I use 2 laptops in exactly this way. One with BSD and one with Windows. They have been on pretty much 24/7 for years now, and still running strong.
I haven't touched the hardware in the BSD laptop since I set it up, though I do want to put a bigger hard drive in it. It had an uptime of over 700 days before I moved and couldn't plug it back in before the built-in UPS ran out :) Add that to the current uptime of 349 days, and I think I do OK. The screen was broken when I got it, so I removed it. I keep it stood up on its side to keep heat from collecting on the bottom. Its location at my old house was in a small closet that got pretty hot. Never had a problem. I think the only concern with the hard drive is with the constant movement normally involved in using a laptop. This won't be an issue after you start using it as a server, but what it's been through in the past will become a factor in the future. Has yours ever been dropped? My Windows laptop is on all the time too. It was made in 2003, and was top of the line at the time. I only turn it off when I need to put it in the carrying case, and that is only because of heat. In addition, my company had 4 very old Toshiba laptops in service when I started here. We're down to 2. One lost a hard drive and one was obsoleted. I agree that the biggest risk factor in a laptop is the hard drive. Keep backups that work and replace it when it breaks. In a way, it's doing you a favor to force you to keep backups, as you KNOW it's going to fail first in all likelihood. -wes On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 11:21 PM, Tim Wescott <[email protected]> wrote: > My #1 son and I are in mild disagreement. I've got an old Dell laptop > (Latitude 26something) that I've put Xubuntu on and am re-purposing as > a version control server (later internal web server for testing and > probably Dirvish for, well, survival). > > (And yes, using a laptop as a server has a number of strikes against > it. But I don't care, because it cost us exactly $0 to put into > service. We can get our feet wet with this without spending any > capital, and if and when it seems necessary we can shell out some real > dough for a real machine.) > > He's of the opinion that a laptop is gonna break if it's left on all the > time. I'm of the opinion that it's going to be pretty less heavily > loaded than if someone were using it (how much can a working household > with three part-time developers load a server?), and besides it's been > left on for days on end before now, so get outta the way kid and let me > work! > > I've never tried this, so I have to admit that it's an either/or thing > as far as I'm concerned. I'm interested if anyone has any direct > experience, good or bad, with this. > > -- > Tim Wescott > Wescott Design Services > Voice: 503-631-7815 > Cell: 503-349-8432 > http://www.wescottdesign.com > > > _______________________________________________ > PLUG mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug > _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
