I have heard from a lot of places that one of the strengths of Linux is that you do not have to reboot it all the time. I am under the impression that this is easier on your hardware and I am wondering if that is true.
I have a Dell Inspiron laptop, and in general I leave it on, trying only to do warm reboots when necessary. I do not use suspend because it tends to mess some things up (Like Kinternet) that only recover after a cold reboot.
As I understand it, this is less stressful for the hard drive, as
up and down is what wears it out.
Can anybody tell me if what I am doing will make my computer last longer? And if not, what is the best way to use your computer to make it last
Well, The same rules and physical laws that apply to general hardware are also true for your laptop. Spinning disks up and down decreases their lifespan. All hard drives have MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) more or less than 50,000 hours and will fail at some point no matter how you care about them. Powering system up and down produces current and voltage spikes which impose excessive wear on all electrical components. Big temperature variations and vibrations are also decreasing lifespan of all electronic devices. An average laptop lifespan is about 3-5 years depending on the component and assembly quality. But why do you need more? I hope you won't list your laptop in your will as an asset for your kids and grandchildren. Won't you? Since hardware is so cheap why bother about its longevity? Is five year an average laptop lifespan not enough for you? After that it's gonna be technically and morally obsolete device. Although, you still can use it as a typewriter. A have 486DX laptop which is already about 15 years old and it's still working. But what can you do with it? It's very heavy and painfully slow and it has only BW display. I hope to recycle it someday. Are you shooting for the oldest working laptop record in the Guinness Book? Get a life man! Alex ------------------- the spinning the
longest?
Thank You
Neal McDermott
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