Shouldn't computers have a better sense of time? / myLot

Brookville, Pennsylvania

November 9, 2015 1:39pm CST

The other day I ran a virus scan on my laptop. I watched a video on my desktop as it ran. The video was about over and I looked over and saw the progress bar saying "less than 1 minutes." That's great timing, I thought. Five minutes later, I'm watching a new video and the progress bar is still saying "less than 1 minutes." And yesterday, I uninstalled a few things from my desktop and the progress bar was stuck at "1 second remaining" for a good three or four minutes. Now I know that unexpected things can crop up, but you'd think a super-advanced calculator would give a good estimate. If it says "1 second remaining" it's understandable if there are still ten seconds or so, but not 240.

3 people like this

3 responses

Ronald Franklin

@RonElFran (1214)

• Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania

9 Nov 15

That's something I've often noticed as well. I think the problem is that the time remaining calculation is based on how long it took to reach specific execution milestones. In other words, it's backward looking rather than predictive, and when the current execution rate is different from the historical average, the time remaining calculation can be off.

2 people like this

Bluedoll

@Bluedoll (16774)

• Canada

9 Nov 15

Yeah, you sometime wonder if I wrote a simple program. 000 go get time 001 calculate time 002 check 003 print time 004 go back to 000 and it got stuck somewhere at sometime at sometime at sometime at sometime at..

2 people like this

Margaret Mwangi

@Missmwngi (12927)

• Nairobi, Kenya

10 Nov 15

Ha haa i really get pissed of when those timings never seem to end

1 person likes this