世論 What Japan Thinks

RTFM – Read The Friendly (or substitute other words begining with F) Manual. I wonder if there is a slang expression in Japanese with a similar meaning? To find out whether or not RTFMing goes on in Japan, Cross Marketing Inc produced a report, with the highlights published by japan.internet.com, on the topic of paper manuals for personal computers.

Demographics

Over the 10th and 11th of October 2007 300 members of Cross Marketing Inc’s online monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. As usual for Cross Marketing, there was a 50:50 male and female split, and 20.0% in each age band from teens to fifties.

As perhaps a cross-reference, I looked at this topic last year in relation to mobile phone manuals.

I don’t know why in Q1SQ2 they didn’t offer as one of the answers that it is quicker to look up the internet or an electronic manual, or even just phone the support line. I’d love to have seen data for both these actions
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Gadgets and widgets on the desktop annoy me; I have Google Desktop installed, but I keep it parked in the task bar as when it is active it either just gets hidden when I run applications maximised, or the frequent updates distract me when trying to do work in other windows. Additionally, Opera widgets just didn’t do anything for me. This survey by MyVoice looks at what the average Japanese internet user thinks of these desktop applications, widgets and gadgets.

Demographics

Between the 1st and 5th of June 2007 13,376 members of the MyVoice internet community completed a web-based questionnaire. 54% of the sample was female, 2% in their teens, 19% in their twenties, 38% in their thirties, 27% in their forties, and 14% in their fifties or older.

I’m not surprised that calendars come out on top – about half the people in my office run some ancient-looking calendar app on their desktops, but I’ve not seen anyone with anything else. I did once try out a Post-It Note™-like app or two, but as mentioned above for other application types, they just didn’t appeal to me at all.
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Much as I might have thought that there would be a sizeable geek population who would have a copy of Linux installed somewhere on one of their home machines, especially given the multiple machine ownership data, a recent article published on japan.internet.com regarding a survey conducted by goo Research on the topic of computers at home suggests otherwise.

Demographics

Between the 15th and 17th of June 2007 1,087 members of goo Research’s monitor pool successfully completed an online questionnaire. 52.6% of the sample was male, 17.4% in their teens, 19.7% in their twenties, 17.8% in their thirties, 17.3% in their forties, 17.0% in their fifties, and 10.9% aged sixty or older.

I’m Windows XP on my one home-brew, and if I were upgrading, the main factors controlling my decision would of course be price, followed by at least one gigabyte of memory and perhaps 150 gigs of hard disk. One gig of RAM – I remember when I was a kid trying to persuade my father to let my brother and I raid our savings to buy a 16K ZX81 wobbly RAM pack for a mere £100.
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If you hang around engineer-related web sites too long you get the impression that everyone is building their own computer in a desparate attempt to demonstrate that theirs is bigger than yours. But, what about in Japan? I’ve never tried asking my co-workers what they do, so perhaps this recent survey reported on by japan.internet.com and conducted by JR Tokai Express Research on the topic of building your own PC can be an excuse to ask them about their habits.

Demographics

On the 6th of June 2007 331 members of JR Tokai Express Research’s monitor panel who were either employed or did in their spare time software development, system development, or system management successfully completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 93.1% of the sample was male, 7.6% in their twenties, 37.8% in their thirties, 45.9% in their forties, 8.2% in their fifties, and 0.6% in their sixties.

Perhaps other married people can relate to me, but since tying the knot my PC budget has disappeared, so barring when a video card and a hard disk died, I’ve not delved into my computer for many a year.
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Over the first five days at the start of March MyVoice surveyed their internet community on the topic of personal computers. Note that I will use the term PC throughout, but the survey includes Macs and other kinds of home computers too.

Demographics

15,786 people successfully completed the survey. 54% were female, 2% in their teens, 18% in their twenties, 39% in their thirties, 26% in their forties, and 15% in their fifties.

As a side-note, I’ve often wondered by MyVoice has no-one over fifty-nine in their samples. Do they have to leave the online community once they reach that age? Do they really mean in their fifties or older in the group? Perhaps I should email them.

Back on PCs, I have a home-built effort, so if I define buying a new one as upgrading the motherboard, I think it was last changed in the year 2000. Marriage does tend to realign your purchasing priorities, or more precisely one gets one’s purchasing priorities realigned for one. I’m still blogging away on a 900 MHz AMD Athlon, and whilst I’d love to buy a dockable portable, or just anything with a quieter fan, sadly my budget is assigned to other things.
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japan.internet.com, in conjunction with Cross Marketing Inc, published the results of research into personal computer maintenance. They interview 300 people, exactly 50:50 male and female, and exactly 20% aged 18 or 19, and 20% in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties.

I can’t say I regularly clean inside my PC, if at all, except to just blow dust out of the way when putting new bits in! I wonder if the virus scan option in Q2SQ includes a spyware check?
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