How long have you had your computer?

on that note, anybody used kvm switches for controlling multiple computers? except i want to keep with two monitors, so i'd like to use the kvm switch on the primary monitor, and have the second one only attatched to one of the computers. will that work?

oh, the other thing i need to learn about is networking them. i don't really want both on the net, but would like to be able to transfer files. i saw something which offered some kind of transfer/network capability over usb? but am i correct that you can't just plug ethernet cable into their nic's and have them talk? i need to hit some networking sites and learn up

michael, how much ram do you have? i think xp is quite fast but it does take up more memory

KVM switches that use a key combo just have a really simple micro processor that look for that key combo on the USB or PS/2 connection, simple as that really.

Mike, get more RAM, no modern OS will run particularly well on that amount, it's cheap enough, a new mac would be better but RAM would get you going again.

Curiously enough, I bought a new no-name computer yesterday and will be setting it up today. It, too, is scarcely leading edge, but still it will be about 16 times the computing power I have today.

My oldest PC which has been cannibalised for parts a bit anyway is 8 years old and not used anymore, then theres my desktop PC which is about 3 years old, and my lappy (currently dead, but under warranty so getting fixed asap) is about 6 months old, and yet broke down the fastest and most irrepariably out of every system I've had. Stupid notebooks and their rassiin frassin inaccesible innards. I wish I knew how to see what was wrong without risking a warranty issue but eh.

It's a Pentium 4. If that's what you mean.

*ahem*

My computer is about seven years old. I've had it for six years. This would, of course, be the one I currently use. I'm only going to get a computer for Christmas, though. Yay!

I have had two other computers since then, but they came to bad ends. My wonderful big powerful Tasty RAM-piece was stolen by my mum when I moved to the UK. And the computer that I was given by my former employers so I could work from home was dismantled and handed back to me in pieces in a bag by my psycho Ex when we broke up.

I've had my free pc from work for about a week now. The plan is that once I've got it up and running, the laptop goes back to my ex so she can lend it to her brother. The free pc is a Dell. It has XP installed on it and has a Pentium P3 processor. It si currently sitting minus its case between the computer I'm using to type this and the other computer on the other side of my desk. Later in the day, I shall put a modem in it.

holy shit! i had a girl do that to my heart once, but to do it to your computer is fucking cold...

I want my next mac to have wood paneling.

had mine since march '04. athlon xp 2800+, half a gig of RAM. pretty solid! it's had the same XP install with no probs since may '05. i'm thinking about a new one soon though, have to get good at photoshop/illustrato/indesign for new job and this doesn't have a big enough monitor or enough ram, really.

if the bios hasn't been changed, then in a windows machine you can (sort of) find the age of your computer:
click start, choose run
type debug
type d f000:fff0
you'll see a string of letter pairs & at the end the age of your bios.
(mines 01/30/04)

1 week. Dell thing. The casing is white and silver. ;_;

dell xps
12 months
3 weeks
2 days
15 hours
57 mins
roughly :)

Oh, new addition 500 gig external hard drive

2 days
11 hours
And some minutes…

Feb '03, Athlon 1800 PC w/256MB RAM, running Windows XP (color: PC beige). Only upgrade has been adding an internal DVD writer and an external HD (iomega 160MB, USB 2.0).

6 years. During that time I've put in a new hardrive (a couple of months ago to cope with sound recording), and a gig of ram (to make the total 1.5gig) which seems to have done nothing.

Mac Pro, 2 x 2.66 Ghz, 5GB RAM, 1.1 TB total storage, 4 months old.

Geez I have bought ANOTHER pc since I last posted to this thread (a new laptop, as the old one's battery was dead and I couldnt add any more RAM)

No wonder I never have any money, if I keep buying new $2000 PCs every year or 2.

1 year and two days. Mac Pro purchased with the big fuck-off 'Apple Student Developer' discount.

Sorely tempted to sell it and buy a Macbook Pro to save space, but I'd need a ton of external storage.

1 year and 2.5 weeks - it's the work laptop I got when I started at this place last September. Dell Latitude D620. Works fine, no major troubles. I spec'd it and the only regret is it has no parallel port. One piece of software I run still uses a dongle, so I have to drag the docking station w/ me when I travel.

I've got a 5 year old Compaq laptop at home, undecided about keeping it as my primary home machine (no built-in wireless) now that I've gotten rid of my desktop (hi lxy! I hope it's still working!). It's probably time for a new one, mostly for the wifi, but all I really use my home machine for is bill paying and ILX and some flash games. Makes it tough to justify a new one.

Since June 14th. My then five year old Dell laptop died last summer, so I inherited my wife's equally old iBook when her job bought her a new one. Then its power cord died.

Anyway, being affiliated with higher ed institution = buy new macbook, get "free" ipod, both of which are very nice. I get more scared every day about having so much stuff on one external HD though. I really need to get a duplicate for that.

I have four computers in the house.
Dual Core Athlon 64 Windows XP machine - 1 Year 10 Months
1.4GHz G4 Powerbook - 3 Years
333MHz Dell Pentium 3 Kubuntu machine - 2 Years 6 Months (I've no idea how old it actually is - I bought it on ebay for £30 to run as a linux server)
Athlon Thunderbird 1200MHz Windows XP machine - 6 Years

I think my next desktop will be a dual booting iMac (if I can afford it)

how disposable are computers these days? how long would you expect a £500 laptop to last (before either breaking or obsolesence)?

to answer question, 05/10/07 (10th may) for this (work) pc. laptop was last december. i have 3 or 4 more, mostly just taking up space.

Blimey, checking upthread I guess the VAIO is nearing its 2nd birthday. The subtitling software all worked perfectly so I suppose it's paid for itself several times over.

However...headphone mini-jack was the first thing to flake out (around 2 months), so bought a USB soundcard almost immediately (and another one since, after that died too). Then the DVD+/-RW drive started playing up - struggling to burn CD-Rs (after 4-5 months), then failing to read CD-Rs (after a year) and now barely capable of ripping CDs without glitches. Fine with CD-ROM/all DVD media though. Keyboard started to play up after 18 months (two keys came off, got replacements via eBay but little plastic "nipple" had become so desensitised by us pressing hard on it to get an "M" that keys didn't actually work once fitted).

Sometime late last year I knocked the laptop off the arm of the sofa and it SLAMMED into the wooden floor with a sickening crack; turned out the only thing broken was the left-hand screen hinge which means we haven't been able to close the thing since (kinda limiting its portability) as the display cables run through there and I didn't fancy damaging them by forcing the thing shut.

WinXP has been pretty solid though - very few crashes - and the internal wireless adaptor has always worked happily anywhere in the house with the Livebox. Fast enough for our purposes too. We've been running at <2GB space on both C: and D: partitions for months, though - archiving stuff off to a WD 250GB HDD. 80GB is enough until it isn't (especially when your last two major birthday/Xmas gifts are a D-SLR [which can take 8MB RAW images] and a Handycam [DV-AVI ain't small]).

How do you guys manage to make your computers last more than 2-3 years? That's how long mine last every time before some important piece of hardware dies and the standard cpu/motherboard architectures available have all changed so I end up getting almost a complete new set of innards. All the storage and peripherals stay the same though, and 6 months ago I finally moved it all into a new case for the first time in 9 years.

(I do have an 8-year-old laptop which is still running xubuntu happily, but it's only been mine for a year or two and it doesn't get much use)

(the electricity at home runs permanently over-voltage, maybe that's why mine like to die so fast? I acquired a UPS recently, I'll be interested to see if things stay working for any longer now)

I've had my iBook for two years.

pc, three years-ish. mac, few months. they both have a lot of life left.

how can you be so confident?

if my mac dies, there's a nice warranty. if my pc dies, fuck it, it was cheap to begin with. but it won't.

Much like treefell upthread I have several computers in the house. Mine are all cobbled together from bits and have been upgraded piecemeal, so it's difficult to tell.

The server dates back to 1/2003 and has the most original parts. New HDD and PSU today actually.
The case of my main PC dates back to early 2001, two different mainboard and a ton of other stuff has passed through it in that time.
Secondary PC was built early 2004 from parts removed from the main PC after it's first mainboard and PSU burnt out.

Mostly since then just the usual replacement fans, etc..

:(

Two weeks! Bought the components over a couple of weeks and put it together only two weeks ago.

I may have to turn myself in though, since one of the operating systems I use is the terrorist black screen with white letters one.

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/boston-college-prompt-commands-are-suspicious

Current Mac Pro is about 2 years old. Still using the 23" Cinema Display I got in, uh, 2004?

macbook i have at home is 10 months old. imac i have at work is 7 months

i love them both, best computers i've ever owned

tho i guess i don't own my work imac

I have a power mac G4 tower that was made in 2002...I got it in 2005. I'm about at the point where I'm tired of saying to my husband 'oh, it does everything I need' while it sits there thinking and thinking of a rainbow spinny wheel. I can't afford another compy anytime soon. Does Mac even make towers anymore, or just iMacs that have everything hidden in the monitor? Bcz those are not so rad. (Love love love the G4 iMac, tho. OTOH I wld be replacing a G4.)

Okay why am I even looking at Macs thinking they'll maybe be in the 3-digit price range.

The Mac Mini is 3 digits and is like a tower in that it lacks a monitor, but is way smaller.

And also has 2 GB of hard drive space....uhh....

mac minis are a great deal i think

nah, 2 gigahertz processor, 1 gb of RAM, 120 gb hard drive (in the base model), for $550 in the education store.

(xxpost) I have a laptop here with a 60MB hard drive

oops lol Euler I think you just sold me

Yeah, that Mac Mini isn't a really great buy... but I suppose if you can't go up to the 24' iMac it's your next best option.

A: About 2 months, and it's my first.

How are your hands? They must be feeling better, because you're back to your cranky old miserable self on politics and baseball threads.

my right hand is still carpally.

I've had this same eMac since 2001 or 2002. Came with that dinosaur game on it and something about capturing bee-hive ladies with UFOs.

Feb '03, Athlon 1800 PC w/256MB RAM, running Windows XP (color: PC beige). Only upgrade has been adding an internal DVD writer and an external HD (iomega 160MB, USB 2.0).

― nickn, Sunday, October 14, 2007

Still got it, but it now resets within about 30 minutes of turning it on (and usually not thereafter, even if I use it for hours more). I'm checking every Fry's ad I see to find my next one, though.

This thread is good as it reminds me my latest laptops still within its 2yr warranty. Which is good, because the power supply plug has gone flaky. The plug, when plugged in, wont stay contacted with the inner plug...thing, so it flicks between AC charge and battery constantly.Which can't be good for the damn battery. If I knew it was easy to fix myself I would have a try... sigh.

one day!!!!11 turned on the imac for the first time and realised it has tiger rather than leopard :( more spending awaits.

If you don't need soon, you might want to wait for Snow Leopard which will probably come out within.. 6 months? Then again it was supposed to have come out by now, so who knows.

Happy Birthday to my mid-2007 iMac - seven years old today and still going strong....

I had a 2004 iMac which just gave up the other day.

Bought my laptop in Dec 2011 and it already feels like a hulking mess of a thing.

took it apart (and i mean literally to tiny pieces) just to clean the fan the other day and ended up with 8 screws left over.

my laptop dates from late 2009 i think. put an ssd in it last christmas and it's fine, no need to update.

(actually, battery is shot and one of the usb sockets is dodgy but...)

I think our laptop is from 2011? MacBook Air.