I hammer the life of of my notebook. 6 days a week. 15 hours a day. 3 years now.
The keypad has faded, but it overall it continues to work well and it’s just as fast as it ever was.
What’s round the corner? This can’t go on forever, surely?
If you are a computer doctor, what signs of age should I be looking out for? For work purposes, I can’t afford an complete and sudden meltdown. When should I retire her?
It’s an Asus A6000 (if that makes any difference).
Cheers!
I don’t think there is a hard and fast rule about this - it may last a few more years or it may die any day. But when you get problems that are intermittent and not software related you should become wary.
Just make regular backups, then you should be on the safe side (applies to new notebooks, too).
I might be able to give you a few pointers. My Toshiba is bout 4 years old now. IT all worked well until bout a year ago when the HDD just suddenly gave up the ghost. New Hdd bought for 70 bucks (60giga) and installed myself (very easy). Lost a bunch of stuff tho. So motto is save everything you want on CD R or CD RW but NOT on the HDD.
And everything was well again until recently when the screen went!! Instead of paying out anywhere from 100 to 150 for a new screen. I decided to make my notebook into a DESKTOP. So I bought a used TFT monitor on craigslist for 40 bucks (didnt want to make any major investments as this puter is not far from the dump I think) , a keyboard and a mouse at frys (30 for the two) , a usb spitter for bout 20 bucks and I am back in biz.
NOW. the fan died . but I was able to overcome that by buying a notebook cooler. Its a plastic base that you put your puter on and it has two fans that work off your USB port. So far its working. I had to remove the plastic cover to reveal the CPU inside so that could properly cool And we are back in business.
But lets see, Iv spent bout 40 + 30 + 20 + 20 = 110 bucks to keep this thing going when I could buy a brand new compaq 15.4 , 1giga ram, dvd rw, vista, 80giga hdd puter for 399 plus tax.
So this could give you an idea when the notebook is getting close to being unsalvageable.
I also have a very old compaq that is working fine, just so obsolete by now.
And that was the cats meow back in 1997 (it was the top of the line compaq notebook and costs bout 2500 bucks).
But what can you do now with a notebook thats only got 2 giga hdd? 32mega ram? win95, and no way to hook it up to dsl and no way to use a wireless card (as those need win98 at least). So you can only get online with dial up with it.
At least the quality was better then , but for 2500 bucks??? Nowadays you get a puter with great specs for bout 500 bucks and just expect it to die in bout 3 years? MOney better spent I think.
double post
my monster of a hp (one in the zd800 series) ran hot, but it ran for over 4 years. year 4 was dreadful. the fan stopped working so i had to always use it in front of a fan or air conditioner. one of the usb ports stopped working. and then, one day this summer, the screen started blinking. first, it blinked once. then a few hours later, it blinked twice. after a day or two, the screen would blink so much that i couldn’t use it. the next day, the screen was completely black. the guys at the the computer shop said the video card was shot and because hp welds video cards to the motherboard, i was out of luck and had to buy a new computer.
(i bought an Everex (very similar to Asus) for around $500 and am very happy with it.)
(i might have some tech details wrong, but that’s my story.)
i think when the fan goes its a pretty good time to get a new laptop… maybe year 4 or 5 of a laptops lifespan
my laptop died within year 2.
I suspect from overheating and fan issues: Apple G4.
Now I have a Lenovo Thinkpad. fan is fine. works great. my favorite laptop overall.
Thanks for your replies. Good to get some feedback and advice.
Out of interest, if a failing fan is a common culprit - is this the kind of thing that could be replaced every year? I don’t know if that is a hard thing to do with a notebook, but I can’t imagine so?
[quote=“BlackAdder”]Thanks for your replies. Good to get some feedback and advice.
Out of interest, if a failing fan is a common culprit - is this the kind of thing that could be replaced every year? I don’t know if that is a hard thing to do with a notebook, but I can’t imagine so?[/quote]
You just need to open the thing up and find the fan and replace it with a suitable replacement. Note the kind of connectors they use and try to find something just like it. Might want to take the old fan with you and see… (actually take the whole notebook with you too…)
Those kind of things aren’t really rocket science you know… They got shops near Guan Wha market that sells nothing but fans.
My Compaq’s been going for 7 years. But I don’t carry it around. It’s too heavy!
In the last few days two weird things have happened. If anyone can shed any light and tell me if this bad news or not, it would be much appreciated.
A few days ago I got several pop up messages (over the course of an hour) saying something like ‘delayed write failed……’
A day or so later, when I pressed the ‘@’ button I got an ‘$’ and when I pressed the ‘$’ button I got a ‘@’. Within a few minutes it was back to normal.
What’s going on and is this something to be worried about?
[quote=“BlackAdder”]In the last few days two weird things have happened. If anyone can shed any light and tell me if this bad news or not, it would be much appreciated.
A few days ago I got several pop up messages (over the course of an hour) saying something like ‘delayed write failed……’
A day or so later, when I pressed the ‘@’ button I got an ‘$’ and when I pressed the ‘$’ button I got a ‘@’. Within a few minutes it was back to normal.
What’s going on and is this something to be worried about?[/quote]
Your hard drive may be saying goodbye
What were you doing when the first error happened?
The second one is just your keyboard setting. It’s using US English instead of British English (or vice versa).
No wait, a different language, otherwise it would be a @/" problem. Anyway, check the keyboard language.
Thanks for replying Tommy. I was worried it might be something like that.
I am guessing there must be some way to have the drive checked for problems. Is that possible and reliable?
I’m not really very computer minded, so if you have any suggestions about what I should do that would be great.
I know I should start backing up, but what next?
Not sure to be honest. Nothing special anyway. Lots of opening and closing documents as usual. The message popped up twice during the afternoon.
[quote=“irishstu”]The second one is just your keyboard setting. It’s using US English instead of British English (or vice versa).
No wait, a different language, otherwise it would be a @/" problem. Anyway, check the keyboard language.[/quote]
Wow, what you said there is right. 
I used the @/ example but it was actually the @/" combination. Sorry, I didn't think that was important and I wrote the '’ example cos is read easier than writing ‘"’ Thanks for spotting that Sherlock.
So, my computer was changing from US to UK? Maybe I hit a shortcut key and didn’t notice I’d done that, or something else. But how come it corrected itself without me doing anything.
Man, I am feeling a whole lot better! Serious thanks to you both (Tommy and Irishstu) for helping out here.
[quote=“BlackAdder”]So, my computer was changing from US to UK? Maybe I hit a shortcut key and didn’t notice I’d done that, or something else. But how come it corrected itself without me doing anything.
Man, I am feeling a whole lot better! Serious thanks to you both (Tommy and Irishstu) for helping out here.[/quote]
Yeah, the shortcut could be something like CTRL-SPACE.
P.S. You’re welcome.
If you want to investigate the keyboard thing a bit more, click on Start>(Settings>)Control Panel.
Now double-click on “Regional and Language Options”.
Click on the tab at the top which says “Languages”, then click on “Details”.
Here you can see the list of possible languages.
For the key combination you need to change language, click on “Key Settings”.
edit.
Industry Notebook annualized hardware field failure rate is about 4%
A temp increase of 10C halves the life of most components, so if it’s running hot, it will impact the life. They sometimes point out the MTBF being 50000hrs, but this indicates performance in a lab setting, not actual. And your laptop is only as strong as the weakest part in it, usually the HDD
Some local brands don’t give 5 year support. The assumption being that in 3 years, your laptop will be a dinosaur and you will probably just buy a new one. And if they don’t have the parts, you have no choice but to buy a new one. So best thing to go after is good support in and out of warranty