# 5% of all Windows installs crash 2 or more times a day?



## Ripcord (Jul 26, 2003)

From this article:

Microsoft Moves to Weather Time of Slow Growth 

(It's a NYT article, so free registration is required) comes this comment:



> Mr. Gates acknowledged today that the company's error reporting service indicated that 5 percent of all Windows-based computers now crash more than twice each day.



I wonder what percentage crash only once per day?

I have to say that this doesn't fit with my personal experience.  I use PCs most of the time (Win2k mostly, or sometimes WinXP) and they rarely crash - MAYBE once per week (Then again my B&W Mac has crashed *once* that I can remember, my Dig. Aud. G4 has gone to lunch once this year (not so much a crash as things went a bit haywire and I needed to reboot)).  However, I wonder if Mr. Gates thought this was an OK stat or not?  I know that if, say, 5% of cars died more than twice a day, more than 5% of refrigerators needed to be unplugged and replugged in more than twice a day to get them working, etc. that there'd be a consumer revolt.

Rip


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## jiomitori (Jul 26, 2003)

na


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## nb3004 (Jul 26, 2003)

i used a friend's PC to play a game and it crashed 10 minutes in, so i believe those statistics


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## voice- (Jul 26, 2003)

I report about half the stuff, but when XP programs crash 10 times in a row I tend to not report the errors any more...


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## Arden (Jul 26, 2003)

That statistic is completely, 100% accurate because of the surveillance software built into Windows that Microsoft uses to spy on your computer.


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## baldprof (Jul 26, 2003)

On another forum someone calculated just how many people that was that had this bad XP experience. He came up with a number of over 27 million. Then that's more than the total number of Mac users worlwide.


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## Arden (Jul 26, 2003)

Wow.

I mean, um, well...

Wow.


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## powermac (Jul 27, 2003)

I believe it, our work machines Dell with server2000 crash everyday at some point.


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## ddma (Jul 27, 2003)

Does that include those crashes of the crash of the crash report appliation?


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## jokestar (Jul 27, 2003)

yes i believe it. i still use a pc equiped with windows XP. I thought it was great and it was for the first 6 months. now it crashes routinely but only on certain programs. the problem is when it crashes during maintainance defrags, that pisses me off. im thinkin about getting a discontinued Power Mac G4 1.25Ghz. the price is right.


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## Satcomer (Jul 27, 2003)

The sad fact is that this is not news. Most every honest x86 user will tell you all about their crashing computer. However, most every PC troll/advocate will yell, in their loudest voice, that this not true, Mac users are making this up, "not on my computer/gaming machine", etc. 

All this does is give an Apple user a good signature.


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## ddma (Jul 27, 2003)

What is a signature?


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## Zeigan (Jul 27, 2003)

it really isnt the os, it is all of those task bar pieces of crap that people install.  I take care of my parents typist and once i close all of the crap she has put on her computer, it works pretty decent.  With them turned on, it crashes every two seconds.


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## nb3004 (Jul 27, 2003)

> it is all of those task bar pieces of crap



Sorry if this is a stupid question but what are task bars in Windows?  Ive never had to use windows for an extended period of time.


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## Arden (Jul 27, 2003)

The Taskbar is the thing that wishes it could be the Dock.  It contains all your open applications, hotclickable shortcuts, and the Start menu, all in ugly text buttons.


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## Aeronyth (Jul 27, 2003)

What Zeigan was referring to are the programs that run in the background, their icons are usually in the System Tray, which is next to the clock, in the taskbar...


For example, i have MSN messenger, AIM, Kazaa, Norton, and a few other things running in the background...if you get too much stuff, it might cause windows to screw up...thats more common in 95 and 98 though...


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## nb3004 (Jul 27, 2003)

thank you i never knew what that was called, i def think the dock is 100 times better but that's just me


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## Aeronyth (Jul 27, 2003)

The Dock seems to have some nice features, however i don't own a mac yet (working on it..) so i wouldn't really know much about how it operates.  Does OSX still have the menu on the right side of the menu bar that older versions of the OS had for application switching?  Was it called the finder menu? I dunno..


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## macgeek_spiro (Jul 27, 2003)

Arden. I agree. The Taskbar is alot like nothing. It sucks and it tried to be a wanna be of the dock but it never got to be. So toobad. I guess Longhorn or Blackcomb would be interesting. NOT!


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## nb3004 (Jul 27, 2003)

> Does OSX still have the menu on the right side of the menu bar that older versions of the OS had for application switching?  Was it called the finder menu? I dunno..



no it doesnt, instead there is a triangle pointing to the app's running in the dock, i like more than in pre X operating systems


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## fryke (Jul 28, 2003)

Moving this to opinion. Nothing to do with Apple News & Rumours.


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## Aeronyth (Jul 28, 2003)

I guess that makes more sense...it's faster than opening the little menu..


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## Arden (Jul 28, 2003)

Opening the Application Menu, as it's officially called, has some real advantages over the Dock.  It doesn't get in the way until you need it; it shows all the currently running forefront applications; and it shows the current application.  Sure, you have the Application Menu on the left side in OS X, but it only shows the current application.  The Dock shows you everything that's running, but not the current application.  It takes twice as long to find out the same information.

I wish the Dock had a way to show the current application, with maybe an enhanced triangle, or a halo, or something.

Oh, and the Dock is one of the technologies Apple "borrowed" from Next; I don't know where Microsoft came up with the Taskbar, probably the same place.


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## Aeronyth (Jul 28, 2003)

Well, uh, Microsoft introduced the Taskbar with Windows '95...

Not that it changed significantly or anything, but it's been around.

And, isn't your "current application" going to be viewable somewhere around your screen?  It shouldn't be minimized if you're calling it a current application?


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## Pengu (Jul 28, 2003)

> Oh, and the Dock is one of the technologies Apple "borrowed" from Next


You make it sound so microsoft-ish.
Apple bought a company that would have otherwise no doubt, disappeared, because they had great technology, which apple saw a use for.


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## Arden (Jul 28, 2003)

Yes, but they didn't _invent_ the Dock, as I'm sure Microsoft didn't invent the Taskbar.


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## symphonix (Jul 29, 2003)

And to clarify, NeXT was run by Steve Jobs, now CEO of Apple. A lot of NeXT technology has been integrated into Mac OS X quite openly, such as the "open" command format and the way the apps are packaged.

Mind you, I liked that comment that Windows runs well "...  once i close all of the crap she has put on her computer..." which sort of implies that Windows runs well, as long as you don't actually install any actual software as such, no accessories per se.

If you really want to see the difference between Mac and windows, take a PC and a Mac of about equivalent power, then fire up Word, Excel, PhotoShop, DreamWeaver, 50 web browser windows in 3 different browsers, mail, and about 20 other major applications. The Mac will be a little sluggish switching, but will remain stable. Even if an app does crash, the system can still be recovered and no other apps will fall over.
The PC will almost certainly crash.
If you don't believe me, try it yourself.


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## adambyte (Jul 29, 2003)

> _Originally posted by symphonix _
> *... If you don't believe me, try it yourself. *



Anybody wanna send me a PC?


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## hulkaros (Jul 29, 2003)

> _Originally posted by symphonix _
> *...
> Mind you, I liked that comment that Windows runs well "...  once i close all of the crap she has put on her computer..." which sort of implies that Windows runs well, as long as you don't actually install any actual software as such, no accessories per se.
> 
> ...



This http://homepage.mac.com/hulkaros/Reloaded.html is from here http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32719

85 apps (+many other background processes) under OS X.2 

Check it out! 
http://homepage.mac.com/hulkaros/dock.jpg


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## madscientist (Jul 29, 2003)

sorry but the 5% stat just reminded me of the last day before we hadto hand in a technology and design project in june.
using prodesktop-possibly the most unreliable cad program known to man, and a really bad printer, i would have would eaily have been double figure *per hour*
and there were about 45 people working their damdest using the really processor intrensive stuff availible.

id say that by ourselfves we must have contributed at least 2% that day


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## dePoPo (Jul 30, 2003)

the 5% number is quite useless, since it seems to include both the OS and the applications. There are more then enough crapy OSX applications that can be crashed when pushed a little. A fine example is iMovie 3. While editing a full day with iMovie 2 never yielded crashes, importing long streams (say 1 to 1,5 hour) is almost impossible with imovie 3.

I'm sure i get my 5% mac crashes, even tough the operating system seldom locks up.

also, an enourmous number of crashes are caused by crap hardware, especialy memory modules not up to their tasks. (try to do a full gcc build with a linux kernal on cheap wintels) Something that has little to do with m$, and all with cheap wintel hardware.

so... the only safe conclusion may be that the small apple hardware platform is in general, more stable *hardware* then the wintel boxes


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## macgeek_spiro (Aug 7, 2003)

My iMac has only had 2 errors. I know it's not a crash but a kernel panic counts because Mac's never do things like Windows. The 1st time I kind of logged into the root account and renamed my "system" folder. Then it had a kernel panic when I rebooted it. The other time, don't ask why but it had a kernel panic out of nowhere when I was opening Maya PLE. But it doesn't happen daily.(Microsoft)


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## nb3004 (Aug 7, 2003)

i havent had any touble with Maya PLE but i also have only used it rarely on my powerbook


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## Arden (Aug 9, 2003)

The Mac can open more programs than Windows because of its protected, and virtually unlimited, RAM.  Virtual memory is much better in OS X than in Windows, and the RAM is protected, so one program doesn't crash the whole system (usually).  You can have as much RAM as you have disk space, though it will not perform well like real RAM.


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