“A Journal du Net article reports that about 8% of Windows sessions require a machine reboot. The relevant quote (translated from French) is: ‘The average rate of failures requiring a system reboot has been measured at around 8% per session. This number varies widely depending on the version of Windows. Windows 2000 has a failure rate of 4%, and NT4 is at 3%, whereas Windows XP is close to 12%.’ The study was originally made by Acadys and Microcost and gathered data from 1.2M machines belonging to about one thousand companies over a period of one month in seven different countries,” Slashdot reports.
Link to full article here.
preach on MDN
i bet the actual numbers are much higher…
and erk…. MDN isnt preaching here…theyre just reporting…
How many times per day?
Actually I need fewer restarts with XP than any other version of Windows. (In my experience)
Sometimes my OS X machine needs a restart but nowhere near as critical as XP.
Anyone surprised the number is that low?
I have had to reboot OSX about 5 times – in a year!
it really sucks to be a WinDoze user…. but you cant tell them that
No kidding, mac dood. You try to tell windoze users that a Mac would do them good, and you’re all of the sudden treated like you’re in a cult.
Listen, Windows-folks. We’re just trying to spread the word that you don’t HAVE to put up with viruses and blue-screens-of-death during your daily work.
It’s closer to 50% here at work on the junk Win98 box I have to do my work on everyday at a Fortune 500 company. I literally never make it thru 2 consecutive days here without having a system lockup that requires a reboot.
In all fairness, at work we have about 50 XP machines in a public access lab and they just about never crash. Uptime of about 17 hours per day 5 days a week for about 2+ years. Of course, I suppose it isn’t a direct comparison since all these machines have the same installation and we’ve had time to work out all the bugs.
iggyb..
Yeah, I’ve talked with WinDoze users about just that.. and what amazes me is how they all say…
“Oh, not meee !!… I dont worry avout viruses and other malware..”
And then they drone on… listing about 30 or 40 different programs they use…. Virus scanners, anti spyware programs… pop-up stoppers…. you know the drill…
When you have all that suff running and still get hit… you would think at least some Windoze users would eventually see the light bulb over their heads….
But they almost never do…
I would say my Win2000 machine at work needs rebooting about once a month or so.
It really is very stable. Not quite as stable as my mac, but not far behind.
Being behind a corporate firewall helps.
It’s slow as hell though. 1.8 P4 feels slower than my old G4 400, but I think it’s the network traffic that does it.
One does wonder what they mean by a session though. About 90% of my sessions require a reboot. The Mac on the other hand, I’d say it was more like 1%. It usually only gets rebooted during software updates.
It did die on me at the weekend though. First time this year I think. No data lost. All apps quit gracefully. Was able to log out of all users but one. Tried restarting the Finder, but then it just gave up, so it was a hold-the-power-button-in job.
im sorry Phil, that sucks. Im the only Mac user in my family and ironically it falls to me to keep everyones windows computer running as smoothely as possible. Hopefully ill convert the rest of the family soon. making headway on my mother, her only concern is getting her Real Estate Apps to work on macs as all are written for Windows, but that new transitive software should make that problem irrelevant
The most common advice I received from IT when my PC locked up was, “Did you reboot yet?”.
After a while I wouldn’t bother to call IT, I just rebooted – the brute force method of making the Microsoft OS comply.
wow, I’ve never had to reboot OS X (other than software installs) in 3 years!
john:
I have never had to reboot my computer except during power outages. OSX rocks!!! The dumb bunnies who use windows work so hard at what we consider fun.
Uncle Rat
How come XP is 12% and NT/2K are 4% or less? Hmmmm….
I can vouch for the 3/4% of NT/2K as I used them daily at work – and they did rarely crash. XP I’ve not used much so I don’t know, but I know people who video chat to me using AOL or Yahoo often require a complete restart during a session. Flakey software.
But, to be honest, the figures are meaningless in the context of a slagging match without a comparison to Mac OS X.
When running an early version (pre aqua) of OS X on my 8500 – I thought my machine had crashed! Oh no! What the !@#$!
I reset coz the keyboard/mouse were totally unresponsive. System came up – STILL no keyboard/mouse! Duh, the cable had become unplugged!!
That was my first experience with OS X “crashing”.
I’ve rarely had OS X itself actually crash, but sometimes apps or devices won’t work properly without a reboot (eg. on one of my machines, Safari loses it’s ability to go to secure web pages after using iChat – go figure). Anyways, I’ve upgraded that Mac from 10.0 onwards, so maybe even this sort of issue may be resolved by a fresh install of 10.3.5. since my TiPB doesn’t experience the same issues.
Besides, more uptime means more time writing on MDN forums
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I usually have to reboot my XP machine at work about 12 times a week for crap stuff. Im am protected via firewall and everything, so its not viruses or worms causing the system failure, its Windows being its shitty self. A 2.8 ghz machine with 1gb of RAM should be able to run photoshop, illustrator, outlook, itunes and a browswer all at once without having to force quit (sorry, dont know the PC term) or force restart nearly everyday, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. On my 500mHZ G3 iBook with only 640 RAM I keep mail, safari, iChat, iCal, PS, Illustrator, and flash open at all times and never have to force quit any of them. I have had all those programs on for over a month now (i havent yet downloaded the newest security update)
I usually reboot my XP box once every week or two, if that.
Same with my OSX box, every week or two…I think alot of reboots and BSOD’s are typically due to hardware problems, like crappy memory, even weak power supply’s can cause problems…Try putting crappy memory into a mac and watch it crater, the same applies to any system…Unfortunately most cheapo philipo Dell, hp, IBM, and Gateway systems sport some ugly ass ram that isnt worth a dime. If these manufacturers actually gave a damn about the quality of their systems the 12% number would decrease significantly. The problem is, and most of you will ignorantly disagree, is that most of the problems contributed to windows arent windows problems at all, they are hardware incompatabilies.
For instance, a freind of mine bought a athlon 64 system recently from MSC Computer. He called me the day after her got it and said he kept getting a BSOD. I went over there with some OCZ memory and guess what? Problem Solved. This is only one example, there have been MANY times this has happened but most computer companies just say, Hmm, it must be windows. Lazy people absolutely Lazy…..
Speaking of OCZ, Its the only memory I run in my PC’s, Macs, and Servers…Check it out…
http://www.ocztechnology.com
i like alot of guys on here.. just leave my comp on..
put it in sleep mode.. you may never have to reboot ever.. they DO NOT CRASH
then again.. I have the best OS (Panther) so I’m getting all the latest pre-emptive security updates etc
What does a session mean? How can you make any sense out of these statistics with such a vague term?
mdn -> maniac street preachers
so…hey …notatotalsucker ….
What do you have running on the 8500 right now ?? and how is it working for you ?
Uncle Rat: Good on you. I agree. OSX rocks!! 5 reboots in a year for me I can live with – usually happens when I have about 10 zillion apps open and overload the processor with comands.
“john: I have never had to reboot my computer except during power outages. OSX rocks!!! The dumb bunnies who use windows work so hard at what we consider fun.
Uncle Rat”