A Slice of Perspective

I was reading on the forums about someone who wanted to pay less than $10 a month of various features and the Host had to provide 99.99% uptime.

I thought to myself what a ludicrous desire for the money. 99.99% uptime is 4 minutes of downtime each month. You know the percents of uptime we see is somewhat vague. Its an abstract idea. When you look at one host who offers 99% and some other Host offers 99.9% well of course you will say hmm 99.9% that’s better I’ll take it.

So let me add a quick amount of perspective to uptime guarantees. This will be very fast and I anyone can work out the math its pretty easy but I have gone ahead and done it for you:

99% = 7 hours 12 minutes of downtime

99.9% = 43 minutes

99.99% = 4 minutes

99.999% = less than half a minute

Now for the perspective. If you wanted a writer with those percentages of accuracy you would have:

99% = 20 misspelled words out of a 2000 word paper

99.9% = 2 misspelled words

99.99% = 2 missing punctuation marks

99.999% = 1 misspelling out of 50 2000 word papers

Most types of gasoline you put into your car are a mix of fuels and additives. Some of the additives are meant to be added (such as cleaners) and some where not removed all of the way (sulphur, water, etc). This by the way is further perspective. I pay about 2 dollars a gallon. To fill up my tank once costs more than what the guy wanted to spend on his Host for a month and yet the gasoline I use is rated around 90% purity. And if the gasoline does harm my engine, the gas company isn’t going to foot the bill like a Web Host would if they dropped the connection.

Think about it. Until tomorrow Happy Hosting!