smart computer use?

I’ve been relying on the internet now for a while for both my career as a web developer and also as a source of information and entertainment. Good times…

Average Internet Usage

I probably spend a lot more time online than an “average” internet user… but that could all be relative. What is average internet usage? Hard to say probably. I’ve seen polls and studies that eluded to the fact that average Internet users use the Internet from maybe 2-3 hours per day.

That’s not too bad. Plenty of time to read some news, check email, maybe browse around a bit, and so on.

Now… I look at how long I am online each day… at least 8 hrs on most days, mainly due to work and extra-curricular Internet activities… but mostly from work.

Anyways, all this time online has given me a pretty focused list of the top things that annoy Internet users. This list might be tilted towards my own usage and experience, so feel free to comment and add anything that you might feel annoys you about Internet use.

Ok, Here’s My “Top 5 Things That Annoy Internet Users”

#5 – Email SPAM

I’m starting this off at #5 because SPAM can be addressed somewhat easily these days with some of the better SPAM filtering services that are available. But it’s still out there.

SPAM is something that I have to deal with every day. My clients SPAM problems even get to work their way into my life as they seek me out for info on how to stop SPAM.

Luckily I’ve found Gmail to be rather good at helping me filter my SPAM. The SPAM folder in my Gmail account, which pulls in email for around 10 of my email accounts, hovers between 2,000 and 2,500 SPAM emails that have been filtered out on average over the 30 span that Gmail keeps SPAM in the SPAM folder.

Good stuff. Glad I’m not manually trying to handle all that SPAM anymore.

#4 – Pop-up or Annoying Ads

I don’t think ads are bad as a whole. People need to make money on the Internet and ads help do that.

What I don’t like is the highly obtrusive ads that either pop-up or have other highly annoying behaviors. The wrong type of ad implementation, even on a good web site, can just flat out kill the user experience.

I would guess that you probably feel the same!

#3 – Hard-to-use Online Forms

How many times have you tried to fill out a form on a web site to register for something, only to commit a validation error somehow (not putting enough characters in your username, forgetting to fill a required field) and end up having to either re-fill a bunch of fields or somehow manage to erase all the stuff you just entered?

Many web sites have horrible form usability. Some forms don’t tell you what is required or what is valid data to enter. Some do but it might be unclear as to the specifics. Some forms have wacky tab ordering, so that when you hit the tab key the cursor doesn’t jump to the next logical field. Some forms somehow manage to erase data that you took 5-10 minutes to fill out if you don’t correctly hit the back button or something.

I don’t know how many times I’ve become frustrated with the usability of a web form. Usually it’s the larger forms that kill me when they don’t work right, but any size form can set me off if it’s unusable. Granted, there are many sites that handle forms great… but there are way more that will do something to test your patience.

#2 – Too Many User Accounts and Passwords

I have a spreadsheet (yes, a spreadsheet) to manage my various Internet accounts and passwords. This spreadsheet probably houses over a hundred different username/password combos that I need to remember for various web sites… online banking, eBay, blog site admins, forum accounts… and the list goes on and on.

Google kinda helps me out by letting me use the same username/password combo for all their services such as Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Adsense, and the like. But that is a very small chunk of my total password collection. I’m sure there are people out there that have user account collections that dwarf my measly 100 row + spreadsheet.

#1 – Connection interruptions and outages!

There really is nothing more annoying than your Internet connection dropping when you are needing it to work. Considering the short attention span of most Internet users, I would say that even 5 minutes of downtime on an Internet connection is enough to drive somebody insane and crazy. Especially when you are trying to do something urgent or are feeling very little patience on the day as a whole.

As I type this I’m even battling with a spotty Cable One internet connection. “We love to make you smile” I think is their slogan. Yeah right. If a bad Internet connection makes me smile than good job CableOne… but it doesn’t.

A bonus CableOne rant…

Plus, while I’m on my CableOne rant… I don’t even feel like calling support anymore because they always make me un-plug and re-plug the modem and also disconnect all my cabling to the modem and then reconnect it (huge pain in the ass).

They make me do this each time I call in, even when I call in repeatedly over several days due to something that is not my problem. It’s like they don’t even have a log that says I called a few times and they already made me unplug my modem and take all my cabling apart a few times over the last few days. Cripes.

But, I guess I’m not the only person who is dissatisfied with their Internet provider. CableOne probably works good for some folks too. But not me.

Peace.