Average life of a pc?

[ashaw1]

After having lost both a laptop and a pc to hard drive failures i wondered what the average life of a pc was these days (if you are not in that line of business)?

Do they still make them like they used to or is this just another example of the throw away age we live in?

Does anyone out there have a real dinosaur of a pc that just refuses to die?

[cazmanian_minx]

I have a bog standard Dell desktop which is 6 years old and still going strong. My laptop is a Sony Vaio, OH's old work machine, and that's about 8 years old.

[Matthew]

2 years-ish for me.

[EDDIE]

If i can get 2 to 3 years out of a laptop im happy.A lot of people dont relise but a lot of hardrives have a 5 year guarntee on them thats if u can be bothered removing the harddrive and checking it out and
sending it away a long with your information.If its just a hardrive failure hardrives are quite cheap and quite easy to replace but i would hope for about 4 to 5 year life span on it

[Phill]

My experience with harddrives is that they either fail pretty quickly i.e. within days or they last a good while.
I have kept every harddrive I have owned for about ten years now (one with a manufacture date of 1997!), they all get dragged out now and then to get old stuff off (generally photo's) and all work fine. I have had a few dodgy ones and they have all failed pretty quickly.

The biggest killer with PC's is normally the CPU's over heating. People often place the unit on the floor under their desk and pretty soon it starts filling up with dust, dog/cat hair etc. and this gets clogged around the fan on the CPU. Fan stops and soon after the CPU does.
So it worth opening up your unit every now and again and giving it a very, very, very gentle vac using the hose attachment. Note, very very gentle and not too close!

As Eddie says, harddrives are a very easy swap on most machines, some laptops can be awkward but even if you take it to a PC maintenance outfit it really shouldn't cost much.

And are you sure it was harddrive failure?

Until recently I had a machine that was about 8 years old, ditched it due to not actually being compatible with much these days rather than failure.

I still have a laptop which is 7 years old and still in use.

Oh, I have a 5 1/4 inch floppydrive machine somewhere but I don't think that'll see use again.

[Connor.]

I normally have my computer for 2 years and it's pretty much obsolete. The dramatic improvements in technology mean after 2 years you're living in the stone age. After 2 years i flog my computer off to someone who doesn't need the best graphics for gaming but wants a decent looking PC with lots of neon ;)

[MadPict]

My iBook is still going strong after 8 years. My old 266 MHz Pentium II desktop PC (with huge 5GB hard drive) is still working after 11 or 12 years (may even be older but my memory gets hazy that far back) so like many electronic goods you can get lucky and they can last a lifetime...

[Kodiak]

Never had a Computer die on me, I have either Upgraded with new bits etc or I have just bought a New One.

That is except for the LapTop which is a Compaq and I bout this 8 Years past Christmas and it still works perfectly. We keep it going only for Emergency now as it is the only computer we have that still has a Modem in.

That way if our BroadBand goes down for any reason then we can still connect to the internet by Dial-Up. Main reason we have been cut off from the BroadBand has been to Power Cuts and the the LapTop is perfect as it is Battery Powered.

My PC I am using is about 9 months old but my old one is still in use, I will be upgrading my PC later this year.

I also have two external Hard Drives on which I back up all my files just in case a Hard Drive blows. This way I would lose nothing and the good thing they are quite reasonable in Price. I bought a 1TB External HD from Tesco for £64.00 and that is a real good price.

[George Brims]

We have a bunch of computers in our lab, and we usually replace them because we want something newer and faster, not because they're broken. We did have one person who needed a new laptop power brick about every 6 weeks (kept twisting the cable to bits) and roughly monthly calls to the Dell guy to fix bits of the laptop. Fortunately that person left! A lot of us travel quite a bit with our laptops, and we use them as our primary machines with an extra monitor attached when at work, so we always buy several years of extended warranty.

As for machines becoming obsolete, the average time it takes a state of the art pc to be obsolete is now about five weeks

[purplelady]

mine is 3 yrs old just have had no problems as yet x

[Liz]

Crikey mine was about 10 years old and only replaced it because it stopped working.

I like to get my money's worth!:lol:

[dx100uk]

well i've still got a 286/1mb/8MHz 20Mb HDD compaq deskpro going strong
used about 1-2 times a month.

and a compaq 286 laptop,
and also a Compal TS30AS win95

all not far off 20yrs old

dx

[scorrie]

well i've still got a 286/1mb/8MHz 20Mb HDD compaq deskpro going strong
used about 1-2 times a month.

and a compaq 286 laptop,
and also a Compal TS30AS win95

all not far off 20yrs old

dx

Is that more advanced than mine?

See here:-

http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i237/scorrie57/2218573731_3ec45c46b6.jpg

:)

[Kenneth]

Mines is now about 9 years old, although when we bought im pretty sure it was a top of the range kind of thing, cost about £1000 I think! And its doing ok, getting a wee bit slow but thats mainly bugs and viruses!

[Pastychomper]

I have a Spectrum that's lasted 22 years so far and wasn't new when I got it - the advantage of having no moving parts! :)

As for PCs, I replaced one after about 6 years with no problems, and the replacement has done 6 years' service so far - I replaced the DVD drive a few years in but that was all. I don't run Windows or play the latest games, so it's not too often I feel the need for a big upgrade. [lol]

[dx100uk]

oh i'm sad.
zx80, zx81 , and a hard kbuk speccy with microdrive. all still going.

got a commodore pet32 but i don't think that works.

but i have worked with computers since 1978 at STC
[yep one of the team that helped design fibre optics]

dx