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An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

research.microsoft.com

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Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#61

Post by lostlogin »

jseliger wrote: post #28
Zenst wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laptops also have in effect a cleaner power source with UPS built in so any power glitch's get filtered on a laptop as standard compared to a desktop. Least I have found desktop's with a good quality PSU and UPS noticable more reliable than those without.

Laptops also have in effect a cleaner power source with UPS built in so any power glitch's get filtered on a laptop as standard compared to a desktop. I've heard this theory before but never seen it substantiated. Do you have a link to any research or articles that explains how this works?

Pull your laptops power cord out the wall, and plug it back in. Laptop unchanged. Dirty power supply, but laptop unaffected.

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#62

Post by mrb »

When Microsoft, Google, or some university publish analysis of hardware failures across large numbers of machines, they always anonymize hardware vendors ("vendor A", "vendor B").

I understand the reasons (not alienating your hardware vendors), but will there ever be a research group who will disclose vendor names? Heck, I would pay for this information.

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#63

Post by dredmorbius »

scott_s wrote: post #48
ippisl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I doesn't have to be dishonesty. It might just be bias(conscious or subconscious) not to waste time on this question. Even doctors show this kind of biases when advising people on choosing treatments(which is a much bigger moral issue).

Their conclusions on "white boxes" are based on relatively straightforward statistical analysis of their data. In order for there to be bias against white boxes, one of the following has to be true: 1. Their data collection methods are biased against white boxes. Given the large sample size and the method of retrieving samples - automatically generated crash reports from users - I find this unlikely. They cover this…

My suspicion is that branded hardware manufacturers are uniformly reasonably good in quality. White box vendors may vary widely: some are good, but some (many? few?) are really, really bad. This can skew data.

It's also possible that it's getting more difficult to accurately spec systems, to enforce vendor quality (Dell gets a bad batch of drives, they can 1) detect it and 2) tell the vendor to stuff it, Ahmed's Boxez'R'Us may not have that leverage or depth of experience), and to do burn-in testing of their own systems.

That said, I've had good and bad experiences with big-name and white box vendors alike.

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#64

Post by dkarl »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #57
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #55

I'm having a hard time coming to terms with "Laptops less likely to crash from hardware fault than desktops" Everything we've learned from experience, surveys, and PC World magazines has showed the opposite. Heat kills hardware and laptops have their hardware packed together so closely that it generates lots of heat. Back then I remember reading something like 1 in 4 laptops fail in the first 3 years. Which was very…

Just a theory, but perhaps laptops have a shorter lifespan in general?

That's an interesting point. Laptops get replaced faster, and when a laptop is replaced, it is typically left in a non-running state in which it will not experience or report errors. Desktops are often left running for months or years after they've been replaced, either through laziness or because of a desire to keep them around for a special purpose.

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#65

Post by mrb »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #57
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #55

I'm having a hard time coming to terms with "Laptops less likely to crash from hardware fault than desktops" Everything we've learned from experience, surveys, and PC World magazines has showed the opposite. Heat kills hardware and laptops have their hardware packed together so closely that it generates lots of heat. Back then I remember reading something like 1 in 4 laptops fail in the first 3 years. Which was very…

Just a theory, but perhaps laptops have a shorter lifespan in general?

No. They only took into account the machines' first 30 days of service life:

"we only count failures within the first 30 days of TACT (total accumulated computing time), for machines with at least 30 days of TACT."

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#66

Post by Lagged2Death »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #55

I'm having a hard time coming to terms with "Laptops less likely to crash from hardware fault than desktops" Everything we've learned from experience, surveys, and PC World magazines has showed the opposite. Heat kills hardware and laptops have their hardware packed together so closely that it generates lots of heat. Back then I remember reading something like 1 in 4 laptops fail in the first 3 years. Which was very…

This analysis is making a very specific measurement. They're only counting software crashes that are detected and reported in Windows logs.

If a machine crashes so severely that a crash report is not generated, than those reports will not be present in our data. Therefore, our analysis can be considered conservative...

"Conservative" here means "it underestimates the crash rate by some unknowable amount."

If you drop your laptop down a flight of stairs, it will likely develop some hardware problems. But for one thing, not all hardware failures will cause software crashes and crash reports. For another thing, you're likely to just replace the drop-kicked laptop, and the hardware failures will never appear in logs like these.

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#67

Post by erhh »

mrb wrote: post #62

When Microsoft, Google, or some university publish analysis of hardware failures across large numbers of machines, they always anonymize hardware vendors ("vendor A", "vendor B"). I understand the reasons (not alienating your hardware vendors), but will there ever be a research group who will disclose vendor names? Heck, I would pay for this information.

https://www.google.com/search?q=An+Empirical+Study+of+Redund...

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#68

Post by flomo »

dredmorbius wrote: post #63
scott_s wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their conclusions on "white boxes" are based on relatively straightforward statistical analysis of their data. In order for there to be bias against white boxes, one of the following has to be true: 1. Their data collection methods are biased against white boxes. Given the large sample size and the method of retrieving samples - automatically generated crash reports from users - I find this unlikely. They cover this…

My suspicion is that branded hardware manufacturers are uniformly reasonably good in quality. White box vendors may vary widely: some are good, but some (many? few?) are really, really bad. This can skew data. It's also possible that it's getting more difficult to accurately spec systems, to enforce vendor quality (Dell gets a bad batch of drives, they can 1) detect it and 2) tell the vendor to stuff it, Ahmed's Boxe…

One question is what happens to a component that fails a major OEM's QC standards, where does it go? In to the garbage? Or into the whitebox channel?

For example, some have speculated that "Gamer RAM" with mean looking heatsinks is actually poorer quality stuff that requires additional cooling to work correctly.

Re: An Empirical Analysis of Hardware Failures on a Million Consumer PCs

#69

Post by wmf »

mrb wrote: post #62

When Microsoft, Google, or some university publish analysis of hardware failures across large numbers of machines, they always anonymize hardware vendors ("vendor A", "vendor B"). I understand the reasons (not alienating your hardware vendors), but will there ever be a research group who will disclose vendor names? Heck, I would pay for this information.

IMO such information would do more harm than good. By the time they could gather statistics, that model would be obsolete so the stats wouldn't help you buy new equipment. But the kind of people who are still griping about the Deathstar would use the information to troll non-stop.
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