Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
world's biggest red bull drinker
I spend half of that time reading Slashdot everyday :-/
Basically, once my linux systems are up and running, I spend 0 minuts fixing it and about 5 minutes/week upgrading it.
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.
WTF? Over?
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.
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
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.
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
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.
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
Summary: Writing all this stuff -- time spent: 2 hours.
Look at some of the numbers:
:D
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.
A blog like any other.
My respons? Either of:
"No problem, let me have a look"
"Sorry, I am a Linux developer"
This tip is GPL:ed ;-)
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.
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.
...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.
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.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
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.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
Mentioned at the end of the article is the question of what SIRCS was during startup. It would appear to be the Sony InfraRed control system USB driver.
While perusing the Google results, another writer in another blog was pondering whether SIRCS was responsible for mysterious behavior in his PC. When nothing seems to make sense it is easy to blame what is visible.
How is fixing your computer wasting time? If anything your computer lets you do things a hell of a lot faster than if you had to do it with a calculator or god forbid in with a paper anc pencil. Computers do have errors now and then and like all things occasionally break down, unless someone designs a crashproof bugproof computer, that will do all tasks you need it to do (internet, e-mail, word processing, whatnot). Its an unavoidable existence.
That is like saying eating is a waste of time because it 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.
Nuclear war would really set back cable. - Ted Turner
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
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.
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...
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
It's not "time wasting", it's called "utilising expertise".
If things never screwed up we would all be out of a job.
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
DUCT TAPE: The Election Supervisors' Secret Weapon
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).
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.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
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.
Log 1) Time wasted on /.
/., on the other hand...
Log 2) Time wasted on pr0n
Time is not wasted on pr0n.
(On the other hand? That's why we have two.)
RTFM; please, I beg you.
Ok, looking through the log there are a minimum of three computers. His computer, Mom's computer and the kids' computer.
Of the 11 hours and 20 minutes, he includes 30 minutes of a cable blackout. Now unless Bill Gates went over to the cable company and snipped some wires, that's hardly a Microsoft problem. It isn't a tv or light fixture problem if the electricity goes out, so I wouldn't call it a computer problem if the internet provider is down.
We're now down to 10:50:00.
He spent 5 minutes helping a friend with Word problems, 10:45:00.
That takes the time spent *per computer* down to 3:36 and a few seconds per month.
Of the remaining problems, a very small amount of user education can take care of a large chunk of the time. Let's start with Windows updates. 6 clicks automates this whole process and you get all the critical updates you need to stop the next worm. He devoted 1:20 minutes that he never should have to that problem. That takes the total time down to 9:25, or approx. 3:08 per computer. While this is a problem, the fix takes literally 10 seconds and from then on you spend no time keeping your computer up to date. It just happens automatically. I think this may even be turned on by default in XP now, but I could be wrong.
I've seen a lot of posts that didn't read the article and just started bashing MS and Windows. Of the remaining problems, a couple were from third party software. In fact, he even counts the time spent consoling his child when a game doesn't work as part of the computer problem time. While there are few things as sad as a Christmas toy that won't work on Christmas day, it simply isn't fair to allocate that time to the computer.
So we're down to about 3:05 per computer over the course of a month. This includes what is probably a one time event -- the 4 hours spent determining that motherboard drivers were needed and installing them. If this is a one time event, then the per computer time drops to 1:45 per month. Because this is such a limited time frame, it is unknown whether the average time spent per month is closer to 3 hours or 1 3/4 hours.
Yes, there are plenty of things wrong with Windows, Linux, OSX, and computer hardware and software in general. But this is not the article to use to get an accurate picture of how much time is wasted on poor design, bad programming, and out right errors.
I 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.
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...
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
....I have a Mac
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
No, I will not fix your computer.
'nuff said.
A Minesweeper clone that doesn't suck
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.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308
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.
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.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
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.)
"Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus."
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.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
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.
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!!!!!!....
I don't want a pickle; I just want a Motor-Cycle! A four foot cop arrived with a five foot gun!
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)
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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
clifgriffin > blog
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.
I once spent a month tracking how much time I was spending at /.
...
This guy doesn't have ANYTHING to worry about
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
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.
Reality is what we taste, smell, see, hear and touch yet we cannot comprehend it...only approximate it.
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.
- 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.
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...
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.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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.
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.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
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.
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.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
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.
SIGBUS @ NO-07.308