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PCs Use More Sick Days Than People
lunarscape writes "ZDNet is running an article about the 'absentee' rate of PCs in various UK workplaces. According to the article, while the average employee was out sick seven days a year, the average PC was inoperable due to a virus nine days a year. The article also discusses junk e-mail's impact on productivity, with one business reporting that 99.84 percent of all incoming mail is spam."
It never has any problems and is always worki
42 percent say they found it less stressful fighting their way through rush-hour traffic than finding legitimate e-mails among the spam
Living in Seattle, they might think differently.
Sigs cause cancer.
I can't really remember the last time I got sick, but I'm pretty sure the treatment was not to re-image myself.
99.84 percent of all incoming mail is spam
Is that one of the 86.55% of all statistics which are made up on the spot?
Bah. It's a proven fact that 40% of sick days are taken on Mondays and Fridays. Why should my PC be any different?
3D Printing Tips and Tricks at Zheng3.com
What would you excpect with most corparations running Windows adn IE?
Coffee, you can sleep when you're dead!
How many days were they "absent".
I bet it was a lot fewer than 9, especially if most of those "absences" were because of viruses.
I didn't RTFA (this is /.), but I wonder what the breakdown is for diferrent operating systems: Linux, Mac OSX, OS 9, Windows flavors.
Where I work the primary reason for PC's going down is hardware, not software.
These PCs are spending more and more time binge drinking on the weekends. Macs are notorious for ending up dancing with a lampshade on its head.
with one business reporting that 99.84 percent of all incoming mail is spam
They seem to have expended time/resources to perform such a precise calculation; perhaps it would have been better spent researching and implementing spam filters.
Sigs cause cancer.
My PC just cant handle its liqor at all. Damn Mac boozes all night and gets up in the morning no problem though. Its killing me trying to keep up.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
In the survey only 2,500 people were polled. That's an insanely small number to post concerning such a wide spread thing as computers. That is like taking a group of 100 people in New York and using that as a representitive sample. An online poll could have gathered more like 50,000 on a well traveled site.
I'm right in with this. So far this year I've had
2 different PCs
3 complete PC rebuilds
No VPN access for 5 months and authentication issues due to an Active Directory migration.
I work in IT, go knows what the poor buggers who just have to work WITH IT have to put up with.
As Computing professionals we should all be ashamed of the quality standards that we have allowed, and continue to allow, to be considered a production ready release. Until we have the same standards of excellence that Engineers have in the construction industry we might as well have arts degrees.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
If my office computer doesn't use its sick days, can it use that money for upgrades?
the average employee was out sick seven days a year
Oh really. The average Scandinavian is out thirty days a year and the per capita GNP is still higher. I find that figure way too low, considering the 'socialist' system in the UK that's even survived Maggie.
My computer will still get promoted before I am!
Nine days?
That's the problem with averages. They can be calculated in so many ways. I know that I've never had a workstation down for nine days out of a year.
Best Windows Freeware
I'd be out sick more often too if 99.84 percent of what I ate each day was spam.
Why is the proposal for a Do Not Spam list being based upon the cleartext version of the email address, rather than something reasonable like the MD5 checksum of the email address?
Looks like the machines are beating us! Come on folks, we've got some catching up to do!
9 days?? I mean, I slam MS as much as the next guy, but the AVERAGE is 9 days???
How long does it take a tech to reimage a PC?
Or even reload an OS??
Are these shops with no Virus Protection at all???
That number is so far out as to be totally unreal...
Heck, I don't use anti-Virus software at home, just safe email practices and Firefox instead of IE, and I have yet to get an infection (Deleted plenty of attempts tho..); and my PC has never been out of service more than the few hours it takes to run a housecall scan for Virus checks..
desiv
There is nothing in the article that says the survey was for PCs in workplaces.
It just says "A survey of 2,500 UK e-mail users found that 70 percent of users had been infected by a virus in the past year." It then relates that to average UK worker sick days. Nothing says the PC's were in the workplace.
Which of course makes MUCH more sense. If the average PC atany workplace I know of was down for 9 days a year heads would roll. That's insane. Average PCs at my company are down maybe a fraction of a percent due to viruses because there are professionals making sure it stays that way.
So this article is basically "70% of random HOME users were infected in a year."
Businesses seem to have been asked only about spam.
Doesn't seem like news at all.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
What do you think the compency level is in this organization on everything else they do?
Good news is they will not have this problem for much long. Chapter 7 is a very efficient Spam eliminator
Help fight continental drift.
This how PCs respond to this article. "OK, You started to count the absentee rate of PC. When will you start to compare the salary you paid to your human emplyees?" "Sure 99.84 percent of all incoming mail is spam, because human can't read what machine write, and machine can't read human write."
you healthy, wealthy and wise!?!
Hey! No I don't mean the shiny colourful thing on my desk
...the average PC was inoperable due to a virus nine days a year.
Do they include all sources for down time or just the PC? For example, a PC can go down due to a local virus/worm issue, or it can go down because an important server on the network is down due to a virus/worm issue. If the e-mail server is overwhelmed with scanning, even if it isn't infected itself, then that is effectively a DOS for every PC on the network (everyone just sits there staring at a blank e-mail client).
One thing about dealing with SPAM is that filtering programs that quarantine suspicious e-mail and then send another e-mail to the intended recipient are worse than all SPAM itself. I'd rather click "delete" on some obviously rediculous e-mail about fun things to do with animals rather than have to read a cryptic quarantine notice and determine whether I need to contact the system administrator about it.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Personally, I don't see why anyone should compare sick computer to sick people. While people are basing new computational methods on biological systems, they're not equivalent. Any competent individual should regularly back up their files to a server or another computer. Once the computer calls in "sick", you reload your files and switch to another computer. Obviously, this is rarely the case when a person is out "sick". Even if an individual was to completely document their daily workings, there's still the subtle workings of an individual's thought processes that simply can't be transferred via documentation. And we can't do a brain core dump...yet.
They now outsource all thier processor cycles to India to do the work instead. Although we have had to let some computers go because of it. :p
You know, when you get right down to it, computer sick days and human sick days pretty much come from the same root source: failure of proper preventative care. Us people don't go to the doctor unless we're sick, typically, because it takes up too much time out of our days to see one otherwise, and it costs too much to go when not necessary, especially with the rising costs of health isurance. By the same token, most people don't fix their computer until it breaks (and sometimes not even then) because it takes time to keep it up-to-date (yes, I know there are auto-updates on virus scanners, Windows patches, etc., but we all know those are imperfect and not necessarily widely implemented), and for those not using free software, it costs money to have an anti-virus subscription or to get a firewall (since most people don't use even MS's built-in firewall).
The real irony is that, in both cases, the benefits of cost-preventative maintenance far outweigh the costs -- in humans, we get less sick less often, and thereby lead better lives and create less upward pressure on health insurance costs; in computers, there's less downtime, and considerably less risk of some catastrophic breakdown/break-in. Too bad people can't see this, and as a result don't do preventative maintenance.
How To Get Humans To Mars
99.84 percent spam? Must be asdf.com.
See you, space cowboy...
and so the 7 day average applies to them as well.
May be the puters' 9 day average downtime is because of this
I've only had downtime on one of two my machines for about 2 days. The video card self destructed.
What's really sad is that, in my rather small local area, more than half the people have had actual downtime due to spyware. (It should be noted that all of our machines are preconfigured with IE5 and Netscape Nav 4.7. Guess which one is more popular.) While I'm not sure exactly why, it seems that some spyware can knock out our source control tools.
IT seems to be pretty decent about squashing both mail and network based V/W/T however. They send out site-wide emails detailing the status of outbreaks too, which is kind of interesting to watch sometimes. Most of the time, an outbreak notice is sent in the AM, and cleanups are done either before I leave or before I get in the next day. Overall, I'd say ad-based malware is much worse on our time than ad-free malware.
Apparently even the poster didn't RTFA - the article states:
Our corporate workstations were affected significantly enough by virii last year to be down a total of less than a single day each. Still more downtime than we'd like, but nothing like nine days. Now spam - that's another kettle of fish altogether...
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
The worst of them are some of those especially illegal eastern European bioengineered viruses -- if a worker catches one of those, he calls the manufacturer and leaves the doors and windows at the workplace unlocked. And then he starts sending out hundreds of emails hawking penis enlargements, breast enlargements, home mortgages, spyware, and immunizations against the most popular, common viruses.
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
I like those days at the office when PCs are down. It's far more enjoyable fixing those problems than doing actual work...
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
The same thing goes for safety, I know at Mercedes they're all about safety and injury prevention, which therefore prevents them from paying workman's comp without getting any value from the worker.
So this data implies that computer trouble has become as much as a problem as sickness is, I wonder when some company is going to take a major initiative to fix this.
And you know (, I don't wan't to blame it on windows directly, but sometimes I wonder... How many major auto companies use windows products? Ok, time to stop before I starting getting flamed...
.. it have its permanent dose of penicillinux.
My computer at work hasnt needed to be "fixed" by our IT staff in over a year (if you dont count patching it every week and new softawre installs). I attribute 90% of computer downtime to people downloading and installing gator/comet cursor and crap like that.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
We send them to the Steve Wozniak Clinic to detox.
I don't make much sense, do I?
--- Ban humanity.
I knew there was a reason for the program. Next thing you know, the HMOs and managed health care plans will start providing PC insurance and for a $20 co-pay you can get your PC checked out. Actually, I guess that what anti-virus and anti-spyware programs do...and compared to realy health insurance, they are quite a bargain.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
I think my PC may have herpes.....no wait, it's just Windows.
If patches are equivalent to doctor's visits my PC is one sick critter! I am not sure what a re-install would be equivalent to...
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Um, I don't quite get the point of this thread.
/. has been usurped as the biggest internet-related time waster in the typical office environment?
Are we trying to illuminate the deleterious effect of computers and the internet to their own improvement in worker productivity?
Or are we trying to determine whether
How do we know that their 2500 people were representative of all computer users though?
Something that would be interesting is to calculate the down time of home PC's and compare that to the down time of corparate PC's. One would hope that Corparate PC would have a longer up time. However, I know for a fact, at least in my case, that I keep my home PC (both my Windows and FreeBSD box, although my FBSD box has had an incredable uptime of about 8 months) running better. Even though I have the ability to make sure that my work PC is running top notch, I just don't have the time at work to make sure that it runs top notch. There seems to be a delicate balance between keeping the computer running just enough to get my work done and having a top notch, well optimized system. I guess since I am not an IT worker I can not justify having a pimped-out, well optimized computer. Nonetheless, comparing uptimes of home and work PC's would be absolutley entertaining.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
In my unofficial survey, I've found that 83.46% of all "sick days" taken by computers are caused by user error.
"What do you mean I wasn't supposed to delete that file?"
On another note, 99.99992% of computers work harder then the user.
Taking a few sick days is certainly better than being DEAD.
I tried for 5 years to come up with a clever sig...only to realize that I am not clever.
A) Delete the spam.
B) Install a popup blocker. or
C) Stop installing every "FREE" weather bug utility when you've got a frickin window office.
Then again, I just spent 5 minutes reading and writing on slashdot about my problem with clueless users. The point is, spam or no spam, people are going to bitch about something or another.
Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the
Psssh. Come out here, I'll introduce you to the 405. If the gangbangers don't kill you, the soccer moms surely will.
"We call that the Dennis Miller ratio."
Just because the PC (or employee) is healthy, does NOT imply it's being productive. I mean jeez, look at the slackdotters around here.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
I'm suprised no one has caught onto the big news:
the average employee was out sick seven days a year
Considering that we only get 5 days of sick time, this is a travesty.
What about things like BSOD when you try to do more than your "little" OS can handle? This happens to me once a week on average. Reboot takes ~10 minutes.
Then there's the "really, really critical security patch" (no shit, that's what our IT calls them now). These require reboots many times. And since I am always working on several things at once, see above, the shutdown and reboot may take 15 min or more. I would estimate we get at least 6 of these a year.
Once a week we have a virus scan program that runs, slowing my machine to a crawl... see above, and cuts my productivity by 30% for at least 3 hours.
Then at least once a year, something happens where my computer may be spontaneously booted form the network, account locked or some such stuff. This requires a help[less] desk call which takes me down for at least half a day to resolve the problem.
So the total is:
- BSOD = 8.2 hours/year
9 days of downtime.Patches = 1.5 hours/year
Virus Scan = 50 hours/year
Help-Desk - 4 hours/year
Total: 63.5 hours/year @ avg workday = 7 hours;
I was sick a total of 2 days last year.
Karma, We don't need no stinkin' karma!
It's hard to /. at home. That's what my computer spends a goodly amount of time doing at work. That and providing - repetitive exercises (Solitaire up, Solitaire down, and 3 and 4). It enjoys its job too much to call in sick.
Have you Meta Moderated t
.. to buy than Macs or linux machines. Standardization makes it cheaper, they said. It is easier to support, they claimed. "They" need to be fired.
It never ceases to amaze me that something like this completely escapes the attention of CIOs and IT people. How productive is your highly paid employees now?
One question I have is who defined what the spam was? Is my girlfriends email about supper tonight spam if delivered to my work account?
It's a simple question, likely to get many flames but it has an interesting impact!
-Ghost
Even if the computer was down 9 days out of the year, there is still vacation days that they don't use. Plus the fact that the computer at times does over time, (where a process is ran overnight or over the weekend.) I for one welcome our new mechanical overlords... (RTFA I don't need no stinking RTFA.)
if the pc's are down that long, the IT staff starting with the CTO needs to be fired. In my 3 years as a network admin I haven't had all the pc's put together down for 9 days. Especially not for something as simple as viruses.
presmike
That is 216 hours. Still high yes, but much more realistic.
Finally, a slashdot article with a strong reason to support installing MS Windows on your work machine!
[Windows] PCs Use More Sick Days Than People.
All of our Linux and MacOS X systems at work have been fine.
Coincidently, this morning I happened to overhear our email folks (in my day job) talking about our SPAM rate. We're up to 88% now. That represents 1.3 million of the average 1.5 million messages we receive per day.
*sigh*
At least where I work my colleagues and I frequently install viruses on our own computers, make a hysterical call to IT about how I have looming deadlines, and go home early.
oh i get it venerable master...
the software engineer was worried that she might be sacked after she completed her project, however when she realised her work was flawed she was happy because she should already have been sacked for being rubbish, and all her subsequent employment was a lucky bonus?
As the great master said "it is all swings and roundabouts"
am i enlightened yet?...i don't have to pick up redhot mainframes with my bare forearms now do i?
Linux and SPAMAssassin.
And that's ALL she did. It never occured to her to INSTALL it. We're not takling about keeping up with the updates.
Some user's are clueless and have to be protected from buying a new PC everytime it 'slows down.'
The only time it wasn't sending Spam is when it was turned off (which sometimes she couldn't even do without pulling the plug from the powerbar; trying to shut it down wasn't working.)
Maybe she should have stuck to the abacus...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
BSD is the guy everyone ignored. He died yesterday.
./, I like BSD too!)
(hey it's
I find this amazing.
I guess business needs to learn you spend it now or you spend it later - with adequate protection on the mail gateway, file, print and mail servers and desktop PCs I don't think we have nine days *total* virus downtime a year across the 2500 machines in our organization - at 86 locations in 14 countries.
I can understand that firewalls and AV products are expensive - but downtime is even more expensive.
If the proper infrastructure is in place a network can be reasonably secure - but businesses need to spend some money to secure it. If they've spent the cash and are still seeing this kind of downtime they need to fire a buncha sysadmins and desktop support people.
we see things not as as they are, but as we are.
-- anais nin
As for my Dell Windows machine (which I bought at about the same time), I've had about ~10 hours worth of downtime, which doesn't include the OS wipe I'm going to have to do shortly due to Windows quirks.
So neither computer has been down a whole lot. But then again, both of us know a reasonable amount about how not to fsck up computers.
If you don't want spam coming into your work e-mail address, you should only give it out to your work colleagues and clients. If anybody is getting 99% spam in their work e-mail inbox, it is because they used their work e-mail address to register for websites, buy stuff online, etc. And they didn't bother to uncheck any of the boxes to sign up for "newsletters" and "exciting offers from our partners." I guard the e-mail addresses I use for personal business and work carefully. I use disposable, free Yahoo mail addresses to register on websites and make online purchases. Using this technique, I have only received one or two pieces of spam at my "real" e-mail addresses in the past several years. My Yahoo addresses get all the spam, and even those are pretty good at filtering the spam into the "Bulk" folder.
Computers are a lot cheaper than an employees, why compare sick days for people to computers?
I'd say that the average machine I maintain for corporate cluebies takes about an hour a week to run through scandisk, and another hour to defrag. Add on an hour to run through an Ad-Aware sweep (how the hell do they get some of this stuff on their machines... it's about time to just say 'screw it', and disable any and all forms of ActiveX, program downloading, or scripting) and you're up to three. Add an hour for the weekly full system virus scan. Add fifteen minutes to add any new Windows Updates, and another five for associated reboots (a minute here and there add up).
That gives me a total of 4:20 a week in regular maintainance. (insert pot reference, here) Over the course of the year, that comes out to just over 9 days.
Keep in mind, though, that normally this maintainance would be done during off hours. The business I have in mind, though, is open 24-7. Any maintainance has to be done while the machines are potentially in use.
My point, though, is that I can have 9 days of downtime on a machine, even without the user screwing it up.
Absence per year:
At work:
~250 Linux systems: 1-2 hrs/yr
~20 Solaris systems: 1-2 hrs/yr
~25 Windows systems: 2 day/yr?
~10 Macs: 2-3 hrs/yr
Then again, we have serious firewalls, and bought a Barracuda spam/virus filter. The Linux downtime is almost all hardware-related (old, dying PS, cheap memory - yes, we're getting away from these). Mac downtime is mostly hardware, and one flaky OS9 app.
At home:
2 Linux systems: 1 day/yr
2 Win systems: 1 day/yr
Good firewalls, only the Linux systems have internet access. Linux systems are always on, Windows are on mostly when used, so guesstimate is for lost time. Down time for Linux systems is mostly trying something weird or adding hardware. About half the Windows downtime is for that.
I also have a production Linux server at a colo. It's been up 499 days, and was down for maybe 2 hours the previous year. So 1 hr/yr.
I have a good firewall for this system, too.
Lessons? Even Windows systems can show up *if* you have a secure environment and educated, trustworthy users. We have, just today, though, implemented a "no IE" policy. And without Windows, life is even easier.
(For the record, TCO/system at our site, and my house, is *much* lower for the non-Windows systems. 8^)
I have serious doubts that the survey included machines with stable operating systems.
I would hazard a guess that the wintel world wants it that way...
Somebody gets paid to remove the malware.
Considering how much time one group of co-workers spends talking about everything but work, during hours they are being paid to work, I'd be happy to have them take only 9 sick days. My PC would have to be a zombie to waste that much time.
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
I am sorry. You must spend another lifetime on the Great Wheel. See you in 50 years.
my 3 desktops, 1 laptop at home, 1 pocketpc, 2 desktop at work can run 365 days a year, even when there's a virus.
btw, I pity the short life span of a pc, they got killed when they can still walk.
[in stephen hawking's voice] my mouse hurts...
So far for the past 2 years I have had:
1 PC
The same image on it.
I reboot MAYBE once a month.
I have been infected with zero viruses, have had 0 browser hijacks, and have installed 0 pieces of spyware (cookies don't count).
I work in IT.
I am running Windows XP Professional, and I am always logged in as ADMINISTRATOR!
How have I avoided problems for all these years? Easy. I follow my own guidelines: Don't execute email attacments, don't install software from untrusted websites, use an antivirus and keep it up-to-date, use windows update. This provides evidence that it is NOT the operating system that is causing problems, but the users who just can't help themselves but to go to online gambling and shopping websites.
I've got a revolutionary system to fight spam that I guarantee will be 99.84% effective for this company! It's simple, free, and uses all existing tools! Here's some sample code:
PS: Don't listen to people who tell you it has a high rate of false positives. 99.84% effective, man!
It was a Filipino doctor, right? I swear to God I've heard the exact same thing from my mother-in-law.
Make that "Troll," please. It's a karma-trollwhore
I would like to see the breakout between Windows and Linux.
The ZD editor got it right and used the term 'viruses' and not 'virii'. So learning Latin was good for something.
The example in the article is not very well chosen. It describes some guy involved with IT as an CEO explaining how many mails had to be deleted from the inboxes by hand. One can only speculate about their state of mail servers. If the mail server runs spamassassin they shouldn't have gotten that huge amounts of UBE/UCE. Client-side spam-filtering is never good. But if the company can't afford an admin, then there're mail clients with spam-filters, e.g. thunderbird, mozilla -mail. False positives are always problem. Due to faulty mail-clients, silly subjects or just improper email header fields. If the senders can't write a proper email they'll have to call me on the telephone. It's a harsh policybut it works.
2. It's so easy to filter spam from the inbound email server, the problem isnt spam so much as either not fixing the problem or management not paying for the proper applications. The filters arent perfect, but catching 98% of spam is better than having 99% of email BE spam.
..to set up an office PC properly:
I mean.. the standard image they come with from the manufacturer is always a bit buggy due to things like multimedia keyboards, java plugin updaters, windows messenger, etc autorunning... and FAT32 disk drives if its a Dell.
Repartition, 8gb for system, rest as a single NTFS partition. Move swapfile into 2nd partition. Disable Messenger service, uninstall Windows Messenger if XP. Update Windows.
Defragment, install apps, defragment again. Lock down user accounts so they can change clock, date, screen res and background but nothing else. Disable Luna theme if XP. Set AV to autoupdate, turn on ICF if XP.. and send to its end user.
Or just set up the domain login and send out a machine with a crappy manufacturers image.. and enjoy supporting it.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
My workers dont use much email anymore.
They use
- MSN Messenger
- Jabber
Chat tools.
E-mail is unreliable, chat-tools are not.
but with (false positives) / (false positives plus true negatives) = 100%, your spam filter would definitely suck. This happens to be the probability that a legitimate mail gets marked as spam.
I love C++
I work in the UK, supporting the software distribution to over one hundred and fifety thousand workstations, and eight thousand servers for the government.
As a stat-monkey, I can quite honestly say the workstations on the estate suffer far less problems than the users that operate them. Almost without a doubt, the only time a PC is inoperable is when, somehow, it has corrupted itself enough to warrant the hard disk swapping out. Far less than one day's work and it happens very, very rarely.
i didn't reply to the grandparent.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
That we made sure that intelligence became a desirable trait in our society.
That way us smart people get the cushy jobs and don't have to pay for our music, movies or whatever.
If you have a problem with that, go watch sports on TV.
If I can convince any regular person that I am smart by mumbling off technical terms until they let me do what I want, is that any worse than physicall intimidating people by having abnormally large muscles?
Please get off the internet.
All email virii are spread by user stupidity, opening shady attachments.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Was she a horny vixen you ask? Yes
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