Shawn
Lifer
- Apr 20, 2003
- 32,237
- 53
- 91
I agree with the guy who said they could last decades. I still have an IBM PC jr from 1983 that still works (or at least it did last time I powered it on a few years back). One of the floppy drives no longer reads discs but it has a second drive that still works.
With that being said, most of the floppy discs have become unreadable. Luckily I still had a dos disk that worked so I was able to get it to boot. I don't know if it would still work if it had been used everyday since 83, however it lost it's usefulness long ago.
My granddad still used it all the time for word processing though until 1999 when we finally got him a modern computer (He was really resistant to windows and a mouse at first). Still, that's 16 years of frequent use.
On another note, I've had my current rig for 5 years now. Just a few months ago I swapped out my C2D E6300 for a C2Q Q8200 and got an SSD in order to help speed things up a bit and squeeze some more years out of it. Hoping to get it to last me another 3-4 years before I have to replace the CPU, mobo, ram, and video card. Already have 8GB of ram, but it's DDR2 so I'd have to re-buy again.
I don't see any reason to upgrade... I am using my computer as a DVR with a cablecard tuner and it is plenty fast enough for that.
With that being said, most of the floppy discs have become unreadable. Luckily I still had a dos disk that worked so I was able to get it to boot. I don't know if it would still work if it had been used everyday since 83, however it lost it's usefulness long ago.
My granddad still used it all the time for word processing though until 1999 when we finally got him a modern computer (He was really resistant to windows and a mouse at first). Still, that's 16 years of frequent use.
On another note, I've had my current rig for 5 years now. Just a few months ago I swapped out my C2D E6300 for a C2Q Q8200 and got an SSD in order to help speed things up a bit and squeeze some more years out of it. Hoping to get it to last me another 3-4 years before I have to replace the CPU, mobo, ram, and video card. Already have 8GB of ram, but it's DDR2 so I'd have to re-buy again.
I don't see any reason to upgrade... I am using my computer as a DVR with a cablecard tuner and it is plenty fast enough for that.
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