall Brainiac wasted eleven hours. For me, this article wasted about five minutes. Typing this reply wasted about two.

But the biggest waste of all is pecuniary and pompous in nature: why bother commenting on how shitty Microsoft software is? Don't we all know that already?

I spent zero hours and zero minutes taking care of my Apple network in December. This was a decrease in support time over November by zero hours and zero minutes, when there was, as per usual, no time wasted on such nonsense.

Meester Brainiac: We have no interest in your Winoze Woze. Either get out or stop complaining.

Goodbye, Meester Brainiac.

The "One minute Troubleshooting" Class

[t0ny]

Open browser window. Five seconds.

Ping the router, wait for reply. Ten seconds.

Telnet into router. Ten seconds.

Have router ping DNS server and wait for reply. Fifteen seconds.

Total time spent checking connectivity? Less than one minute.

Only when SMB is involved

[ReNeGaDe75]

After having 48 days uptime on my own desktop (until a damn power failure killed it), I can honestly say that the ONLY problem I ever have on my network is with Windows networking. Especially when it comes to printing to SMB printers using Samba. Windows likes to randomly lock people out (my dad insists on using Windows, while my mom and I both run strictly Linux.)

I've never had to troubleshoot any connectivity problems or software problems, because I build everything right the first time. My router (also running Linux) has almost 5 months uptime. I never touch it. Why should I? I NEVER have problems with it.

But I'm always wasting time fixing Windows and Windows-related services.

This is interesting?

[g_bit]

About as interesting as the fuzz in my navel.

Woah, you run Mandrake and have no problems?? Hmm, your uncle and friends aren't the type of idiots who run exe's from porn sites are they? Because that might explain it.

Of course, nobody makes any mal-ware for Mandrake because nobody runs it. (that includes you)

-1 Offtopic

[Geek of Tech]

I know this is offtopic but I've got plenty of karma, so here goes. I'm getting a new computer in two days (with plenty of harddrive space). Longbottle mentioned Linux, BeOS and Windows. What other OSes should I put on the box? (Yeah, I'm gonna have BSD)....

Re:Network Crap

[aonaran]

I'll take your Belkin when you upgrade. Don't worry I'll pay the shipping.

May I suggest something more cheaply made like a Dlink or better yet, Ovislink I've got one of their routers, and as far as I can tell, having distributed Ovislink hardware, no two pieces of Ovislink hardware are made by the same company... but the router will stay up for months at a time and even registers your dyndns.org address for you when your cable/DSL provider changes your IP.

I hate to say it kid, but if you are having that much trouble with it either A) you're doing something wrong with it, or B) it should have gone back to the store while there was still a 30 day return policy covering your butt.

If it's less than a year old you can probably return it to the manufacturer for repair/replacement, but then you'll be out a router for a few weeks.

Re:Well duh, looking at what he's using.

[Ohreally_factor]

Over 10 years ago, there was a Mac virus called the autostart worm. This was before the internet was part of most users everyday experience, so there was much less of a vector for virii. Macs are much more connected today, so there is a greater chance than ever for infection.

Mac OS X is BSD based. I haven't heard of any Unix viruses out in the wild, let alone one specific to OS X. If it's so easy, why don't we hear about Unix viruses?

linux

[LordMyren]

isnt this what linux is all about? spend 40x what you would anywhere else in hopes that it runs perfectly flawlessly for the rest of your existance? that every four seconds you save time and time again will add up the to the weekend it took to configure?

(maybe i'm just not as fast as ya'll)

Re:linux

[ReNeGaDe75]

(maybe i'm just not as fast as ya'll)

Hmmm... yea, guess you are kind of slow. I configured my linux box in about 10 minutes.

Sounds about right

[ducomputergeek]

I had to fix my dad's computer after a good old melt down and it took a total of 20 hours. Granted a great deal of that time was downloading stuff as he has Win98 and soon thing's aren't going to be there.

Personal, and professionally, I switched to an iBook about 18 months ago because I was sick of dealing with x86 based computers and their Operating systems, yes even Linux.

Same at work. When we went to purchase computers for our office, we bought everything from apple. I am sure we spent several thousand dollars more upfront, but we don't have to deal with lost productivity due to crashes, viriuses and the like.

Oh no...

[thelizman]

That's why things like binary package managers exist. Even on windows, things like this can be hairy.

Wrong song pal. I have never had more than one or two 'dependancies' with Windows. Maybe I'd have to upgrade a driver or DirectX to get a game to work, but 99% of my downloads worked on the first run. Linux on the other hand suffers from chronic chain dependancies. That's why we have words like "what provides, what depends" in our vocabularies. I can install Windows9x in under 20 mb, but the smallest comparably usable linux install is about 400 mb. The usual is about a gig. It's all those damned dependancies, and when you compile from source like I do it's too big of a pain in the ass.

The bottom line is that there is too much choice in Linux, and unfortunately that means sometimes those choices come with strings attached. It also means we have to put up with often half-assed assembled software.

Oh well. I'm going to dump RedHat for Gentoo or Mandrake soon enough.

Gotta love it

[gleekmonkey]

Fixing other peoples computer is almost a job in my family. For example:

Me: Ok guys. If you guys get an email with a screensaver attached, dont open it!
Family: Ok
Me: It's important... because its a virus that is going around.
Family: Ok

Next day (and 2 screwed computers later)

Family: My computer wont work!
Me: Did you open an email with a screensaver?
Family: Yeah, my friend Jess sent it to me.

Need I say more.

Re:Well duh, looking at what he's using.

[dbirchall]

I hate to be one to defend to microsoft here, but get off your high horse.

Let's see... I just said, "I've spent my fair share of time dealing with Mac issues this year." A quick look at what messages I've posted might reveal that those issues have included Apple losing a machine I sent them for service, and my rather new, top-end dual G5 being rendered paperweightish for a week by a kernel extension glitch in one of their OS updates. Perhaps you should think twice before deciding I'm just some sort of Mac bigot.

In actuality, there are as many PC's in the house as there are Macs. None of them run Windows, of course. I don't run Windows unless someone is paying me to do so - and they pay me quite well for that particular torment. I've used more than enough OSes, be they Mac, Windows, UNIX, or things you've probably never heard of (lucky you) to be able to bash Windows from a thoroughly objective viewpoint. :)

So, your points (such as they are):

The main reason that Macs seem so relatively bug-free is because the platform is so obscure and tightly controlled. "Tightly controlled" on the other hand... is that a BAD thing? I'm not sure. Windows, like Topsy, "just growed," and it's now got a decade plus of stuff piled atop other stuff, and so on. Which of course makes fixing it very hard. OS X has the advantage of having been able to ditch legacy stuff to a large extent.

Obscurity, as has been pointed out before, has nothing to do wiith it. Before Mac OS X, perhaps it might have - but BSD? Obscure? C'mon, we're talking about an OS that's in wide use on the Internet.

You don't have the variety of hardware that you have on a PC, you don't have the variables PCs have.

Well, "variables," whatever they are, would be different on a Mac than a PC, I suppose. Other than that... what do you think Macs are using? We've got ATA (and Serial ATA) drives, DDR RAM, USB devices, FireWire devices, PCI slots - a lot of terminology that should sound pretty familiar to a PC user.

Now, there may be things that work on the Windows because there are drivers, and don't work on the Mac because there aren't. Dunno. I do know that a fair percentage of the external peripherals I buy come with driver disks for Windows, yet are "plug and play" with the Mac. (And actually, I've observed this trend for several years with Linux, as well.)

And before you try to get off acting like a mac is immune to viruses, think again. It's entirely possible to write a virus for a mac, even OS X that can be quite destructive. Probably wouldn't take more than a few hours by a bored enough person. I'd do it myself, but I have better things to do with my time, like sex, than to write viruses.

Are you sure you're not confusing "virus" and "trojan?" This obviously-biased piece has some interesting numbers.

Also, last time I checked, the near-month service packs that Apple puts out for their OS take longer than 5 minutes to download and install.

Odd... not on my machine. But then, I've got DSL, and my system reboots in under 90 seconds... I suppose it'd be worse on an older machine with a dialup connection.

In conclusion, please share whatever pills you are taking to get to that reality, because they seem like they're pretty fun.

Well... relative to the experience of the average Windows user (in terms of security risks, viruses, stability, etc) I can't really disagree with that.

11 hours - that's nothing!

[dbIII]

11 hours - that's nothing! I spent more time than that just reading slashdot on Friday.

Re:2-3 days to reinstall OSX & apps? VERY fish

[sfgoth]

The friend almost certainly has defective RAM, which is causing random bit errors in memory mapped files, which sometimes get written back to disk (if they're prefs files), which slowly makes the machine flakey and unstable.

For some reason, no one ever suspects that their flakey, unstable machine might have something as simple as a hardware problem they could fix themselves.

-pmb

Good for you

[GCP]

It's refreshing to see a posting like this. There's nothing I wouldn't do to help my parents, if I could. I'll help my friends and extended family as much as I reasonably can, too. I expect them (except my parents) to pay for their own parts, but I can't imagine charging them for my time.

I won't spend an unlimited amount of time. I'm careful and I will sometimes have to explain that the job is going to take more time than I'm going to be able to put into it, but I try to do what I can to help them out with the skills that I'm fortunate enough to have. If they can help me out somehow in return by doing me some sort of return favor, that's great. If not, well, that's not why I do it.

Security updates for Linux

[einhverfr]

Well, you only have to do security updates for programs which are exposed to untrusted users. Since only a few people have access to any of the systems, and most of the services are blocked by the firewall, I only have to worry if one of the exposed services (apache, tinydns, qmail, openssh) has a home. Of those, only 2 have ever in my experience needed a security update. And the Apache system is running a minimalist configuration, so I don't have to worry about some mod_extension.so causing some sort of hole.

For example, I rarely if ever update BIND simply because it only serves the internal network. Same with MIT Kerberos or openldap. To exploit these systems you have to get through my firewall or exploit OpenSSH, Qmail, or Apache.

Windows is FAR more dangerous. open ports do you have on your system by default, and hw are they connected? IOW, if you exploit the RPC handler, what do you gain access to? Compare that with what you gain by accessing, say, Apache or Jabber (run as its own user).

Windows is, IMO, impossible to secure properly. You can secure a Linux system to the point where ti takes very little maintenance and few updates, however.

Making a contribution

[GCP]

It's called making a contribution, and I'm with you. There are a lot of times when my friends and family have to make an extra effort to pull part of my load. I'm not good at everything.

I'm good at this, though, so this is a good way for me to be a net giver anyway, rather than a net taker.

Too much time

[bjoeg]

Just me or does your kids and your computer, run with some unfamous buggy hardware?

I understand your frustating and this wont help, I think you spend a bit too much time on things.
Dunno about real-life situation, but think I could have cut time by over 50% on the driver issues and security issues.

Why the hell is parent modded 'funny'?

[xdroop]

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

Staff to support 100 unix boxes: 2
Staff to support 25 Macs (OS 7): 1
Staff to support 100 Windows boxes: 8

If it wasn't for the shitty OS and apps, there would be a lot of unemployed windows support people.

Re:Why the hell is parent modded 'funny'?

[skinfitz]

Shouldn't that be 4 staff for 100 Macs? The Windows figures are off - we have around 1000 Windows boxen and only 8 techs and those techs also manage our *NIX (Solaris / OpenBSD) and Mac (OS 8 / 9 / OS X) boxen.

Re:Why the hell is parent modded 'funny'?

[xdroop]

Possibly -- I should have mentioned that this is from my own experience, and I have no idea if Macs scale, or even if the single Mac guy was very busy.

The windows number I justify by saying it was the bad old days of Win95/98/NT4, in a Visual Studio development shop. So we were probably busier than a modern word-processing-and-web-browsing site would be.

Isn't it interesting how the details matter? :)

Re:Why the hell is parent modded 'funny'?

[skinfitz]

Yes - bear in mind though that the toy versions of Windows (9x/Me) are - well - shite - really. NT4 is infinitely more stable, but still too difficult to manage remotely.

Windows 2000 / XP with Active Directory domains is actually very easy to manage with group policies. You can control almost anything and apply it to the whole network at once. Very nice. If they could sort out the "must be administrator" to do lots of stuff then it would be very good indeed.

OS9 is unreliable, crap, and a bastard to manage en mass with Macintosh Manager and Remote Desktop (Oops - did you upgrade the admin tool? You just broke your ability to remote manage. Go and manually reinstall the client again.)

OS X however is rather nice so long as you have an XServe (or whatever as a server) using Workgroup Manager to manage prefs and so on. Much more elegant.

Again, all from personal experience.

step up to free and find out for yourself.

[twitter]

The uptime on the computer I'm using is 25 days. That is the last time my house suffered a power failure. In those 25 days, I have not had a single problem with it or any of the other six computers that I have running. Time spend on them is used to make new toys, programs or simply surf and email. Sure, it took time to set up and figure out, but now it just works. With Knoppix, and the experienc gained, set up will be much easier on any new machine. I've never had a virus or worm and I've never lost data to hardware failure of any kind, though I have had more than one hard drive die. Debian stable is what it says it is.

Re:step up to free and find out for yourself.

[pellaeon]

Don't worry, I've been using 'free' since 1998 and I couldn't agree more (including your sig). I've seen uptimes on my boxes of over 380 days... (only to have them ruined by some kernel exploit :( )