Please Stand By
March 30th, 2005 - 10:31 pm
Any PC more than three years old is an accident waiting to happen. Mine is 38 months old, and the wait ended yesterday. After a few (ahem) problems, everything seems to be working again – for now. But I can tell you the video card is about to go down for the last time.
Back after I read some news.
How do you manage that? Almost all of my boxes are far more than three years old. I bought my firewall box six years ago for C$100. It was a used 486. My internal server is over 10 years old (HP parisc). My monitor came with this HP box, and it is still fine.
I had only one brand new box in my life, and it was a 486 back in ’92.
I hear many times people complaining about their hardware, but somehow I am lucky since mine doesn’t usually die (except the hard disk… or the whole motherboard if I pull a card after forgetting to power down…)
Vilmos
TO: Stephen Green
RE: Get a Mac
“Any PC more than three years old is an accident waiting to happen.” — Stephen Green
Three years, eh?
My G4 had the first major problem I’ve had with any of a number of Apple computer in 25 years; lost the logic board. [Note: I think it was due to my installation of Microsoft Office for Mac 30-Day Demo(lition) that caused it to blow.]
I consider hard drive and monitor failures to be a normal hazard. But I’ve only had two hard drives fail me at home in all that time. At work, when I worked for US WEST, I had 12 machines going in the lab. I lost one or two hard drives. I lost numerous monitors. Most of which were due to power hits resulting from some bozo with a digger cutting a line while they were building Park Meadows across the street (I-25). That was in 10 years at that job.
When I left, a year ago, we were still using the machines we’d bought in the previous millenium. [Note: One of the reasons I left. Management would not upgrade the equipment or the software.]
Regards,
Chuck(le)
How’s the abacus working, Vilmos?
3 years is generally a good time to start looking for something with a little more horsepower. When that time comes, I generally look for something that is 6 month or so old so as to avoid paying a premium for the latest tech.
I bought my computer in 1998 and it is still working fine.
Three years!
I bought my present box in early 99.
OK, I’ve added RAM, upraded the video card and hard drive. But…
It runs along trouble free.
The only two reasons I want to upgrade is…
a) more horsepower
b) I’m starting to have to get my daughter off of it so I can use it.
Hey, in ’97 my PII 200mmx was the bleeding edge and it’s still ticking away. If your hammer is still pushing nails into boards, do you really *need* a new hammer? (Granted replacement power supply, monitor and upgraded hard drive have been added, but everything else is original (Note to self: never again buy proprietary hardware))
There’s nothing I’m doing that needs more horsepower although reading CDs written on XP systems is somewhat problematic I’ve got workarounds for the few times it’s been necessary.
Did I mention I’m cheap? Or that first person shooters make me ill going all the way back to Castle Wolfenstein? Or that 200K miles later my ’99 Bonneville is still haulin my butt to work and back (100+ mile round trip). And I still play XCom:UFO Defense and MS Flight Sim 98, so sue me.
Hey Stephen,
As the saying goes, what do people mean when they say the video card is going down on them?
(Sorry, someone had to say it…)
cheers,
DiB
I find it difficult to believe these Mac fanatics and their wonderful machines which are still working after 25 years??
We had three of them in five years. Crashes and freezes were constant. Forget about running MS Excel.
We gave up and got a Dell PC which stood up to six years of hard usage. Never crashed or froze.
It still works okay, but was having trouble dealing with the new software (my husband is a CPA) so we retired it and a local guy, actually gal, built us one tailored to our needs.
BTW – Stephen. The link above was a bit more explicit than I expected. Was there more to it than its leer appeal?
> How’s the abacus working, Vilmos?
It is churning along pretty well. It hasn’t been rebooted for almost four months.
> 3 years is generally a good time to start
> looking for something with a little more
> horsepower.
Why? That box does its job spectacularly. There is no need for anything more powerful. If I replace it, then I will replace it with a soekris box or something like that. It does firewalling, natting, dns server, mail server, and a web server.
No question that it would be a great idea to separate the servers from the firewall, but I don’t want to have too many computers around. Besides, if one uses djb software and OpenBSD, then it is pretty secure, and runs flawlessly on a low end box like this 486.
Vilmos
…but I don’t want to have too many computers around.
HERESY!!!
