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Windows Fails 8% of the Time
descubes writes "A Journal du Net article reports that about 8% of Windows sessions require a machine reboot.
The relevant quote (translated from french) is: "The average rate of failures requiring a system reboot has been measured at around 8% per session. This number varies widely depending on the version of Windows. Windows 2000 has a failure rate of 4%, and NT4 is at 3%, whereas Windows XP is close to 12%." The study was originally made by Acadys and Microcost and gathered data from 1.2M machines belonging to about one thousand companies over a period of one month in seven different countries."
For once some of us don't have to RTFA! Now when we look at the numbers we go ooooh, look MSFT is teh suxx0r! But look at which versions of Windows tend to fail. NT at 3% and Win2k at 4%. NT and Win2k are being run by people with more of a clue than those running XP. XP was aimed more at the home market while NT and 2k were not nearly as much.
So, maybe the article tells more than the blurb, but it would appear to me that the reason that XP crashes more is that the people who are running it could be partly at fault (ie worms, trojans, poor hardware choices with outdated drivers).
Personally I use 2k at work and XP at home (for my Windows machines) and I can't remember a crash for either. Work is a bit of a stretch as I do shut it down daily but the XP machine hums along just fine without problems.
YMMV.
If you leave your computer running until it needs a reboot, your "failure rate" by their definition is 100%, even if you reboot only once every 6 months.
I find it hard to believe Windows XP crashes 12% of the time. I run XP at work and at home. Here at work I am building, compiling, crashing code, running about 20 things at once and I almost never need to reboot. I shut down on weekends, and sometimes at night to save the company some dough, but I rarely need to reboot.
At home, I play games, surf the web, write in MS Office...all of the typical things a normal user would do. Plus I do things that a "power user" might do. Newsgroups, Irc, nothing too great...and I NEVER reboot. I would say on average I need to reboot about once a month when Seti@home decides to get flakey or something. Does that count as needing to reboot...after a month!!?? Then I guess it needs to 100% of the time.
If people need to reboot 12% of the time, then they are doing something wrong. It's not the OS, but more the user in my opinion. XP is a stable system, and does a good job of keeping my machines running.
Win98, however, I would say needs a reboot 50% of the time. The other 50% you have no choice and it dies without a reboot.
Of course the big difference is uptime. My Windows (98) box has been up for 48 hours and is starting to feel sluggish, whereas my Linux box has been running for 4 months.
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Given that XP isn't just Win2K SP5 but is in fact Win2K with an awful lot of extra chrome tacked on, it was never going to be more stable to begin with.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
... but if the article does not quantify this failure "rate" as mean-time-beetween-failure (MTBF), then the statistic is worthless. 8% of "sessions" requiring reboot is meaningless, without defining how long is a session.
If humans are mostly water, and beer is mostly water, then humans must be mostly beer.
"Windows Fails 8% of the Time"
No. 8% of Windows failures require a reboot. Big difference.
I run Windows XP at work, I've been running it since early 2002. The 12% figure seems artificially high to me. Yes, XP does fail but by my estimate it only seems to fail on me once a month or so. That would be about 3% of the time by my calculations. Windows 2000 was comparable, maybe twice a month it would freeze up enough to require a reboot.
:)
:) One notorious box I had to repair took 45 minutes to load due to the sheer number of stupid apps the user had loading up (stock quotes, desktop weather, a dancing fish, Gator, football score app, etc. etc.... what a waste).
Windows 98 (not SE) was less than this, I only rebooted my Windows 98 box every 2-3 months. About 2.5% of the time in that case. Windows 95 crashed 3 or 4 times a day
So, if you factor in adding patches, I maybe loose 1 hour of work per month due to faults with the OS.
I think the main reason my Windows boxes stay fairly stable is because I don't install a great deal of software on them. I only install Office (Microsoft), A virus scanner, Gaim, Firefox, Thunderbird and a few apps I need for my job. I also keep up to date on patches, and do housekeeping tasks like keeping my disks defragmented.
Most of the unstable Windows boxes I've seen are the ones that have been overloaded with a ridiculous number of apps, most of them the silly ones that come on cereal packets
I'm not saying Windows doesn't have its flaws (I think everyone would be happy to forget Me!), but if used sensibly it's not *that* unreliable.
As a comparison, my Linux servers have maintained a 100% uptime so far as crashes are concerned. The only thing that's knocked them out in the last 12 months has been due to Hurricanes. My Linux desktop (KDE), however, crashes about once every 2 months. So, from a desktop perspective at least, Linux is about as reliable as Windows XP.
isn't the whole point of Windows supposed to be that it is easy to use and easy to administer? Isn't that why it's supposed to better than UNIX?
Easy is in the eye of the beholder.
People don't use Windows because it's better. They use it because it's easier. It's easier than having to learn something new. It's easier than having to install new software. It's easier than having to think about choices. It's just easier.
It's easier to reboot 12 times. Easier to just use Office. Easier to just reinstall the OS. Easier to just not care.
People don't vote because it's easier not to vote. Easier not to make up their minds... easier to just complain.
Change is hard work. Even if it's good change. Change is stressful even if it's change for the better. Change is not easier than just suffering with what you know. Learning is hard work.
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