Computers Top BBC List of Stress Producers

twitter writes "The BBC is reporting results of a poll by UK charity Developing Patient Partnerships that shows crashing computers to be one of the most common stresses and that it's actually killing people by driving them to drink and smoke. The quoted list has: 1. IT problems - 30%, 2. Change in financial status/personal injury - 24%, 3. Commuting - 20%. I've seen people take a smoke break when their computer pops a window and they lose an hour or two of work and admins taking their break straight from the bottle."

Comments

Which is it?

[Dekortage]

From the article: "1. IT problems - 30% ... 2. Change in financial status/personal injury - 24%" Then later: "Over two thirds thought stress was simply having a 'bad day', 63% said it was dealing with difficult people and 58% saw stress as having too much to do." Okay, so which is it? 30% said IT problems were the top problem, but 63% said dealing with difficult people? Maybe the IT problems are caused by difficult people...?

Elsewhere: Considering that most people - 79% - believe they have been stressed in the last year.... ONLY 79%?! Who are these 21% of people who haven't felt stressed in the last 365 days?

Re:Blame Windows

[kesuki]

That reminds me of the bug windows 95 had where it you left it running for 40 days it would crash. it only took them 6 years to reproduce the bug so they could fix it.

XP at stock is very stable, though, but there is a wider problem in computing than just the 'OS' the electrical grid can have spikes (no problem a good PSU can protect you) and worse, undervoltages. there is Nothing (other than having massive redundent arrays of capacitors) that can be done about under voltaging, and even then it's just a matter of time before the undervolateges cause the capacitors to all blow... then we have people trying to plug everything on one 15 amp breaker that was designed when people had like a living room radio as 'entertainment'

PC power and cooling is selling a PSU that can draw 38 amps from Each 12 volt rail. Dude, my OVEN only operates on 60 amps. but i guess if you want that quad sli setup so you can run battlfield 2 at full resolution on a 40" LCD screen... call an electrician, and have em put in some 60 amp wiring to where your pc plugs in...

er, well there is more than just power issues there are 'reliability' a lot of technology is built on a 'pump and dump' model make it cheap as possible and who cares if it blows up, or sucks etc. they'll just buy more of the junk. still more hardware is designed and engineered broken, but it seems to work fine so they ship it and then find that it seems to work fine but only with one configuration of hardware etc.. it takes a lot of time and energy to really find out who's got a good solid product, and who's selling the flimsy ones.