I have an irrationally strong, negative reaction when someone is having a problem with a non-Microsoft Windows computer and they suggest, “Oh, just reboot it.” I know that it’s darned unpleasant for the poor folks who catch the brunt of my anger on the subject and, until now, I have not known what was going on or why I got so angry. Sitting here, typing away on a completely unrelated project, I just had one of those Ah ha! moments and it all became clear to me.

I have spent my entire career working to make computers completely reliable for my clients. It has been hard work but usually rewarding for both me and the people who use my computers. Hearing someone say to me, “Oh, just reboot it” is akin to telling me, “I know that you cannot make this computer reliable.” No one who puts their heart into their craft would like to hear that; I know that I don’t.

We have Microsoft Windows to thank for the pervasive attitude that computers are inherently unreliable, that they need to be rebooted frequently, maybe even more than once per day. Until that operating system saw such widespread use, the majority of computers ran quite reliably for months at a time, sometimes years. Now, people who use Mac OS X or Linux on their personal computers take such reliability for granted. Two examples:

1. I have an old computer sitting in a corner of the basement acting as a file server and a backup machine for other computers on the network. It runs an old version of Linux and I never touch it except to turn it back on after power failures that last longer than the UPS battery lasts. As I write this blog posting, poor neglected “Dumbo” has been up for 273 days.
2. We run another Linux server as the company phone system, CRM system, and backup server for several workstations. This one is in a real datacenter so it has better power than Dumbo. It has been up for 303 days. What took it down last time? A fire in the datacenter’s power distribution room.

This is the sort of reliability which I expect to deliver to my clients, whether they are paying customers or family members. I will try to tone down my reaction to, “Oh, just reboot it” and hope that, next time you catch yourself rebooting your computer, you might raise your own expectations on reliability.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2009 at 2:36 pm and is filed under Desktop Technology, Hosting, This & That. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.