How long should a computer last in your opinion?

Is it reasonable that a brand new product today is considered obsoleted within a year?
(IBM-clones for gaming comes to mind).

Is it reasonable that an expensive "all-in-one" solution only last a few years, untill the computer either dies of hardware failure or is EOL:ed by the manufacturer.
(Read Apple).

What should we expect from the NG-Amigas?

My IBM-clones since the year 2002 when I got my first one has lasted quite long, in average a life span of 5 years, which is reasonable considering the amount of money invested vs. usage, a mix a second hand and brand new.


My Apple experiences however, 2 years and three months lifespan is not a good value for the money, since it was purchased as new.

AmigaOne, well, bought in 2003, an expensive piece of hardware, but still "working" afaik, (just need to replace the battery again I guess ). The value, pretty good if you consider the time and that it was bought as an enthusiast machine.

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@tomazkid

Good question.

I don't mind computers becoming obsolete. Time marches on. If it's true that increased hardware power inspires increased code bloat, it's also true that the increased power inspires creativity and superior multimedia, among other things.

In my experience, since 1995, I have never had an Apple machine die on me from hardware failure, or any other reason, while it was in active use. That's about 6 total machines. My Mac Pro even survived huge shipping damage and is still working. I have had 2 Macs, 1 Amiga and 1 PC seemingly die from being stored in a moist basement for over a year. I will file this under Operator Error.

Every PC I have owned has died or become degraded. Probably 8 machines total. Two were turned into zombies by viruses. My Alienware Area-51 died right before my eyes. Just went black. The HD was infected, but still useful as a data drive. The hardware was history. My Cyberpower PC died when the PSU cooked off and fried the motherboard. I've had bad luck with PCs.

My Amiga luck has been similar to my Mac luck.

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@tomazkid

Lifetime lasting computer would be nice, IMHO.

I hate it if I need to buy new computer just to do the same thing I did yesterday. In windows and on Mac that is forced. And it causes applications to break -> need to buy new apps .... and new add-on cards ... and ....

My Amigas have been pretty nice to me. They have never failed, and if I have upgraded, I have usually not lost any application. And usually there has been upgrades and new machines available, more than I need.
It took 8 years before I started to feel that A4k+68k accelerator is not the "cutting edge" of performance any more. But even after that it would be ok for 90% of stuff. Even today, when I power on A4000 I see a lot of things happen faster than on a 4Ghz+ machine.

Realistically, I would want HW to last 10 years.
(to be able to upgrade the CPU of the HW once in that time would be nice, but often whole new motherboard does not cost more, it just can cause extra work/investmens)

In future the cpu PERFORMANCE should be enough even longer than before, I think.

Last edited by KimmoK on 09-Feb-2010 at 07:06 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 09-Feb-2010 at 07:05 AM.
Last edited by KimmoK on 09-Feb-2010 at 07:01 AM.

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@tomazkid

I love old computers. Making them usable makes me happy. Under my desk, at work, sits IBM workstation. It was produced in 2001. It's my my primary work machine. At home I keep old Dell workstation from 199-something (PII class). This is my "experiment with me" computer.

I expect 10 year of lifetime from a computer. Not software wise, but it shouldn't die on me. My new netbook was serviced once, because it burned battery module on a 4th day after I got it, now (~10 months of usage) LCD connection is going bad (I need to move my screen to get picture instead of whiteout). My Thinkpad T40 and Apple G4 Powerbook since I got'em few years ago.

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@tomazkid

My Pentium 90 running Windows 95 is still working and usable with Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer. It is good value considering I didnt pay single penny for that machine.

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@itix

I'm sure my P90 is running fine too - it has 98 on it - but it's been in retirement for many years now. I think it was more acceptable up until recently for PCs to be quickly obsoleted - a P90 is in no way nice to use, nor was it back in the day. PCs with Windows are only now getting to the stage where I would want to keep them for a long time. I have an Athlon XP 2000 machine running XP for many years, and more recently I have a Pentium-D 2.8GHz, also running XP, which I would expect to last me another 5-10 years, seeing as it's in a state now where it is fully usable.

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@tomazkid

Amigas generally have lasted 15 years and beyond, give or take some. So is that a lot to ask for other OS'es and Hardware? My A1000 still runs, and I used to use it daily for atleast 10 years.

Cheers

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Still using my P4 2.6 from 2003 with XP with no problem. It is fast enough to run all kinds of emulations and edit audio.

A1200 (1995-ish) still going strong, A3000T (Probably 1991) has SCSI issues otherwise is fine. Micro A1 is fine too. (2005)

@Gebrochen

Quote:

My A1000 still runs, and I used to use it daily for atleast 10 years.

My IBM runs daily 9 years now (and for most of that time without power down, it was closed in server room), Amiga 1000 is older, that's true, but what I find excellent: 10 yo hardware still runs current software (current, as updated daily OpenSuSE Linux).

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@tomazkid

Machines becoming obsoleted is par for the course. Naturally anything you buy will eventually have something better to replace it being released. It was just that in the last 2 decades, advances in both processing power and GPU capabilities meant that these advances happened in a relatively short space of time.

However, this doesn't mean that you had to then go and buy the latest kit constantly. The only people who do that are those constantly wanting to be the owners of the latest technology - rather than an inherent need for it. My PC built in 2007 still copes with everything I throw at it today and I have no need to change it unless a part of it dies.

Now reliability of modern machines is another matter entirely. I have my Commodore 64 and 128s, built in 1982 and 1985 respectively, and both work perfectly (OK, I reburnt some EPROMs for the 128 to update it fixing some bugs in the original releases), but aside from that it is the same as the day it left the factory.

My PC on the other hand has already gone through a set of memory, a DVD burner, water cooling pump, new fan a couple of HDs, and a PSU (all replaced due to dying in some form or another).

@Kimmok
Quote:

I hate it if I need to buy new computer just to do the same thing I did yesterday. In windows and on Mac that is forced. And it causes applications to break -> need to buy new apps .... and new add-on cards ... and ....

You don't have to replace the machine to do the same things. If it works with what you have, then that isn't going to change. It is only when you want to upgrade either the software (application or OS) or hardware that you run into these issues, and in a majority of cases, the new software does mostly the same as the last version, only slower with more bloat added for good measure

Last edited by _Steve_ on 09-Feb-2010 at 03:54 PM.

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@tomazkid
I expect minimum a decade from a desktop/workstation. I would have less expectations for a laptop or netbook though.

@tomazkid

My first PC, bought at the start of 2000, is still working today and it was used 24/7 for about 4 years. So are several other PCs I've got. Only one PC died on me, due to a PSU failure. My PowerMac G5 has happily been working 24/7 since January 2005. There are PCs here at work that are over 10 years old and still work but I'd say a 5 year life span is probably reasonable to expect. 10 if you are prepared to replace PSUs, HDs etc.

About machines been obsoleted, the biggest surprise I've ever had in the PC market was my Q6600. I've had to upgrade the GFX card on the machine once and will have to replace it again at some point but I haven't found a single game (for example) to max it out, all my image processing is nice and snappy, as are my development tasks and "extreme browsing" habits, ie. 12390812389123102031019230981203 Chrome tabs open at any given point in time. Got it in September 2007 and the processor was already 9 months old by then. The other surprise is that it *still* costs £150 boxed, which is the price I paid back then.

Last edited by Zardoz on 09-Feb-2010 at 04:35 PM.
Last edited by Zardoz on 09-Feb-2010 at 04:31 PM.

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I've had one x86 PC since 1989.

I've replaced the mobo, graphics card, sound card, power supply, RAM, network card, TV card, keyboard and mouse. But the case is still the same.

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The part I've hard to replace the most on any computer is always the laptop power supply. The kids go through one every 6 months or so :(

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@opi

Quote:

opi wrote: @tomazkid I love old computers. Making them usable makes me happy. Under my desk, at work, sits IBM workstation. It was produced in 2001. It's my my primary work machine. At home I keep old Dell workstation from 199-something (PII class). This is my "experiment with me" computer. I expect 10 year of lifetime from a computer. Not software wise, but it shouldn't die on me. My new netbook was serviced once, because it burned battery module on a 4th day after I got it, now (~10 months of usage) LCD connection is going bad (I need to move my screen to get picture instead of whiteout). My Thinkpad T40 and Apple G4 Powerbook since I got'em few years ago.

I'm with you: I'm building a "'90's gaming rig" right now: PII/400, 128mb RAM, two 8mb VoodooII cards, etc. because from '94 to about 2001 was the golden age of PC gaming. I'm having huge amounts of fun messing with it.

That machine is built around a ca. 1998 motherboard, CPU, RAM, HD, 9 y/o video card (Geforce 3 Ti), 13 year old 3d cards, and a 10 year old HD. Can't recall the vintage of the CDRW, but it's something like that.

I gave one of my nieces a 10 y/o P2/333 IBM Thinkpad : bumped it up to 512mb RAM, put a 6 gig HD in (could take up to 500 gig, IIRC, just no need for it) added a USB hub (thing only came with one port!) and PC-Card WiFi. She loves it! I put about $30 into it to get it up to spec (it's running WinXP, btw).

While I've upgraded video cards, my current motherboard is ca. 2004, and will probably be chugging along for years to come, along with its 2.0ghz Athlon XP-64.

I recognize that OS's grow, and I appreciate the march of technology. But there's no reason to throw away old gear if you've got a use for it and certainly no reason to not use what you have! Heck most of the equipment in the gaming rig came out of a rack-mount server, which I gutted and put a 1.4ghz athlon with a gig of RAM and a couple 20 gig HDs inside of and then installed server 2008 (for work/training purposes). The thing is huge; I could've stacked a pair of A1200 motherboards inside. LOL

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ALL of my PC's have degraded or broken if they explicitly ran windows. My macs, I've only had for a while but no problems, my 3k had a hardware failure (but fixed) when i plugged a parallel device in the SCSI. i don't see the mac g4's going obsolete anytime soon either, we've basically hit a wall

@_Steve_

"You don't have to replace the machine to do the same things. If it works with what you have, then that isn't going to change."

If one does want to keep the system safe, one is forced to move on, because there is no security updates for old win OSs. (sure, if Amiga was still in the mainstream we might have same problem)

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@all

I have always envied people whose needs allowed them to keep a computer for a long time, because it's true that old machines can do a lot of useful work. Indeed, barring hardware failure, bulk obsolescence of printers and driver availability may be the deciding factor for a new machine.

I am not so lucky. I edit video and author DVDs, and I always need a faster machine. The Toaster/Flyer was very fast -- almost realtime -- but I will never go there again with all those finicky components, the cable mess, the inability to handle HD, and of course the lack of a DVD authoring capability. But a good Toaster/Flyer setup in full power remains a magnificent thing to behold.

With modern machines, when I had 1Ghz and special hardware, I wanted more CPU and even better special hardware. Now, special hardware is required only for exotic needs. So, when I had 2 CPUs, I wanted 4 CPUs, and as it happened, 4 CPUs was twice as fast at rendering video. So the next thing you want is 8 cores, and then 16, and so on. Editing video also seems to bring death to PCs (but not Macs) at an accelerated rate.

And then again there's always Crysis.

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@EmperorLongo

One reason to keep an old x486 or Pentium, is the backward compability issue.

Old dos programs don't run too well on XP or higher, especially if you have hardware that lacks dos-drivers.

Dosbox can be ok, but not always like the "real thing".

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@tomazkid

Actually between DOSBox, Bochs, Sun's VirtualBox and Virtual PC you've got a plethora of ways to get old stuff working without having a second PC. I elected to do it because none of them support d3d, which leaves a small-but-vital (to me) handful of games out in the cold. Hence I keep it.

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