[LAU] pd, linux, graphics hardware.

[david]

Mark Knecht wrote:
> On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 10:05 PM, naysayer <gateswideopen at gmail.com> wrote:
>> hey crew.
>>
>> i know this is a really boring topic but i'm in that horrid world of needing
>> a new laptop.(current one died) call me old fashioned but 3 years is really
>> not that long for the life of a PC. grrrr.
>>
> 
> Mine died this week and it's only 10 months old. Only good thing to
> say about that is that I did good backups and it's still under
> warranty. I agree. These things don't last, especially laptops.

Hmmm, my current Toshiba laptop is 3.5 years old and got hauled around 
Europe a few months after we bought it. My wife's previous Toshiba 
laptop was 3-4 years old when she slammed a hinge of the screen into the 
edge of her desk and broke it - outside of that, it was still working 
fine. Her previous laptop was a Sony Vaio Superslim Pro, and it lasted 
for years and years before it simply wouldn't boot up anymore. And we 
bought the Superslim Pro for her because a friend of ours was using one 
- he carried it around during his busy day just like a book (never used 
a case, would just toss it into the trunk of his car, etc) - and his 
lasted 3 years. Finally, our daughter just now replaced her very used 
Dell Lattitude 600 which was three years old when we bought it used in 
2005 from a former employer of mine - so it was 5 years old when her 
fiance bought her a desktop PC as a wedding present to replace it. (Her 
laptop still works.)

Then, on the other end of the scale, a friend bought a high-end Dell 
laptop five years ago. It has a 3GHz Pentium 4 processor in it. During 
the first month, the hard drive died. A few months after he got it back 
from them, the processor died. During the last month of the warranty, 
the processor died again, this time taking the motherboard with it. (The 
problem was poorly-designed ventilation - the design had been for a 
slower processor and Dell had simply stuck the faster processor into the 
old design.)

Still, they say the average laptop's lifespan is 18 months.

-- 
David
gnome at hawaii.rr.com
authenticity, honesty, community