Reliabilityweb.com has built its entire business on Microsoft Windows platform with the exception of Uptime Magazine and Reliability Magazine - who use Macintosh platforms.

As different MS Windows problems would creep up and require time and attention - our magazine editors would quietly wonder why we simply accepted these circumstances.

As I returned from a visit to the ACIEM 9th International Congress on Maintenance (excellent by the way) in Bogotá Columbia, we experienced a catastrophic shutdown and MS Windows failure. We did have a back up system however - due the extensive amount of programs and data we use to support Reliabilityweb.com - the time required for system normalization was over 72 hours.

My tip?

Follow me in performing the ultimate "Windows upgrade" and switch to Macintosh. It may not be Bill Gates fault that all the miscreant worm and virus writers obsess on Windows but I am ducking out of this battle and going the way of Steve Jobs.

Enough is enough!

Do you have any Windows "Unreliability" stories?

Terry O

Back in 1983 when we used real computers (govs now super computer) I laughed and said, "no one will go with that crap" - wow, was I wrong! We were operating at 33 MHz back in 1980 with data transfer - how many have 33 MHz today? Few to none. Forget the 2.5 GHz processor advertised rate; at what rate really do you have data transfer? Some still at 12 MHz, few at 28.

So here I am on a DOS computer. IN a major company you don't have a choice, you use what's provided.

How much farther can we go backward? The word processor in our MS Word 2003 is not up to 1985 standards yet. Bill "wormy" Gates has set computing back 25 yrs IMHO!

I actually started with an Apple II with 512K of memory and two 5.25" floppys and a 9 inch black and white monitor.

It worked fine and as I recall - never crashed and did not get viruses.

I moved from Apple with the first MACs although a few in my company had them. I thought the new IBM PC was the greatest! It was a 286!

Terry O

By the way - I had to revert to using some DOS commands when we crashed the other day - and I really had to strech my memory.

IBMs DOS was what gave Bill Gates his start!

Terry O

All your bits are belong to us

I have had to remove all of the MS updates all the way back to removing SR2 XP so I would stop getting a memory error message on close of MS Internet Exploder. If it is a cumulative update then why do all the past updates still remain on my computer?
I let MS put my PC in suspension when it wakes up it doesn’t know how to connect to the wireless network.

Who To Blame?? First corporate America is to blame they wanted something that was inexpensive, (ie under 1k dollars) it is no problem to spend up to 1K each platform, over 1k needs higher authority approval and you may wait up to 3 weeks to get it.
I recall back in 1994ish my company looked at “Mainframe & Spark Station” verses PC the PC won because it was cheaper and so many companies were using visual basic we could not let that market slip past.
Second Americans expect the newest and greatest every year or other year.

Some one should start a reliability database just for Microsoft products. How many hours before it stops or crashes.

Paul J

In 1997 I was asked to be the liason between the state IT guys and the facility I was working at. They had just bought new Gateway computers for all the offices. I spent so much time solving everybody's glitches, I barely had time to do my own work. I had an Apple IIe in the mid 80's, and a friend gave me a IIgs. After working on the MS driven pc's for 6 months, I bought myself a Mac Performa. What a pleasure to operate. I now have a Dual 2Ghz G5. I still have to put up with Windows at work, but my home life is enjoyable!

I cant help but wonder why you guys are having so many problems with windows.

I have XP ProSP2 and I like it. I guess if all you do is work then a mac might be fine but if you want gaming performance then mac isnt an option imo.

The new Macs with the Intel Dual Core Processor can run Windows as well so you can have a choice. The only time I would have to do that would be for MS Project or MS Access.

I've been working on Mac since 2001 but still have to put up with Windoze at work. Having said that, XP Pro is pretty stable and doesn't cause that many problems.

I don't think many people will want to boot up into Windows after they's had a chance to use the Mac OS. I run Norton anti-virus on the Mac but only because I don't want to spread the viruses that are targetted at Windows users via e-mail.

If gaming is important - Windows is still by far the best bet.