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

Heh

[metlin]

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

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

[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

[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

[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.

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!

[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..

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

[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

[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

[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

[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!

Not to nitpick...

[Fortunato_NC]

But I think that time spent restoring a computer to its formerly working state isn't so much wasted as annoying. Because you're going to waste a lot more time if your computer isn't usable.

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

All in all, out of the 43,200 minutes in a month w/ 30 days, we're talking about a 1.6% rate of unavailabilty. And no doubt, that's unacceptable, but I bet as far as home computers go, that number is as good as it's ever been.

How is it wasted time?

[KingDaveRa]

How could it be classed as 'wasted'? Its a necessary fix. Would you class filling your car as wasted time, or making lunch as wasted time? I think the article is a bit redundant personally. Its just nullified my entire job by saying all I do is a waste of time.

And Linux isn't the answer to all our prayers. It will work 100% out of the box, only if you install it on supported hardware, otherwise its a few hours finding an obscure patch to make things work. I spent a good few days trying to coax FreeBSD into running UDMA modes on its IDE controllers only to find out its not supported with the controller on the board. That's not 'wasted' time though. It was investigation to find the problem was mine - my fault for buying a cheap board. The only things I'd class as wasted time would be waiting for a bus that never came or waiting for a render which you knew wasn't going to work.

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

Waste #22

[gspr]

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

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.

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

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.

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. :')

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.

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: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.

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.

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.

Bill for your time

[chigaze]

My dad the welder taught me not to let family take advantage. If you do something for a living it means you bill for your time. You might have a 'family rate' but you still bill. He does make exceptions but in general he has a an hourly rate he charges for welding. He has also paid me for any tech work I've done for him.

Re:Bill for your time

[Jedi Alec]

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

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

Re:Bill for your time

[Tim C]

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

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...

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).

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

[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.

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)

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.

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: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.

No, I will *not* fix your computer.

[Hanji]

No, I will not fix your computer.

'nuff said.

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.

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: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.

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.

Family IT support

[Matey-O]

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

Skewed results

[t0ny]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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: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.

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: 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: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:Lie or exaggeration?

[DavidinAla]

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

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

Re: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.

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.