Waiting for laptops, programs and files to load is now one of the seven most stressful everyday experiences faced by people with computers, according to the research.
Almost one in three Britons admitted slow-loading PCs put them in a bad mood for the rest of the day while 29 per cent of those asked said they lost sleep over the issue.
Some 8,001 desktop and laptop users across the world were quizzed as part of a study commissioned by computer storage company SanDisk.
Italians were found to face the longest delays, wasting 6.8 days a year waiting for slow computers, while America’s 4.9-day average was the lowest of any country.
In the UK the most common cause of time delays was waiting for files to be uploaded or downloaded, followed by slow-loading applications. Relatively little time was wasted waiting for computers to boot up.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10361881/Britons-lose-five-and-a-half-days-a-year-from-slow-computers.html
Lon quote due to Telegraph paywall.

So if stuff takes too long to load, and it loads much quicker than it did a few years ago does that not mean we have saved loads of time?

When does real news start again?

computer on

go make coffee

no time wasted waiting*

* may not be true if you drink nescafe and your back at your desk within 30 seconds….

People really need to get a grip.

I know countless people who carry around work laptops that never get maintained. It’s no surprise they complain about how slow, buggy, crashy they are.

although i do lose about 6 weeks to propriatory planning software being slow…. great STW surfing time though on the other computer 😉

I lose more time, than that, on here! 😆

I dread to think how much time is lost each year where I work through general inefficiency bordering on incompetency. Frankly, a few hours here and there waiting for a laptop to boot is just noise.

Oh the joys of corporate life!

Some 8,001 desktop and laptop users across the world were quizzed as part of a study commissioned by computer storage company SanDisk.

Ah, so it’s an advert rather than true facts.

I can agree with that. I’m amazed by the hardware we have in my work (I use a quad-core Thinkpad) being constrained by the software. Most people are on Excel 2003, so it can only work on one core, yet I got 2010 and I’m seeing processor-intensive tasks that take 45 mins on 2003 taking 2 mins on 2010.

If I could be bothered, a cost/benefit analysis would be a worthwhile task. I like spreadsheets.

30s boot up
30m log in
1m for word to fire up
2.5m every time visual studio needs restarted

Yeah I can see how it adds up, the annoying thing is most of the stuff is perfectly possible on slower machines if only the answer to software efficiency issues was “write it better” rather than “throw hardware at it”

Chromebook. Boots in 7 seconds.
*hugs my laptop*

In my last job, my PC took 5 minutes to boot and to start up our crappy software, so I used to fire it up and go and get changed. Boss was not happy, so instead I sat and stared at the start screen for 5 minutes every day. Motivational stuff.

30s boot up
30m log in

bloody hell – how long is your password? 🙂

With the exception of massive processing jobs -if I was rendering all the individual hairs of a yeti in a pixar movie for instance – its me, not the computer thats doing the work. If it takes a few seconds for the computer to do something then fine – I generally give my work more than a few seconds thought.

I’m amazed by the hardware we have in my work (I use a quad-core Thinkpad) being constrained by the software

Bit of both for us. Our IT has been outsourced to HP subsidiary.

Alot of users are still on winXP 32bit ie 3.25GB of RAM max.

But HP are still specing 4GB of on alot of the new computers. This is fine for using as an office PC but some of our colleagues need to actually use then a scientific workstation generally dealing with lot of large databases.

We’ve managed to move alot of the caculations from the PC to the HPC cluster mind which helps.

caculations

that’s saving an “l” of a lot of time

We’ve got what more or less amounts to a 2mb connection for 80 people (admittedly there’s only 40 PCs) we recently had our 5yo desktops replaced and i was actually impressed with the difference – I never thought the machines were such a significant part of the problem – we’re not very demanding users.

Be glad* you don’t work as an enterprise Java dev.

Make code change
Rebuild
Redeploy
Restart broker
Restart app server
Log back in
Run code
This all takes 10 mins or even half an hour at one place
Realise some small thing is typoed, back to start

This is why I spend so much time on STW. As soon as I have to wait for something I flick to STW.

* or sad – plenty of time for surfing

Just back from checking the lappy…. 54 minutes remaining, going for a beer.

Most people are on Excel 2003, so it can only work on one core, yet I got 2010 and I’m seeing processor-intensive tasks that take 45 mins on 2003 taking 2 mins on 2010

Ahahahahahahahaha

ha ! 😥

I’m fairly sure our pcs at work (NHS) date from the 90s, the network is laughably slow and even when it’s all eventually worked, the security policy is to remove all privileges (genuinely took me 5 years to get right click enabled on my mouse; mere mention of the word “breast” on a website means it’s blocked due to obscene content, so no breast cancer papers, for example)

for molgrips – old, likely been done to death:

Now it says 64 minutes… wtf!?

Most people are on Excel 2003, so it can only work on one core, yet I got 2010 and I’m seeing processor-intensive tasks that take 45 mins on 2003 taking 2 mins on 2010

Excel 2007/2010 are actually much slower than 2003 for many things esp making changes to a worksheet via the Object model, which in some cases is 10x slower. I had to re-write loads of code just to try and get back to 2003 run times.

You’re telling me- my average download speed is 0.3mb/s, which apparently (in mid wales) is worse than 99% of the UK….
It does suck ass, but I do have decent trails on my doorstep. 😛

Some 8,001 desktop and laptop users across the world were quizzed as part of a study commissioned by computer storage company SanDisk.

……who,purely by chance, make SSDs.

Now I’m using a retina MacBook Pro I’m saving a fair chunk of time a day when retouching
It used to take 1min to read/write 1gb of data and working on numerous files 2-5gb in size plus saving them and backing up every half hour and it all ads up. Now these tasks take seconds, some days I’m easily gaining half an hour.
Couldn’t care less about boot time as that’s something I only do once a day.

“is now one of the seven most stressful everyday experiences faced by people with computers, according to the research.”

In one way this is a good thing. People are so happy and satisifed, a tiny, tiny thing like waiting five minutes for a computer, is now in their topseven worse things in the world.

I wonder how long all those people sat in traffic jams on the way to work?