Stability (Do PCs still crash?)

[HateEternal]

Yea... I don't like that ad because I haven't crashed my laptop... ever I don't think. I beat the crap out of my work machine on a daily basis (by beat the crap out of I mean running a ton of heavy apps at the same time) and I have never crashed it. I don't think I ever managed to crash my win2k box at my last job either.

I'd say my PC crashes about as frequently as my Mac does.

[hawki18]

I have been running XP since it came out and since then the crashing issues just went bye bye, kind of a mute point now. Spy ware is still the real killer of Windows machines now.

[sinclair_tm]

i have to say that after going to xp from 98, it was a while since i saw the bsod. but it does still crash more often then my mac does. the main thing with win is that it can't be left on as long as os x. i have too many problems with it getting really sluggish after about a week, and the only way to fix it is to reboot.

[symphonix]

I use Windows XP on my work machine, around 40 hours a week. It crashes for me completely about once every week. Program freezes that don't cause a complete crash occur every three or four days.

I don't have virus or adware problems because I run two firewalls, AdAware, Firefox with AdBlock, and an antivirus package - and I'm careful with my web browsing.

At all times I have the following open:
- An in-house problem management tool.
- Crazy Browser (MSIE with tabbed browsing) running eight MSIE only pages.
- Internet Explorer (for that one annoying page I administer that won't work in anything else)
- Firefox with Adblock for all other pages
- Lotus Notes 7
- IBM Personal Communications (a 3270 terminal emulator)
- IBM Community Tools (an instant messaging suite)
- A Unisys terminal emulator
- A few SSH sessions.
- A VPN session
- Firewall & antivirus software

So yes, I'd say PCs are better than they were 5 years ago. A well-managed PC with a tech-savvy user is fairly stable. But you will still have regular crashes.

And I'd still much rather be using my Mac.

[texanpenguin]

A good clean XP machine won't crash on you unless you're at fault (99% of the time anyway). The main problem I have is HOW it crashes. BSOD isn't a good thing. I've only ever had one Kernel panic (while playing with System files), and even THAT had the Bezel appearance and explains what you have to do.

How is it ever good news that Xlkjfljlsl.dll has caused an exception of type 0x792F33? Who cares? That's what the console is for; you can find out specifics if you care, but are told useful things when (if) they happen to you.


I think that ad really played on the freeze idea because:
a) most people's computers aren't clean and DO freeze; regularly.
b) it's very comical to see someone fall over mid-sentence.

The main issue that it presents is the need to restart all the time. I work as a PC technician to earn a living and the first rule in every situation is to restart. If you can't explain a problem; restart. Even if you're not experiencing problems, you should restart. Before we leave each and every job, we restart the computer, and people always tell us that their machines seem "snappier" when we visit (even when we didn't do ANYTHING speed-related besides that).

The only time I restart OS X is for System Updates.

[Lt Major Burns]

XP learned a lot, in that the red cross button will always works now, (well, 90%), right-click on the taskbar is the same (to quit), and ctrl+alt+del is now bloatware.

[Cat]

My brother has an XP machine that is not on-line and it crashes regularly. No spyware, adware, or malware of any kind. Only a plain vanilla XP SP2 install and lots of games. Oblivion sometimes freezes up the whole machine on launch. Now we could blame that on Oblivion, but I only remember app freezes that locked up the entire machine from OS 9. If something crashes in OS X the other apps are not affected, never mind the OS itself. Windows should not allow single apps to crash the entire machine. No error screen, no BSOD, nothing, just frozen just like in the ad. Reboot and try again, you might be luckier next time!

[HateEternal]

Originally Posted by symphonix

- IBM Personal Communications (a 3270 terminal emulator)

Puke!!!!