Get a VMS system would be rather better advice. We used to run those with up times of months to years. If a machine ever stopped unexpectedly it was very rare event that required a serious hardware investigation. Uptime of days is nothing to crow about.

I run my Windows XP desk system in the same way. It stays up for about three months at a time. Now that was not the case before I switched to XP. Machine would crash regularly. Then when I got XP thinking it would fix it I ended up having to get a new video card. Guess what? The problem just went away the minute I switched out the old voodoo card and upgraded to an AIT. The problem was the voodoo driver.

They're talking about the TabletPC, which has no equivalent in the Mac world.

My typical uptime in Emacs is probably two to four weeks, or the average length of a project.

My OS had better support my Emacs usage!

Eh. My brother runs Windows XP and apparently lost his hard drive to a brownout. His solution was to buy a UPS.

My approach is to turn the computer off when I'm not going to use it for a few hours, sparing the grid a hundred watts or two.

I bitch about Microsoft too, but my XP system doesn't get rebooted more often than every week or two. And even that's mostly because I'm rebooting my cable modem after Cox Cable somehow bollixes up my connection.

VMS, though, is a whole different story indeed. Back in the 80s I remember that one of our 750s went for two and a half years without a reboot. I'm not sure why we finally had to restart it, either. Probably because we installed some new hardware or something. Rock solid hardly begins to describe it.

The only reason I ever reboot my Mac powerbook is because they've updated the system software, or I'm taking it somewhere. It has stayed running for months without a hiccup. It does not crash, it does not whimper, it just stays up forever.

I fire up my Sat Pro on XP/SP2 when I use it....I really don't understand the problem here. Mind you, I have one of those NTL cable connections that everyone else in Britain whines about ceaselessly and it's been as reliable as the landline phone, so perhaps I have good feng shui. Or maybe it's because I quit porn-surfing and don't virus-share (whoops, file-share).

If it's suddenly weird to turn off machinery you're not using, we're in worse trouble than I thought. Why would you leave computers burning carbon and using up life-limited parts for no reason at all? Do you leave all the lights on?

Or do Macs take two hours to boot up or something? Can't see any other explanation for this bizarre behaviour.

I've been running my Tablet without rebooting ever since that article came out. No problem for me, since I have a gig of RAM. But the tablet input panel app does use a bit more RAM than when it was clean booted. We're working on fixing that.

Some of the Tablet team say they've gone a month without rebooting.

[So memory leaks?...]

Oh, god. Save us with the Mac smugness. My XP systems at home and at work stay up for weeks at a time. At work, I often have a dozen programs running for days or more at a time.

Mac smugness? Allow me some Linux smugness: I have two Linux boxes that have run rock-steady longer than XP has been on the market.

[I bow before your superior uptime...]

> I shut down my Tablet PC most evenings and start
> it up from a fresh boot. Why do I do that? Because
> I've been using computers for 20 years and have
> learned that's the best way to work."

Back in the 1980s, Microsoft did a lot of good work in developing and promoting personal computers. But this is one of the saddest legacies of both Microsoft's deliberate refusal to learn from the history of computing (Gates has stated it is a deliberate policy) and the rapaciousness of the 1990s Microsoft: an entire generation of humans who believe that this is how computers are supposed to work. Recently I have started to see industrial control systems where the manufacturer's advice for troubleshooting is "reboot". What is next - medical devices?

Kevin - VAXen? Hrumph. Let me tell you about our DECSystem-20 .....

Cranky

You guys are soooooo lucky. Never any power outages, or a UPS that works for HOURS while you wait for the outage to un-out itself....

Us folks in the hinterlands simply power down to avoid unhappy events, so, we just don't know about stuff like how long XP or Mac OS stays up without problems.

Now, at work, we have a generator and a huge UPS, and our Linux systems and MAC OS systems perk along just fine all the time. Our Windows 2003 server crashes with regularity. Our NT 4.0x systems work fine. Our XP systems work fine most of the time.

So it sort of depends on what you've got...

Running eComStation v1.2 on a IBM Thinkpad 600x with 500MHz Intel P3 cpu. Best system I have ever had.
Goes for months without needing a reboot.

I don't waste electricity. When it is not in use it suspends itself. To use it I just open or wake and it is ready in 2 seconds.

I use eComStation because it has the ease of use of windows but the reliability of Linux.

Just checked my Linux system (Fedora Core 2) - 81 days up time. I think that was from our last power outage. Since Macs are now on the Mach kernel, they ought to be as reliable unless Apple mucked it up.

[Apple *has* mucked it up slightly, with unlucky people getting serious memory leaks...]

Before I rebooted my computer last night (sound card issue), I had about 2 weeks of uptime on a Windows 2000 system.

My work Mac, I have to reboot every 2 days or so, the memeory seems to get more and more gummed up after that. For work I run a large number of programs, opening and quitting them with regularity. OS X seems to not be made for that. It's made for using a few aps on a permament basis.

[So you're getting lots of memory leaks?]

The abacus my grandfather gave me as a kid has been online for almost 40 years and has NEVER been rebooted.

Don't draw conclusions from the fact that some Microsoft employees are idiots. I have had an XP laptop in heavy-duty use for about four years now, and have rebooted it three times for reasons other than hardware or system software installation. Hibernate saves and restores the system state during power-off with no problems.

Your machines are named "bradford" and "delong"?
Do you have machine named "J"?

I would find this a profound endorsement of my own choices since 1985 (Mac 128, Mac Classic, UMax Clone, iMac, soon to arrive Mini) and given the fact that I routinely leave my iMac up for months at a time with exactly no problem I should be looking down my nose at anyone who uses anything else.

On the other hand it crashed Friday night and now no longer handles cookies properly and so has cut me off from the WaPo and the NYT and doesn't allow me to comment on dKos or MyDD. So I guess I will have to let others fight this round of the Mac-PC wars.

[:-)]

It is a superior machine, but anyone who tells you that they have not pounded the table in frustration because their magic box wasn't doing what it was supposed to is trying to fool you or themselves.

so you claim five nines reliability...this allows about 5min15sec down time a year. how many reboots does this allow you?

[About three... I've had four forced reboots on the office machine in the past year (but those have all been due to Berkeley's losing its power... and one kernel panic and forced reboot on the laptop...]

I find it fascinating that on an economic (mostly) blog, that the Brad is highlighting a problem that results from the massive market for PC compaitible devices, and consequently device drivers, on the PC platform -- one of the most instrumental reasons that Microsoft has an overwhelming market share.
...and it is really overwhelming. And basing on a product that Mac does not even have a competitor for...strange boasting.
As a consumer I hope Apple continues to make good products (their Industrial Design is damn good -- I would like to be running dual 30in Displays right now), but gloating about sub 5% market share seems awfully strange.
I am curious as well what people think about Apple's proprietary iPod format -- I think they are pretty well designed, but would prefer an open music format.

I concur with the pro-XP crowd. Actually, all my windows systems (4 - 2 laptops and 2 desktops) have been rock-solid since the upgrade to Win2K, XP, and XP Pro. New kernel architecture, no longer based on DOS!

> I find it fascinating that on an economic (mostly)
> blog, that the Brad is highlighting a problem
> that results from the massive market for PC
> compaitible devices,

Coach,
Presumably you are familiar with the history of desktop computing from 1970-1990? It was never an open market, so forces other than pure choice and competition constrained what was available to consumers when the explosion happened around 1995. From there on economy of scale and network effects took over.

There is a flipside, which is that the crappiness (technical term) of the PC platform in the 1980s created a secondary market which drove most of the innovation that occured 1985-1995. If IBM had chosen the Motorola 6800 and an internally-developed OS for the PC, then the secondary market might never have developed and the result not as good for the consumer.

But when Bill Gates already controlled 85% of the desktop OS market and started saying things like "we don't hire people with knowledge of 'obsolete' systems" (where "obsolete" = "lots of known problems identified and solved"), then the consumer never really had a chance. It is telling I think that when Microsoft really tried to bring out a sold OS (NT 3.51, upon which W2K and XP are based) it had to hire the architect and most of the coding crew of the aforementioned VMS.

Cranky

The key, I think, is "I've been using computers for twenty years." Twenty-odd years ago, late '70s, early '80s, we used to regularly schedule "housekeeping boots" for our mainframes, usually on a Sunday morning. These weren't forced boots. The machines would be running fine. But experience taught that if we did them periodically, we wouldn't be forced to reboot on a Wednesday afternoon when it would inconvenience all the users.

Reboot when it doesn't matter and you won't have to reboot when it does.

Your own completely controlled environment is a wonderful thing. I used to work with IBM Series 1s, early 1970s techonolgy, used as communications processors. They would routinely stay up for years at a time, even covered with dust. Typically the only reason they were ever rebooted was for some kind of upgrade.

I don't know what you Mac people are so smug about!

Windows has a HUGE library of software programs that I use on a regular basis that have no Mac alternative.

For instance, the four programs I use most on my PC are an ad-aware protector, virus protection software, a defragger for my hard drive, and a spyware remover. And there are no alternatives to these on the Mac. Sheez! How do you Mac people get any work done?

sz

The funniest thing I ever heard on NPR's Click and Clack show was a quip about Volvos: "There are two things every Volvo owner believes -- 1) Volvos are fantastically reliable; 2) mine's the only exception."

My wife, who didn't really start using computers until 2001 and she's really sure what "reboot your computer" means. I'm sure she could find the power button (a tiny one under the radio tuner knob on her miniature MSI box) but I don't think she's ever used it.

We both use Windows XP. Like Professor DeLong my wife uses her PC for email, to browse the web, to write documents, and balance her checkbook. So of course it never crashes.

My even newer laptop doesn't crash either, but I'll be darned if I don't forget every couple of weeks and restart the foolish thing anyway, even though I haven't really had to since I switched to Windows 2000, um, how many years ago? Old habits die hard, eh?

As for Macintoshes, even in this set of comments there's another one of those references to "memory leaks." I've heard those and similar problems since the days of the Apple Lisa but those things just don't penetrate Apple's Volvo-like aura of reliability.

Don't get me wrong, Macintoshes are just as nice as PCs (even if you can't buy one that looks like a radio/CD-player, and even if they still have those crippled little 1983-era one-button/no-roller mice.) But other than style they're really not that different anymore in the sense that, for instance, people like my wife wouldn't care which one she used as long as she didn't have to learn where the power button is.

sz,

you forgot the 60,000 Windows viruses that simply refuse to work on my mac.

I am curious as well what people think about Apple's proprietary iPod format -- I think they are pretty well designed, but would prefer an open music format.

The iPod has no "proprietary format". An iPod uses either the FAT32 filesystem (if connected to a Windows system) or HFS+ filesystem with a Mac.

The files used on the iPod are cross-platform standard AAC and .mp3 files. Music purchsed from the iTunes music store also has a DRM wrapper as part of the AAC file.

The only thing proprietary about the iPod is the proprietary Windows Media Protected files it won't play.

Unfortunately for Napster, these are the only files they sell. Some of us have already filled our iPods with music we actually own (and have ripped from CD over the past 5-6 years), so paying $180/year ad infinitum to fill our music players with drivel we won't be able to hear after letting a subscription lapse doesn't seem to be a very good idea.

I love it when people use threads like this to take anonymous potshots at the Mac and it's perceived failings in the marketplace. "Sub 5% market share! No software!". If the people who screech these arguments before running off into Internet-enabled obscurity actually knew anything about the personal computer market in general or Macs in particular, they'd understand that a heterogenous makeup of compatible systems is required for something like the Internet to actually, you know, work.

For example: when MSBlaster hit, do you think it would have been a good idea for all Name Servers, Mail servers, FTP sites, Web Servers and the like to have been running Windows 2000 Server? We may not have had an Internet as we know it for several hours. A homogenous system comprised of Windows machines would be a massive security risk for business and government.

No software for the Mac? No, only just about everything every written for POSIX-compliant systems, plus the vast majority of software that was written for the Mac in the past fifteen years, that's all.

20,000+ applications or so, more every day, plus Microsoft Office - which I find much faster and more accomodating in it's Mac version anyway. Considering that I only use 6-10 different software applications each day, I'll consider 20,000+ a good pool of potentials supplements.

The one-button mouse. Where do I start? Has no one noticed the literally hundreds of models of two, three, five, eighteen button USB mice for sale at the paltry price point of five whole dollars?

Oh, god. Save us with the Mac smugness.

Quite frankly, we wouldn't be so g-d smug about how quickly and well Apple has executed Mac OS X and the current crop of Mac hardware had Mac users not been berated for twenty one years about what jokes their computers were.

No viruses. No waiting 30-40 seconds for my three-year-old, 1GB-of-RAM laptop to "resume". No removing adware. No installing personal firewalls, no hunting down open RPC and other ports on a new machine before attaching it to the 'net. No installing service packs simply to gain what should be minimum security on a system.

Did I mention I work with Windows-only companies as a tech writer with zero interoperability issues? I take no small amount of pride in my Mac; I paid a little more for it to start off with, but without a day of downtime because of a hardaware or OS failure in three years, I think I'm freaking entitled.

I also get annoyed when Windows users jump in to offer their circa 1996 opinions of the Mac. If you're going to criticise anything, make sure you've got the current set of facts.

Windows is actually holding the Mac OS back in some areas; the delay of Longhorn also means delays for developing any cross-platform software on a common codebase that will take advantage of the G5's 64-bit memory space. The upshot is that I can't use more than 2 of my 8GB of RAM for Photoshop until both Microsoft andAdobe get their act together to ship a version of Photoshop that supports 64-bit memory space.

voughts-Computer:~ vought$ uptime
11:14 up 14 days, 12:02, 2 users

As far as market share,

my Windows clients are constantly asking me about buying new equipment, perhaps on a 1.5 year cycle. I am currently typing this on an eight year old computer running the latest software, slightly slow but certain.

By the manner that market share is calculated, I would assume that a brand that lasts over one that does not would tend to have a (even lower than expected) market share.

Using browser "hits" is confusing because my browser can (and does) masquarade as Internet Exploder when the need occurs.

I second the comments of SV. The only software I cannot find Mac counterparts to are the virus and hardware maintenance varieties.

Y'all are pikers. The following is from a server deep within the bowels of one of the web's larger sites:

% uptime
12:28PM up 1001 days, 21:42, 2 users, load averages: 0.60, 0.71, 0.66

This server averages better than 100 pages/sec, 24x7. It was last rebooted when it was moved to its current colocation. The other servers in its group show similar uptimes except for one that was taken down to replace a disk drive.

The OS? FreeBSD. The OS (along with Mach) underlying Apple's OS/X.

I use both, and see little reason for camps to belittle each other. There are more important things to argue about, like whether Natalie Portman is prettier than Kate Beckinsale.

...as for the proprietary iPod format, it'll be interesting to see if they run into the same problem as they did with the personal computer, namely trying to be a hardware vendor instead of licensing others to produce hardware based on their software standard.

I'd be much happier if there could be a digital video standard to be what mp3 is for audio.

As an engineer, I've always used unix-like systems (Currently Linux, uptime says 88 days).

Out of curiosity, I asked one of our Accounting guys "Is Windows reliable?"

His answer "Very reliable - every time I reboot it, it comes right up".

Having owned both, I can state categorically that if you are running windows on a machine and not playing games on it, you should be declared legally brain dead and your organs donated to some thinking creature like a tapeworm. A ¼ of a century later and Gates still hasn’t written an operating system as reliable as the original Mac OS.

I'm currently running an uptime of 33 years, plus around 80 days. My expected uptime is around a total of 91.5 years, although this may approach infinity if certain types of technological singularities occur. I'm running an operating system that has been under extensive design since the beginning of life on earth, with many individual customizations.

[You don't reboot every night?! I suspect that there are times when your system, if not hung, is unresponsive to outside input...]

I tell all of the users I support to re-boot Windows 98 every morning. Most of its problems are from third party stuff that doesn't clean up and the OS doesn't take care of either. I don't worry about it with XP. My XP box gets restarted only when I install something that requires it or shut it down to do some hardware work. The only time the OS has crashed on me is when I had a bad DIMM. At work we have an NT 4.0 server that has only seen down time for the same reasons as my XP box. OTOH, I'm putting together a box that will have 98 on one drive and SUSE Linux on the other drive. The 98 is only for purposes of testing code and so I can look at stuff when I'm home if I get a call.

Linux Servers : up 176 days, 6:39
Cisco 7200 Router : up for 176 days, 7:16:43.

(That was a power failure in a supposedly uninterruptable power
system. I had to go in and flip the power switch on the Linux boxes.)

I have had 1 Mac kernel panic in the last year - out of 4 Mac's I have running - I froze the screen and took it to the genius bar at the Tyson's Corner Apple Store. Several of the genius's had never seen one :)

Regards

Thane Walkup comments: "I'm currently running an uptime of 33 years, plus around 80 days."

Our host replys: "[You don't reboot every night?! I suspect that there are times when your system, if not hung, is unresponsive to outside input...]"

I do believe Thane Walkup, and the rest of us (ordinary Windows types), are on Stand By each night. Life would be a mess indeed if we lost our minds (memory) every night.

D's got the long and short of it - my sleep mode is very light, allowing me to resume activity within around 2-3 seconds of the initial input. However, system response can be sluggish as I page areas put to rest back into main system memory. In addition, processing continues while in sleep mode, although the output is somewhat bizzare.

Although my model does contain a 'coma' mode, it is only suggested to be used in extreme emergencies, and I hope that I personally never experience it during my expected lifespan.

I own both a Mac and a Windows XP machine. Both are equally reliable. Both automatically install updates and virus protection. Both never need rebooting or the disk defragmented (see stats below).

I have found software on both very easy to use and occasionally very difficult to use.

For example, The other day I installed a HP printer driver on my Mac and could not get it to stop pestering me for configuration information. I finally had to delete the program.

I have found, however, children's games that work quite well on Windows don't always work as well on the Mac. I don't think the gaming industry spends as much time tuning and testing their software for the Mac. It is also getting harder to find games that work both Mac and Windows. Most new titles are for Windows only.

- Steve W.

$ systeminfo
Host Name: TRUCKEE
OS Name: Microsoft Windows XP Professional
OS Version: 5.1.2600 Service Pack 2 Build 2600
OS Manufacturer: Microsoft Corporation
OS Configuration: Standalone Workstation
OS Build Type: Uniprocessor Free
Original Install Date: 3/29/2004, 1:02:54 PM
System Up Time: 13 Days, 15 Hours, 56 Minutes, 36 Seconds