Whether it be a laptop desktop or tower computer what would be their lifetime before they start playing up and time to change or upgrade?

Question

Whether it be a laptop desktop or tower computer what would be their lifetime before they start playing up and time to change or upgrade?

Answer 1

It depends on both the manufacturing quality and the suitability for any newer software that you may need to use.

It also depends on maintenance, keeping the vents / fans / heatsinks clean so it does not overheat.



I have two laptops that are over ten years old and they are as good as new, they still work immaculately.

(They are Panasonic Toughbooks, that use the metal casings for heat dissipation and have no fans or vents).



One of out company network machines, a small firewall/router setup using an ITX size intel atom board, with a passive heatsink, is probably also around ten years old.



Another little machine I used purely as a Quake 2 server ran for almost 15 years, until the hard drive disintegrated...





On the other hand, a cheap laptop with a flimsy case that allows the main board to flex every time its handled, is not likely to last long at all...



Or a desktop where the CPU heatsink gets clogged up with dust and it cooks itself - I've seen that happen in under a year on one machine.

Answer 2

Having worked somewhere that sells computers, I would say we probably see people upgrade/replace their computers after about... 5-6 years, or at least that's when it starts to make sense to do so in terms of performance improvements. By then you may start to have some components that may or may not fail. I think the most common thing we see go out first is the hard drive on most computers, especially laptops.



Desktop computers have a bit more leeway with incremental component upgrades, but laptops it's usually the whole thing each time.



It really all comes down to what you use it for and how you use it. If you take care of your system and maintain it regularly, it'll probably last many years. If you're like the kind of people I work with daily and trash their computers, never clean them, etc, you'll probably start having issues not long after the warranty is up.

Answer 3

I bought this laptop ten years ago and it's still in daily use as my only computer - Machine:

Type: Portable System: Dell product: Inspiron 1545 v: N/A serial:

Mobo: Dell model: 0G848F serial: BIOS: Dell v: A14

date: 12/07/2009.



It came with Windows 7 on it but within five minutes Windows was deleted and replaced with Linux Mint.



It now runs the latest 2019 version of MX Linux 18.3 -

Host: mx Kernel: 4.15.0-1-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 6.3.0

Desktop: Xfce 4.12.3 Distro: MX-18.3_x64 Continuum March 14 2018

base: Debian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)

Answer 4

That COULD be 1 day, 1 year, 10 years, or never, mate.



If you were to use just a modicum of intelligence you'd think about it.



If a computer comes with a faulty component built in, or added, then you'd need it replaced as soon as you got it.



Dependent on what you're actually going to be using your computer for, you MAY need to upgrade components as and when the need arises. i.e. if you are a games player, with the rapid development of more realistic games AND their requirements, you MAY need to upgade your video/graphics card if there's a particular game that you wish to run. (You MAY also need to upgrade the storage capacity of your computer for larger games ... some already take several Gigabytes of room up, and this is VERY LIKELY to expand to the extent that even more games will be needing more room. i.e. larger hard disk drives.) The same could be true of video editing, audio editing, etc.



More powerful programs/applications require faster processors and/or RAM (Random Access Memory) ... the memory in your computer. This means that you MAY need to purchase a faster CPU or more RAM to run specific programs/applications. Be aware that specific motherboards are only able to run specific CPUs up to a certain rate. i.e. you MAY also need to purchase a new motherboard into which you would fit a new CPU. The same is true of RAM modules, too. i.e. you can't run DDR4 RAM on a DDR3 RAM motherboard.



If none of the above applies to you, you MAY be able to run a computer for many years without the need to upgrade anything.