How much time is "dead" when using PC/Windows

I'm so amazed that we as a community can spend so much time on getting our PC's to work instead of letting someone else take care of it. I've tried to measure all time I spend on stuff that is not productive, like start up, shut down, installation, configuration, error handling, patching, rebooting and the like. Here's a list of time spent a common week...

1. Start up I do every day and it takes 4 mins.
2. Shut down also 7 times a week at 1 min
3. I install at least 1 new program each week which takes 20 mins (including reboot)
   
4. I spend about 30 mins configuring all the stuff I have installed
5. In average I do patching every week and reboot which takes 20 mins
6. There's at least 2 errors a week which requires investigation and reboot taking some 30 minutes

In total I spend 7*4+7*1+20+30+20+2*30= 165 minutes i.e. 2 hours 45 minutes every week or 143 hours per year managing my PC instead of being productive.

How could this time be used for something better then you might ask? This is my answer: Stop using a PC for doing IT related work. Ask your ISP to provide a Virtual Display Client with no management and constant availability.

The "PC free home"™

Have you ever get tired of managing your PC at home, or even worse, manage your relatives and neighbours machines? Have you avoided looking something up on the web just because it takes so long to boot up your PC? Have you had viruses? Are you afraid of viruses or getting you computer high jacked? The list of treats to the normal PC user can get long and it's time to get a change.

Ever wanted an Internet machine that is on all the time, safe, easy, no management, silent, and very low power consumption? It exists, it's named the SunRay developed by Sun Microsystems

What I want to bring forward is the "PC free home"™ in which you have the SunRay console at home connected to your ordinary broadband Internet connection. Then the server program providing functionality for browsing, e-mail, word processing etc. is run by an ISP who also takes care of all management. The cost for the device and for the services will be considerably lower than with an ordinary PC and youwill do zero administration. The SunRay client power consumption is as low as 4 Watt i.e. 1 tenth of a light bulb letting you always keep it on. Or turn it off, it "boots" in a couple of seconds. As there are no disc, CPU or memory (it on the server) there is no fans and it's totally silent. You can even move between machines, having your session moving with you. It just, securely, follows your login.

So stay tuned until if get my act together around this.

Why not Linux?

Linux is just not ready for prime time, whatever they say out there. Solaris on the other hand has all the enterprise scalability of a OS that you can ask for, a stable company behind it, and is just as open. This makes the best platform for new IT solutions such as "The PC free home"™, which is my name of a general purpose solution for easy and unexpensive Internet access based on the Sun Microsystems SunRay technology.

mplayer

If running Solaris and you want to watch streaming video from web pages you might want to install mplayer and mplayerplug-ins to firefox (you are using firefox, aren't you?). mplayer can be easily installed from blastwave.org but the plugins are not all that easy. Hope I can figure everything out tomorrow and I will poste the details here...