Friday Forum: How Much Downtime Does Your Mac/Windows/Linux Box Cost You?


Sun Microsystems' announcement of an enterprise server with a claimed 5.25 minutes per annum downtime got us thinking: how reliable is your system?

This is decidedly unscientific, but how often can you not actually use your Mac/Windows/Linux/Apple IIe/BeBox? One per month? A week over a year? Give us a ballpark figure.

Let's take an example: Software-related failure. How long was it before you could start up your computer again? How long was it before, say, a system was reinstalled in order to get back to work? Did a system reinstall fix the problem?

If you've had hardware failures, what's been the most common? Monitor? Hard drive? Motherboard? How often is it your own stupid fault? And how often is it Apple's/Dell's/Sony's?

Portable owners might be more likely to suffer real downtime, due to a lack of immediately available spare parts. For example, in the past 12 months, my PowerBook G3 has suffered a dead battery (annoying, but not catastrophic); keyboard (= PowerBook out of action for two days); and a PRAM battery (a damn nuisance).

Maybe your Wintel box has been more reliable than your Mac. Or your Linux one. Be honest. Maybe it's just easier to get x86 parts, but then perhaps the new BIOS didn't work with your old hardware.

The prize for the best computer failure story is...well, there is no prize. But tell us anyway.