Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > alt.folklore.computers > #160796

Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC?

Show all headers | View raw

In article <20160310102218.b0031bb65dfec0524f233559@eircom.net>,
Ahem A Rivet's Shot  <steveo@eircom.net> wrote:
>On Wed, 9 Mar 2016 16:00:59 -0800 (PST)
>hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
>> How long do people typically keep their personal PCs?  Do people 
>
>	I doubt anyone in this group is typical.
>
>> replace it  because of obsolescence/lack of power, or because 
>> it is broken*?
>
>	Mine are around five or six years old, tricky to be exact because I
>rarely buy whole machines. Parts are replaced either because they're broken
>(rare) or because of obsolescence. I keep working parts and recycle them -
>so the motherboard in my router was once in my workstation.
>
>	The last flurry of replacements here was more in the interests of
>reduced power consumption than increased computing power. The next may well
>do both (I have my eye on an Odroid C2).

The odroid c2 and the xu4 are both wonders in terms of computing power
per watt. The xu4 is my favourite; it  uses around 7% of an i5 at the
same frequency; and use around 38% as much memory for code intensive
tasks (the thumb2 is that effective). This is measured with real loads
of around 16000 sip devices and kamailio/asterisk with around 600
calls active, and around half of them being transcoded from/to g.729.

>	Tablets OTOH rarely last more than a year or so before they get
>broken (usually a broken touchscreen on an otherwise perfectly functional
>computer). They'd make quite nice little servers (low power, built in UPS,
>built in display - Wifi only which is a pity) if it weren't for the pain of
>running services under Android.
>
>> Likewise for PCs used in business?  How long are they kept in service?
>
>	Again it varies - at one PPOE I retired some servers that hadn't
>been rebooted in (IIRC) seven years, if we hadn't been shutting down the
>service they were providing they would have stayed in use until they broke
>down. Desktops and laptops usually have a replacement policy varying
>between three and five years IME.


The same setup I described above use "the network is the computer" as
a guiding principle. We built three-way redundancy with floating failovers
for all devices (talking bgp to the network for a multicast DNS and
SIP register service). This means that one node can be taken out of
service at any one time, and the hardware can be upgraded very smoothly.

Which they do every 4 years. They also let servers have a burn-in 
of 3 months before switching them in. So far, 100.000 % uptime since
2008. (But some other providers lost their lines to us and the two
failover patchs during both a fire that took out a whole location and
a hurricane that took out power for 4 days, bringing some fiber repeaters
to shut down. But all connectivity to the fixed network and the
two main mobile operators stayed up. Even when losing a whole site.

We lost about 60 calls in progress, and the adapters had retries for
up to 12 seconds before re-registering at another node and proceeding
as normal.

Which is good enough for emergency lines, even.

>> *Obviously, some computers break from accidents--they fall off a
>> table or something hits them.  Laptops can get lost or stolen.
>> But I'm not considering those.  I suspect most PCs are replaced
>> before they physically develop problems.
>
>	Most likely PC hardware is very reliable.

A former collegue lost a laptop from the window of the 5th storey, 
straight down into the asphalt. It had a shattered sceen (but with 
a prompt blinking in the ~20% of it that was still readable) and
the wifi was still up. But the disk had crashed.  Linux still
replied to pings, though. The whole machine was not rectangular
any longer, more like an elongated parallellogram. And it made
a 4-5 cm dent in the asphalt.

We did manage to rescue all that was written to that disk
since the last backup too. Journalling file systems can be your 
friend.

IBM sure made good laptops.

-- mrr

Back to alt.folklore.computers | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar | Unroll thread

Thread

Typical service life of residential and business PC? hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2016-03-09 16:00 -0800
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2016-03-09 19:07 -0600
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? "Sam Crean" <sg55443@gmail.com> - 2016-03-10 12:31 +1100
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2016-03-09 21:38 -0600
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-03-10 04:13 +0000
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? timcaffrey420@gmail.com - 2016-03-09 19:58 -0800
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Jon Elson <elson@pico-systems.com> - 2016-03-09 22:29 -0600
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com> - 2016-03-09 22:30 -0600
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> - 2016-03-10 02:07 -0400
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2016-03-10 08:20 +0000
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-03-10 14:31 +0100
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Bob Eager <news0006@eager.cx> - 2016-03-10 08:22 +0000
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2016-03-10 17:02 +0000
      Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2016-03-10 14:10 -0500
      Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Lawrence Statton NK1G <lawrence@senguio.mx> - 2016-03-10 14:43 -0600
        Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2016-03-11 08:14 +0000
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Stephen Wolstenholme <steve@easynn.com> - 2016-03-10 09:21 +0000
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2016-03-10 10:22 +0000
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-03-10 15:19 +0100
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-03-10 11:02 +0100
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2016-03-10 06:30 -0700
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Joe Makowiec <makowiec@invalid.invalid> - 2016-03-10 14:47 +0000
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Mark Storkamp <mstorkamp@yahoo.com> - 2016-03-10 09:01 -0600
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Jon Elson <elson@pico-systems.com> - 2016-03-11 21:49 -0600
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2016-03-10 14:12 -0500
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Jan van den Broek <fortytwo@xs4all.nl> - 2016-05-02 09:51 +0100
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? andrew@cucumber.demon.co.uk (Andrew Gabriel) - 2016-05-03 20:40 +0000
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2016-05-03 17:40 -0400
      Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2016-05-03 23:03 -0400
      Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2016-05-04 12:54 +0000
        Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2016-05-04 10:08 -0400
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? pechter@pechter.net (William Pechter) - 2016-05-04 20:36 +0000
  Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? jhhaynes@earthlink.net - 2016-05-03 19:53 -0700
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Jon Elson <jmelson@wustl.edu> - 2016-05-04 14:42 -0500
    Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? "J. Clarke" <j.clarke.873638@gmail.com> - 2016-05-04 22:43 -0400
      Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-05-05 08:37 +0000
        Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Lawrence Statton NK1G <lawrence@senguio.mx> - 2016-05-05 13:26 -0500
          Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2016-05-05 20:13 +0000
          Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-05-06 14:09 +0200
            Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? mausg@mail.com - 2016-05-06 19:42 +0000
              Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? Morten Reistad <first@last.name.invalid> - 2016-05-07 02:42 +0200
        Re: Typical service life of residential and business PC? pechter@pechter.net (William Pechter) - 2016-05-09 22:53 +0000

csiph-web