British workers’ patience with slow technology lasts just sixty seconds ⁰

The patience of British workers to put up with slow and malfunctioning technology lasts just sixty seconds on average before they lose their temper, according to new research from tech firm Crucial. The survey of 2,000 Brits claims that one in five (21 percent) lose their patience once a week, a fifth (19 percent) every couple of days, and 7 percent kicking off over slow technology every few hours. And when slow technology does strike, it takes 60 seconds on average before people lose patience. However, some Brits lose it even quicker, with 32 percent saying they lose patience with slow technology after just 30 seconds. While there is no one single reason cited for a PC freezing, almost half (46 percent) of respondents said that opening web pages caused their PC to freeze. Other causes include opening programmes and apps (27 percent), opening files (21 percent), loading videos (17 percent) and when saving down an important file (12 percent).

In addition to getting frustrated with slow technology, Crucial also found that Brits lose valuable time while waiting for their PC to unfreeze, with a third (32 percent) deciding to take a toilet break and a further 29 percent taking the opportunity to make a hot drink. Over one in five Brits (21 percent) don’t utilise the time at all, instead spacing out and staring at nothing. Among the cited causes of tech temper tantrums, slow internet (50 percent), frozen computers (47 percent) and slow computers (40 percent) come out top on the frustration list.

Once their PC has recovered, 12 percent of Brits forget what they were doing, 40 percent postponed what they were doing until later and 32 percent chose to work on something else.

Jonathan Weech, Crucial SSD Sr. Product Line Manager, commented “The time spent waiting on a slow computer is frustrating and it eventually adds up. Considering that the average Brit not only loses valuable time waiting for their PC to start functioning again, but also ends up being distracted and not returning to their tasks points to a critical efficiency issue when it comes to finishing jobs. Time spent waiting for your PC to unfreeze is one thing, but if we add up the time spent doing other tasks in the meantime, this is a huge slowdown of productivity. It’s easy to diagnose the problem, for example, if you have lots of heat and noise coming from your computer and it takes a long time to start or load apps, you’ve usually got a storage related problem with your hard drive. However, if your PC frequently suffers from the dreaded spinning hourglass of death or struggles to run more than one application at a time, then your PC most likely has a memory deficiency.”