One in seven PCs fail, very fast indeed

AMERICAN CONSUMER watchdog, Consumer Reports, said that one in seven readers reported their PCs had stopped working for different reasons inside a month, giving the phrase Trusted Computing the spin we bestow on it here at the INQUIRER, Rusted Computing.

The consumer watchdog, according to an article in CBS Marketwatch, says that the failure rate is unchanged for five years, but doesn't say exactly what the problems are.

It's us consumers that are stupid, right?

Well, it ain't necessarily so. When we were at CeBIT last week we were chatting about the wondrous Windows XP, which lets you roll back to a time before it crashed, and attempted to be "user friendly" by sending little messages telling Microsoft what had happened.

But when you track down these little messages on Microsoft's own "tracking system", you get cryptic little messages telling you, for example, that a "driver" caused the problem.

What does your average Mr or Mrs know about drivers? She or he might know they need them, but why do they need them, and why are they important?

The really unpalatable thing about personal computers of the IBM-clone variety is that right since we used our first one in the early 1980s, is that they're not easy to use.

No doubt this is partly caused by the bastard-IBM design augmented by the equally bastard-Microsoft software designs too.

Apple machines always were pretty easy to use, and although they bomb too from time to time, that's a fact.

If you've got the patience to fiddle about with PCs you can make them work after a fashion but things are only going to get worse, not better.

As the software and the hardware gets more complicated sophisticated, things are only getting to get worse, not better. And when you "upgrade" from one machine to another, as Intel and Microsoft just would love you to do, that's when the nightmares can really start.

As the author of the CBS Marketwatch article points out, you'd go berserk if your fridge, your car, your radio or even your throwaway pen failed at this kind of rate.

On the other hand, they really are marvellous things when they do work - instead of hunting around for days or weeks for a book, you can now find the same book in minutes using the Interweb. And although you may never ever want to see an old flame ever again, or, heaven forfend, the people you went to school with forty years ago, you can now, if you want to.

And all of that cultural information online - the entire content of libraries and art galleries - that's got to be fantastic.

Perhaps if Microsoft and Intel spent a few of their spare billions of dollars making the computer really workable, those unpersuaded by its advantages might come over.

Finally, the fact that one in seven PCs fail within a month is good news for websites like ours - after all, how would we manage to earn a living otherwise? µ

L'INQ
CBS Marketwatch