Milan, re: "I'd have to agree. I have a 5 year old Dell Pentium 133 that my 3 1/2 year old daughter still uses. Running Win98, and about 6 kids games. The thing is built like a tank - the kids abuse the CD tray, hit the power switch any old time they feel, and usually are kicking it with their feet continuously while they are working with it. The clunker manages to boot every time, 90% of the time after fixing some error using the scan disk utility that Win98 runs after a non-clean shutdown."
Sounds like kids' treatment of anything they use all right. Amazing how far we've come. 133 MHz - 2 GHz and no slowdown to Moore's Law in sight. Moore's Law is expressed in transistors, I know, I know.
In the 5 years, I have built and cycled through 5 (AMD) DIY computers built using "quality" components. On my system, the motherboard has died twice (I really don't understand this - might it be the power supply/spikes to the MB?). My father-in-law's power supply smoked out. My Dad's CD drive (Toshiba?) won't read most CD's, and for some reason, the system just won't recognize a modem (yup, swapped modems, reinstalled OS, just stopped working one day!).
I've had a lot of problems with screwdriver shop PCs also, mostly annoyances, but a pain, like badly fitting parts, flakies in motherboards, backplanes, switches, etc. Nothing but namebrands from now on for me, and, with the prices you can get, why not?
All these systems worked flawlessly for about 2 years each. These were not cheapo components. What amazes me is how Dell is able to create and procure components that are so reliable.
Nice tribute to Dell.
Tony |
