Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
one of the networks i manage runs windows and ie, and if it had a downtime of 9 days per pc, i would be replaced in short order. with 30 client machines, that would be at least one machine down for 270 days!
the last machine down was for 2 days, due to needing a new part that i didn't keep on the shelf. (can't stock them all!) i ended up just replacing the whole machine, since i couldn't get the part faster. thats the only machine that's been down for longer than an hour during the past year (maybe longer). and, it was due to hardware failure, not windows/ie.
the windows risk is manageable, but it does require extra cost and work to mantain. in this case, the company is willing to tighten things down to keep the machines running well and keep the less-experienced users out of trouble. call it big-brother if you want, to them its good policy to keep business running.
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...
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.