John, On Sunday 01 August 2004 02:19, John Andersen wrote:
On Saturday 31 July 2004 10:12 am, Hylton Conacher (ZR1HPC) wrote:
Perhaps you should check the above first, as 5 years down the line you do not want to have to buy another laptop because your chip is not manufactured any longer.
Huh? Why would that make a difference? Its not like CPUs burn out and have to be replaced periodically like oil filters on a car.
Yes and no. It's true if they're never subjected to overvoltage, overclocking or overheating (by being denied sufficient ventilation, usually). But processors don't always operate in benign circumstances. I just lost a two-year-old P4 CPU in my desktop system because I neglected to clean out what turned out to be an huge amount of dust _between the CPU heatsink fins_! I'll never make that mistake again. I decided to upgrade my motherboard when I got the new CPU and the new MB has variable CPU fan control. I discovered that when I put the side on the cabinet, the CPU fan quickly speed up from the 2500 RPM at which it ran with the case open to about 3800 RPM (in a fairly cool room, though not a frigid machine room). From this I conclude that ventilation in the main compartment of this case is rather poor. I plan to add a front-panel fan to the cabinet. When I told a friend about my system's recent breakdown, he mentioned that he once had a laptop that would begin to malfunction if used with the top closed (by using an external CRT monitor). Opening the lid allowed it to cool just enough for the malfunctions to cease. A lot of modern computer systems are designed or operated at the very edge of their acceptable environmental parameters, and that's not a recipe for reliability or longevity.
I submit that in 5 years you WILL want to buy another laptop because of new features and speed - all of which are not attainable with your current laptop motherboard.
This is probably true, too, but nowadays, there are lots of good uses for non-cutting-edge computers (unlike those based on a first-generation Pentium, say, or a 100 MHz PowerPC chip--and even those systems can have uses for some people), so while some may be willing to walk away from a system after a few years, others may want to consider them a longer-term investment. Randall Schulz