Annual Window Cleaning for PC Users

[My Thinkpad X60S. Salvaged by Geeks and zipping again. Photo by Shel]

I get kidded a lot about the tech problems I so often seem to have. Last week I was at TC 40 and was the only person in the front two rows who could not get on my computer. The trouble is I am not alone in what goes wrong for me.  In fact, I am among millions of people who work on Windows-based machines, who are not tech professionals and do not have IT support to tweak their machines.

It's worse for me than it may be for you, because I move around a lot with an ultralight computer and Windows does not seem to like me connecting to the Internet from several places every day.

About a year after I buy a computer it starts developing goofy anomalies. This time it began in May, when my desktop photo went don making my background the Thinkpad Time Zone default. Over the next few months, I developed a list of 30 anomalies, some of which came and went, some of which stayed.  The worst was a persistent freeze up of my Outlook mail client, followed by a wait of several minutes to rebuild my personal folder.

In the end, I went to the Geek Squad counter at Good guys.  I had them do a clean wipe and rebuild of my hard disk. Now I need to personalize everything again. Firefox does not recall any sites I have visited, nor does Outlook recall who I've previously emailed.

Other than that my Thinkpad zips and sings like a new computer and I am a happy camper. I tossed in an extra Gig of DRAM and was out of the store for $450. Much cheaper than a new PC (or MAC). And if I had bought a new computer, it probably would have cost $150 anyway, to port my data from old to new computer.

With the money, I've saved, I'll probably buy a video camera, because the webcam I'm using to blog is severely limited. The big fear is that Thinkpads are really not built for multimedia and my growing passion for video may force me into a Mac in the end after all.

I write this, because the Geeks confirmed to me that, most people with Windows based machines, particularly laptops need to do what I just did, but perhaps not as frequently. If you have a laptop, the average is 18 months. If you have a desktop, on the average it's once every two years.

Comments

[Rob La Gesse]

Shel - of course, it's not that black and white. How often I reinstall and OS on ANY machine depends on what I am doing with it. My Toshiba Tablet PC never had an OS refresh in 5 years - not until last month when the hard drive died. All I used it for was surfing the web, doing email and blog posts, and the occasional Office document tweak. But the point is - I pretty much left it alone and didn't install a lot of crap on it.

I've been a mixed Mac-PC user since the early 90's, at least. Wrote the first wireless application for the Newton (after the company I worked for added WLAN and CDMA to the Newton, of course - oh, and backlighting and GPS!)

In any case, my experience with Macs is not much different - if you install a lot of "stuff", hardware and/or software you will eventually be reinstalling the OS (or the OSX, whichever).

I just think Mac fanatics prefer not to show their flaws in public - so they don't talk about it as much as Windows users. Yes - I am serious :). I know a number of Mac users who have as many problems as PC users.

One of my best friends is a Mac fanatic - yet when we are out for dinner or a drink the odds are he'll get the Mac support call before I get the PC support call. Probably he gets 3 calls to my one. Perhaps it's because PC users just have had to learn more. Maybe it's because the Mac users he supports are "artists" and can't be bothered to learn anything about the tools they use.

In any case, it's a function of software installations/uninstalls, hardware changes and driver updates and AGING of both the hardware and the sum total of installed software that conspire to kill your machine - no matter what OS is running on it.

And yes - that's just the way it is - as long as users can control their computers they will eventually brick them. Let's hope we're still bricking our own computers a decade from now.

Rob

[Weave]

WHOA...what a comment! "Artists" who "can't be bothered to learn"? I'm one of those artists, bud, and you're talking about things not being "black and white"? Indeed. :P

I've had the opposite experience. I have only had to reinstall my OS on my PowerMac G5 once in four years, due to a hard drive crash. While my Toshiba Portege has been great, my HP desktops have required constant reinstalls. I've kitted together Windows computers that were more reliable than my factory-built HPs.

I would submit that it's also the constant onslaught of malware, spyware and virus attacks on the Win platform that also help slow the machines down, along with ever-increasing protection rules/algorithms and ever-building log/temp files that need to be read and written to. But then again, I dunno... I couldn't be bothered to learn. >:)

[Rob La Gesse]

Heh - Congrats - you aren't the "artist" I was referring to.

But you make a few good points - the external malware/security attacks on the MS platform DO raise a challenge - a challenge that would be faced by Apple or Linux if they had the same market share that Windows has.

But you also reinforce another issue I've noted with the WinTel boxes - the hardware can make the difference. And MS has little control over the quality of the systems PC Manufacturers are building. But MS DOES take the crap over those systems.

I've had PC OS installs last 5 years, you've has Mac OS installs last for 4 years. Most people won't. Because most people will screw it up and they'll blame their OS vendor for not protecting them. But if the OS vendor tries to protect them they complain about the system being locked down.

If you sell Operating Systems you'll always be hated. The good news though is that it selling an OS is pretty damned profitable.

Rob

[shel israel]

The hardware in my case is a Thinkpad X60S, generally regarded as the best in the ultralight class. But Rob is right. I do a LOT of things with it. I try out a lot of software. I download a good number of stuff, although downloading is becoming a thing of the past. But the real question I have is: Is blogging art?

[Rob La Gesse]

Blogging is BMVS. BMVS was our internal password when I was building a WiFi test lab - it stood for "Black Magic VooDoo Shit". Things you just can't explain. Like one marketing site is more popular than another, or why one Windows hints site gets huge and another fades away.

Like Scoble. :)

Blogging isn't an art - it's a passion - a passion some people can monetize and other cannot. A passion some wish to monetize and others couldn't care either way.

But it isn't an art - it's a canvas, for sure. But anyone can paint a soup can on canvas. People that know how to market the soup can can make it into something bigger.

Personally, I am more excited that anyone can paint on the canvas than I am about who the artists are.

Rob

[Städ]

Hi, i think that skill and dedication are important whatever you choose to do.