A new study, commissioned by memory and storage specialists Sandisk, has quantified the amount of time the average computer and laptop user wastes in a year - just waiting for slow computers to respond. Around the world, the average computer user loses about one working week.
The research was undertaken worldwide with around 8,000 participants. The US had the best times for loss of productivity amounting to 4.9 days, the UK fared a little worse at 5.5 days and the Italians were the most frustrated with 6.8 days of tedious, life-force sapping wasted computer time.
The study found that in the UK the most common and time consuming delays were caused by waiting for necessary file uploads and downloads to complete. Loading files and starting programs was the next most time consuming task, however computer boot-up times weren’t a major contributor to wasted time.
Stefan Kratzer, senior product marketing manager at SanDisk USB & SSD, would have probably liked the worst computer delays to have been caused by HDD storage technology rather than slow internet connections. Nevertheless he had this to say about the study his company commissioned; “It’s high time PC users in the UK started getting back the time they are losing to slow computers,” said Kratzer. “PC users in the UK are spending too much time waiting for computers and would quite understandably like to get more time back to do the things they enjoy”.
Looking again at other countries The Telegraph reports that while a fifth of Britons bashed angrily in reaction to their PC’s being too slow the Germans were the most aggressive and impatient PC users. Also the annoyance caused by slow PCs isn’t as bad as many other aspects of an average working day. On average digital downtime caused by slow PCs was in the top seven annoyances but ranked less annoying than being on hold on the telephone, waiting for late busses and trains or waiting-in for a delivery to arrive.
