* * * * *
                                        
              Tell me again how easy Windows is to keep running …
                                        
> My goal was to see how much time I waste in a typical month on computer
> problems/maintenance. Prior to this experiment, I had a vague notion that I
> was spending a fair amount of time on this kind of stuff. This experiment
> has brought the actual amount of time into sharp focus.
> 
> Having done the experiment, it is amazing to me how many problems a tiny
> home network can create. Over the course of one month, I logged 21
> different errors/problems/activities that wasted time.
> 

Via The Gus [1], “Marshall Brain's Blog: Amazing Amount of Time Wasted
Repairing Computers in December [2]”

I've been using the same computer now for … um … six years or so and I
haven't had nearly the amount of problems that Marshall had in one month.
Then again, I'm running Linux (RedHat [3] 5.2 in case you were wondering, and
probably weren't) and except for the times I masochistically [4] torture
myself [5], I haven't had any problems with Linux (or Unix for that matter).

To be fair, I haven't had as many problems with Windows as Marshall, but when
I do, they tend to be rather spectacular and no amount of swearing, blasphomy
or sacraficing small furry animals will fix the problem (even reinstalling
Windows would fail—I don't mean fail to fix the problem, I mean the
installation itself would fail). That's why I pretty much stick with what I
have.

[1] http://www.spies.com/~gus/ran/i.php?040104
[2] http://marshallbrain.blogspot.com/2003_12_01_marshallbrain_archive.html
[3] http://www.redhat.com/
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:1999/12/13.4
[5] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2000/02/15-16

Email author at sean@conman.org

.