Ian wrote: > On Saturday 04 Jun 2005 18:36, JR wrote: > >>Hi folks, >> >>I'm curious what you all consider a reasonable lifespan for a laptop. >>Personally, I bought my one and only Dell I4000 about 4 years ago. Within >>weeks, the battery deteriorated beyond use, as did the DVD drive. > > >>A few months after that was repaired, the hinges on the screen came apart, >>and the display became a true peripheral :) >> >>Anyway, that was all repaired while in warranty, but within a few months of >>the warranty expiring, the battery again became useless, and shortly >>afterwards, the DVD drive died. So I cant make any alterations to my OS >>that might require say, and emergency boot CD. >> >>Is this normal for laptop parts? Everything else is fine, (Actually, the >>speakers blew within a week of owning the laptop.) but I want to know what >>to look out for when choosing a new model. > > > I'd expect a laptop to last at least 5 years without repair. > Either you are extremely ham fisted or you bought a dud. > Laptop batteries aren't known for longevity, although completely discharging > them is a sure recipe for failures (the charger usually can't bring it back > up from zero). I find this interesting, because the directions for the Li-Ion pack for my Thinkpad recoment doing a full cycle to full discharge, and then full recharge every 3 months. The instructions for the Ni-Cad recoment doing it at least monthly. I am not sure about systems using Ni-MH batteries... > > Old Toshiba laptops (PII) are still going strong, so it appears some do last > for a while. I'd suggest a google for forums discussing the virtues (and > otherwise) of laptops. > I have a Toshiba 400CDT that is starting to die - the bottem 1" of the display sometimes goes gray. Other then that, and the fack that it so limmited by todays standards, it is still going strong. (P-75, 40Mb RAM and 800Mb drive. No USB, No cardbus support, no 3.3v PCMCIA cards.) The strange thing is that the battery is still good for 2 hours.
My brother-in-law has a Compaq laptop that is even older. 486 processor, and 8Mb of RAM. It is still up and running. When he gets tired of it, I am thinking of turning it into a firewall. The batteries are only good for about 5 minutes on that one, so it isn't too partable any more. Mikkel -- Registered Linux User #16148 (http://counter.li.org/)
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