世論 What Japan Thinks

japan.internet.com reported on a survey conducted by Cross Marketing Inc into automatic software updating of personal computer operating systems, in particular Windows.

Demographics

Between the 4th and 5th of April 300 members of their online monitor group living in Tokyo and the surrounding area successfully completed a private internet-based survey. As is usual for Cross Marketing, there was an equal split of the sexes 50:50, and of the age bands, with 20.0% in each of the teens, twenties, thirties, forties and fifties age groups.

I do share most of the people’s concern that the reboot dialog is annoying, as once it is there it will keep popping up every five minutes. It really needs a “Please stop reminding me!” check box. My other pet hate is that the background process does slow down my machine a bit when it runs.

Survey results

Of the 300, 269, or 89.7% used a Windows operating system, although it is not clear if this means home or office use. Of the 269 Windows users, 219 people, or 81.5%, used automatic update features, or perhaps more precisely, were aware of the presence of an automatic update feature. These 219 were asked the following question:

Q1: What setting do you use for Windows Update? (Sample size=219)

Auto download and install updates (to SQ)	54.3%
Auto download updates	35.2%
Notify on updates only	8.2%
Don’t know	2.3%

If we add in the other 81 users, we get the following data:

Q1a: What setting do you use for Windows Update? (Sample size=300)

Auto download and install updates (to SQ)	39.7%
Auto download updates	25.7%
Notify on updates only	6.0%
Don’t know what setting I have	1.7%
Don’t use or don’t know about Windows Update	16.7%
Don’t use Windows	10.3%

Q1SQ: Do you feel the reboot dialog box after automatic Windows Update gets in the way? (Sample size=119)

Always feel so	41.2%
Sometimes feel so	44.5%
Occassionally feel so	6.7%
Never felt so	7.6%

Q2: When do you think is the best time to run an operating system upgrade check application? (Sample size=300)

Start-up	28.0%
Shutdown	34.7%
Fixed time every week	9.3%
Manual update	26.7%
Other	1.3%