For the past few weeks, I have been running a survey on the Javamex web site asking readers' opinions on which of various common pieces of software they find the most irritating. The table below gives the votes from the first 100 respondents. [A larger sample of 1,000 respondents is to be included shortly.]
As with any survey designed to be practical and non off-putting, there are various caveats to bear in mind. Respondents were asked which single choice they thought to be the most irritating out of a range of common pieces of software; this software included various common "programs", taking a broad definition of the latter term to include operating systems. The twelve "programs" mentioned below were given as choices, as well as the option "other" (in which case respondents were asked to name the offending program).
In this simple survey I made no attempt to 'normalise' the results according to how frequently the programs in question are actually used. Thus, one factor to consider is that the programs judged more irritating may owe part of that judgement to the fact that they are more frequently used than the other programs (and vice versa, those judged less irritating may be less frequently used). However, the programs named were generally chosen because they are at least "fairly common" mainstream applications or operating systems.
| Software | % respondents naming as most irritating |
|---|---|
| Antivirus software | 18 % |
| iTunes | 15 % |
| Internet Explorer | 13 % |
| Windows Vista | 11 % |
| Mac OS | 10 % |
| Firefox | 6 % |
| Windows 7 | 5 % |
| Open Office | 5 % |
| Safari | 3 % |
| Google Chrome | 3 % |
| Windows XP | 2 % |
| MS Office | 1 % |
| Other | 8 % |