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We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

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Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#241

Post by figassis »

jeroenhd wrote: post #105
figassis wrote: post #81

I know this will get some downvotes, but I'm the IT person in my close family. Used to get calls all the time to fix slow laptops, CD drives not working, keyboard not working, system not booting, popups everywhere, apps crashing, you name it. Each would take insane amounts of time to troubleshoot. And then sometimes their machines just needed to be upgraded because they were running the new office, and the new skype…

> they just wanted a quick fix, not spend $$$. > Then I bought macs for everyone I bet you would've gotten similar results if you spent the same amount of money on Windows computers. For example, my dad is using an 8 year old Windows computer that he got second hand. It works absolutely fine because it wasn't underspecced at the time it was produced. People underestimate the difference investing in good hardware make…

I would not. I never bought laptops under $1000. I know what to buy and I'd almost always customize specs for the person that needed it (spend more on ram, graphics, cpu, cooling for my architect sibling). Still, 3 year expiration. Starts with fragmentation (you end up having to defrag more and more frequently), every app you install makes the system less stable (messes up the registry, add/removes some random and critical .DLL), uninstalling doesn't necessarily fix. There's this accelerated entropy on windows PCs that I had just had enough of.

Don't get me started on the update reboots when you really need to get work done. On the long startup times even when you clear out the startup items, the never knowing if a reboot will actually be that or a BSOD. If you're helping someone remotely and they say "It's asking me to reboot", you know you'll have to drive to them to help it back up.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#242

Post by figassis »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #184
Etheryte wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question in my opinion is not really about specs — no matter how much you spend on your hardware, you can't, pardon my French, take the shitbox out of Windows. Device manager and registry still being a thing, reboots to install software, ads in the start menu, etc are a good example of how Windows is not a system for human users. It's amazing how much backwards compatibility they've offered over the decades, yes,…

How often do you have to touch the device manager? Registry is fine. It's not a very big fraction of software that needs a reboot. It's much more common to have an OS update need one, and that's pretty universal across desktop OSes. The ads are bad. Though interestingly those are relatively new , not baggage.

You install autocad, reboot. You install something that uses the camera, reboot, you install an antivirus, reboot, you uninstall any of these things, reboot. Worse is the restore points that never seem to actually restore anything. Often they just make it work because now you're in a weird state where something that was supposed to be there isn't there anymore.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#243

Post by matsemann »

figassis wrote: post #81

I know this will get some downvotes, but I'm the IT person in my close family. Used to get calls all the time to fix slow laptops, CD drives not working, keyboard not working, system not booting, popups everywhere, apps crashing, you name it. Each would take insane amounts of time to troubleshoot. And then sometimes their machines just needed to be upgraded because they were running the new office, and the new skype…

This comment and all child comments reek of a logical fallacy.

If your family had stayed on Windows, would you have gotten more requests today than with the current setup? It's disingenuous to compare Windows of many years ago (on probably some crappy underspecced and bloated laptop) vs a modern OS (on expensive hardware).

Data point of one: I also used to be the IT person in my family. Still is. But I never get calls anymore. Things generally just work. And most of them run Windows.

Actually, I've done more support for people using MacOS. Each upgrade inevitably break something. Only way to have a hands-off Mac experience is to tell everyone to never upgrade their OS..

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#244

Post by figassis »

ilyt wrote: post #223
jeroenhd wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they just wanted a quick fix, not spend $$$. > Then I bought macs for everyone I bet you would've gotten similar results if you spent the same amount of money on Windows computers. For example, my dad is using an 8 year old Windows computer that he got second hand. It works absolutely fine because it wasn't underspecced at the time it was produced. People underestimate the difference investing in good hardware make…

That's more to your dad not managing to install any crapware many computer-clueless users get baited into rather than hardware itself. Even the bottom line machines nowadays are perfectly fine for "living" (internet, multimedia, office apps etc.).

Sorry, I'm a software engineer, I never installed crapware, ever, and I moved off of windows (long before I moved my family). The amount of time spent troubleshooting issues was always non negligible. Today, on Mac I wan wake up, open the lid and start coding. With windows, I used to be afraid of even closing the lid the night before. The amount of peace of mind I get today, and the time I save? Macs could cost 2x more and I still would be saving money. Funny thing is, before I moved to macs, I used to not like them at al, mainly because the entire UI/UX was different. But then I got used to it, and huge productivity boosts like spotlight (don't get me started on windows search + all the indexing while searching), silent almost never activating fans, like confidently leaving the house for 5 hours without having to carry a charger (try that with a powerful windows laptop), being able to drop the thing without having to worry about buying a new one, and a 1000 other little things that really add up. My point is, the reason there are apple fanboys is not because they're a great company, or they pretend to want to save the planet, or because of "one last thing" or whatever, it's because of all these small things that add up to just letting you do your work and forget about the machine. I'm an engineer and I don't want to think about my machine. Imagine what my mother feels.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#245

Post by Dylan16807 »

figassis wrote: post #242
Dylan16807 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you have to touch the device manager? Registry is fine. It's not a very big fraction of software that needs a reboot. It's much more common to have an OS update need one, and that's pretty universal across desktop OSes. The ads are bad. Though interestingly those are relatively new , not baggage.

You install autocad, reboot. You install something that uses the camera, reboot, you install an antivirus, reboot, you uninstall any of these things, reboot. Worse is the restore points that never seem to actually restore anything. Often they just make it work because now you're in a weird state where something that was supposed to be there isn't there anymore.

I've installed many things that use the camera and none have needed reboots. And if you're changing antivirus more often than one per 5 years then that's not a normal use case (also defender is fine).

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#246

Post by IshKebab »

fknorangesite wrote: post #201
twh270 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more choices than "ship-it-quickly and fix bugs later" and "over-engineer something complicated that ships later". There are _lots_ of good practices which reduce the (potential) bug count without making things more complicated -- indeed, good practices serve to reduce complexity in design and architecture. Selecting the right data structures and algorithms, server-side validation, making proper use of your…

> There are more choices than "ship-it-quickly and fix bugs later" and "over-engineer something complicated that ships later". It is abundantly clear that GP is roughly describing two ends of a spectrum, not enumerating every possible option.

That was to make the point very clear. Twh270 is correct. There's a whole spectrum of robustness. It's a constant fight to push towards the robust end no matter where you are on the spectrum.

The other big one I constantly fight have to fight for is using type annotations in Python. It's a total no brainer and definitely not an extreme end of the spectrum. I'm not advocating formal software verification.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#247

Post by figassis »

8n4vidtmkvmk wrote: post #189
manicennui wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who exactly sells Windows machines with good hardware?

You can get ok hardware for a reasonable price. My LG 'gram' seems fine. $800, very lightweight. Came with Windows home. Upgraded to pro for $6. If you want 'good' some of the Alienware laptops will be more beefy. Or the $5000 desktop PC I got off Newegg had top of the line specs and came with Windows.. Not sure what you're talking about really. You can get crap, medium or best with Windows.

Are you suggesting I buy $5k windows desktops when I can get $1000 macs that I know will be easier to use long term. Also, I used to buy top of the line Sony VAIOs, that was my go to brand. They were robust, many were had sturdy aluminum bodies (not unibody but close), and the base models were often very performant (specs, cooling, etc). Usually they all started at roughly $800, I used to buy the $1000 ones, so moving to macs did not start suddenly costing more, same average price, better quality of life.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#248

Post by jen729w »

Worth noting that this study, which I just happened to read today, is small (n=234, with the number of useful responses even lower).

And the ‘up to 20%’ refers to the fact that they had some odd responses which indicated that the time wasted was the entire hour of the study. If they corrected these down the figure becomes 11%.

Oh and it’s self reported. From participants crowdsourced at Prolific, who were paid.

It didn’t seem like the most rigorous study to me. And I’m invested in the result being bad, as the thing I do claims to solve some of these problems!

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#249

Post by figassis »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #229
manicennui wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who exactly sells Windows machines with good hardware?

If you want a fair comparison with Apple laptops, you should compare them to Windows Surface laptops.

I moved off of windows long before surfaces, not going back. Funny story, a few months ago we needed to setup an office windows 11 laptop (as part of a software project).

It used to be you could just boot the machine, cleanup bloatware, install some antivirus (after figuring out which one has not currently become adware), install basic applications, a copy of office, configure an email client or outlook (which is a nightmare to setup itself, with its weird mail folders that you can create but then can't delete without obscure windows voodoo because they become default windows mail folders or something...what the actual f!).

Anyway, so I give this machine to a junior dev to setup, and some time later he comes to me saying he can't even get to the desktop screen because an online windows account is needed. I think, surely this can't be true because a month earlier we had done the same thing on the same windows version, on the same laptop model. So I tried and guess what, I could not. I googled, and there were all these tricks you could try to make the "create offline account" option appear, but it never did, so I had to create a throwaway windows account, with a real email alias, go through all the "confirm your email" steps, in order to access a computer that was just purchased. I even tried removing all network access and restarting, no luck. See related rant by me here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34983448

If I could not set it up with an offline account, imagine a non techie, buys a laptop, goes somewhere with no network, tries to get work done and finds out it's impossible because of some dark pattern war that Microsoft is waging on it's customers.

So no, problem is not just hardware, or how well this one machine runs windows X, Y, or Z. It is the fact that a person can't just walk into a store, buy a windows PC that is being sold (at whatever price point) and trust that it will enable them to do work, consistently, on the short, medium and long term with little to no additional IT effort.

Re: We are wasting up to 20% of our time on computer problems, says study

#250

Post by robertlagrant »

itsboring wrote: post #142
robertlagrant wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Then again how much time do computers save? Unbelievable amounts, both in speed of processing and communication, and in lack of error.

Seems like AI is becoming pretty effective at undoing the “lack of error” part…

AI is barely involved in any digitisation of things yet.
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