Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

My setup: 4 Mac, network (two wired, two wireless), 3 printers, running both 10.3.2 and 10.2.8. Wife is a graphic designer so she uses fairly sophisticated programs, ftp server, and big print jobs. In the average month, since upgrading to 10.2.8 and upgrading all her Adobe programs, I spend no more than 1 hour a month troubleshooting. The kids eMac, purchased in August, HAD NEVER CRASHED any program even once. And the Safari popup blocker is flawless. He needs to change OSes.

15 minutes spent explaining to my son what to do on his new (my old...) iBook.

Let's see... OS and Microsoft software problems plus security problems (including all the PC-illin stuff), plus misbehaving I/O drivers. And this is with XP, the latest and greatest of MS operating systems. Ever heard of the 'Tipping Point'?

Andrew and Matt are right. If you eliminate the XP, IE, Outlook and Word problems, along with the time for the security updates, there would have been very little maintenance time. Macs are way over-priced, but when you figure in the $4,000-a-month you wouldn't be putting in maintenance, they start to look like a real bargain.

I have Win2k and Linux boxes and spend plenty of time keeping them both going. I'm always on the verge of buying a Mac, but can't bear the thought of also paying for a lot of expensive software all over again: PhotoShop, Flash, Director, etc.

Sorry dmh, didn't mean to leave you out. I use a G-4 with OS9 at work for graphics and as long as I reboot around lunch time it never crashes either.

The pop-up ads could be dealt with by default with a handy thing called Mozilla: www.mozilla.org

5 desktops running XP...1 running Mandrake linux (soon to be 5 linux 1 XP) all networked with ethernet cable and one laptop on the wireless.

The only real problems I have are when comcast goes down.

rt

His methodology makes the cost sound much higher than they should be; when I figure that switching from scrambled eggs to oatmeal (savings:20 minutes in prep and cleanup) in the morning would equate to 3600$ a year (10 hours/month = 300$) in 'savings'...

[and if someone offered me an 'instant omlette maker' with a 5 year warantee that saved me 20 minutes every morning, I wouldn't pay 8,000$ for it, although the calculations seem to indicate that it's a very good deal for me, a net gain of 18k$-8k$ = 10k$, minus time value of money.]

Wu

A huge chunk of time (4 hours) came from installing motherboard drivers.

I'm scratching my head as to why that took so long.

I'm also wondering why he hasn't changed browsers away from IE and/or gotten a popup blocker.

I'm also wondering why the "security" updates take an hour. You don't DO anything for those. You press the button and go do something else.

So I have problems with this tally, as well as the unecessary pain he's inflicting on himself.

This is an underestimate. I have a MAC (OS 10.2.1) and a PC (MS XP) working side by side because I have some programs that I can't port to the MAC. Not only do I have constant problems as described above. But I get all those annoying updating messages and other thikngs that are part of the MS OS.

I think he's counting download time as his own time wasted. Which as Alex points out is a little bizarre.

For all the mac users not worrying about security updates, if your OS and major applications were used on over 90% of personal computers, you WOULD be worrying about security updates because most of the virus writers and script kiddies in the world would be targeting your OS instead of ignoring it. There are holes in every major OS if it's not patched. I run a Linux web server and have to be constantly vigilant for updates to prevent leaving gaping security holes. The "casual" PC Linux user will probably do something like get a Red Hat Linux CD and just install the whole package on it. The result is a system that's overall probably less secure than a default windows installation, and which becomes less and less secure over time because of the lack of the idiot-resistant update method Windows now uses.

A lot of these problems are also side-effects of cheapness and variety. 1 hour spent with "mon's printer driver" likely has nothing to do with Microsoft. Ditto with 4 hours spent on "motherboard drivers". PCs have a far greater variety of hardware and software configurations than Macs. The down side of this is that it's a lot harder for the people making each individual component to ensure that it will be compatible with the computer system of every consumer. So, more bugs. The up side is much greater variety and lower prices.

If you look at this guy's problem list, most of them are short items except for driver issues and security/explotation issues. From what I can tell, security and exploitation (spam, popups, etc.) are the major time sinks for the typical user. I don't think there is an easy solution to this. There are just too many people out there with an interest in exploiting you and the internet so greatly magnifies their ability to do it to lots of people with little effort.

With some machines, it is well known that all downloads and upgrades will fail unless you spend every moment of the download/upgrade sitting in front of the machine, anxiously watching it, and praying...

Just as an example, I visited a family member on Christmas vacation. They complained that their computer is too slow, had weird network problems, etc. I installed a virus scanner and found dozens of viruses and trojans. Then I installed an adware/spyware detector and found dozens of such nasties. The root cause is usually being too credulous about launching e-mail attachments, downloading "free" software from Kazaa, clicking "OK" on those "would-you-like-to-install-this-convenient-utility" popups on the web, etc.

I've never understood what it is that everyone is doing with their computers. I bought a IBM laptop, off the shelf. I've never had any problems with it. It might crash once a month. But all I do is the normal stuff, surfing all over, word and excel stuff, digital photo stuff. Do people need a personal network, with server, in their home? Is this just for bloggers? Or do said people actually like tinkering with machines and having every new whiz-bang feature?

If so, then it sounds like more of a hobby, and shouldn't be counted as time wasted. You guys do it for fun, right? If I had to spend an hour every other day working on my television, I'd throw it out the window. And if your job is requiring you to maintain such a complicated home system, than upkeep of such should be factored into your pay. Which might mean you're making a lot less than you thought (a long commute could be thought of the same way).

I'll second Ian's comments. A stable computer needs a virus scanner and user dicipline. Unfortunately, too many people are too credulous. It's particularly horrible when I've had to visit some of the local Internet Cafes. Tons of ignorant users download tons of spyware apps onto each machine. When I've logged onto a computer, I have to spend 5 minutes shutting down these utilities running in the background. One program (not spyware, so much as a electronic Vietnamese-English dictionary) was taking up 90% of the processor time.

I run Windows 2000 - which (set up properly) can be a very stable OS. I have no interest in going to XP. Reports of its stability sound to be greatly exaggerated. Maybe it will be Linux next or Mac OS.

Regarding Ian's comment that Macs are not more secure, only less known, this isn't true. At a basic level they are more secure because they are built on the multi-user model of a network machine. Meaning that neither users nor programs can do anything that affects the basic OS functions or other programs unless the user herself types in their root password. Which, btw, only gives permission for one specific activity - it doesn't log you in as root.

XP, on the other hand, is basicly always running as root. Which means there is absolutely no end to the damage a user, or a virus, can do without the person being away about what they're doing.

Remember, even OS' with less installed base that OSX, such as BeOS, have many more virii that OSX. If it were true that Apple's only advantage over XP were obscurity, BeOS would be even more secure.

On a final note, the main reason that XP is so bad on security is because of Microsoft's desire to flex the monopoly as much as possible. So things like Visual Basic Scripts, that can run root-level commands from a Word or Excel document, can easily be abused. Don't believe me? Look are the websites that house Kiddie-Scripts, which anyone can download and start a new virus attack.

I don't know why people put up with flawed and defective OS products like XP. I think it is because they fear an alternative system (such as OSX or one of the various Linux flavors) will not play well with Windows. Users of these systems, of course, know that isn't the case.

sz

It's funny. The only maintanence I do is to curse Bill Gates and my ISP while I'm rebooting. But I enjoy cursing, and I seldom curse Bill for more than an hour in any given day.