Re: [Linux-aus] Windows: 30 billion crashes a year ?

[Shane Stephens <shans@research.canon.com.au>]

On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 13:41, Chris Samuel wrote:
> Found via Cryptogram:
> 
> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,1210067,00.asp
> 
> [Quoting Bill Gates talking about Windows XP crash statistics]
> 
> [...]
> 
> Gates said that 5 percent of Windows machines crash, on average,
> twice daily. Put another way, this means that 10 percent of Windows
> machines crash every day, or any given machine will crash about three
> times a month.

That is _totally_ bogus mathematics.

So 5% of machines crash twice daily.  How many machines crash every
day?  Dunno.  How many machines crash at least once a month?  Dunno. 
What is the average number of crashes per machine per month?  Dunno.

IF these machines were operating every single day, then we could say
that there are 5% * 35% * 700000000 * 2 = 12250000 daily crashes from
the XP machines that crash twice daily, which equates to approx. 4.47
billion crashes a year.

Of course, these machines probably aren't operating every single day. 
Plus we know nothing about the frequency of crashes from machines that
don't crash twice a day.

About the only thing we can say, then, is that the XP experience is
very, very crap for at LEAST 1 in 20 users :)

	-Shane

> 
> [...]
> 
> With 10 percent of them crashing daily, we have 70 million crashes every
> 24 hours.
> 
> [...]
> 
> Windows 98 represents about 25 percent of the market at this point. It
> has to crash 10 to 20 percent more often than XP. I think that when we
> put all the numbers together, we can estimate that there are a minimum
> of 30 billion Windows system crashes a year.
> 
> [...]