To nitpick: the Apple IIe wasn’t introduced until 1983.
(And, both of mine are working fine as well.)
In fairness to the OP, I have built and maintained my systems much the same way (Fryes/Pricewatch, lot’s of gaming, in a room that the A/C just doesn’t want to cool as well as the rest of the house) and, with the exception of a couple HDs and a PS, have never had a component fail. I do tend to upgrade a little more often (2-3 years) so I’m sure that makes a bit of a difference.
(Oh wait. I do recall a monitor that went Tango Uniform, but it was well after its expected life expectancy)
I think you’re just unlucky. Damn, “last six”??? As is, there were computers you owned before your last six? I hope there was a lot of overlap of computers in concurrent deployment going on there!
I’m using the fifth computer I’ve ever owned (starting 1991). One mobo failure, one 3rd-party accelerator fry-out, one laptop screen-hinge fracture w/slicing of data cable to screen. First two problems were with the same computer, which I bought used. I replace the motherboard (arguably not a good choice, but I did) and when the accelerator card died in 1996 I sold it in original stock condition, still working.
Computer #2, purchased in 1995, still ticking along just fine 10 years later. Computer #3, bought used in 1996, is at my parent’s house and also running just fine. Computer #4 (the laptop with the screen-hinge problem) was repaired by cannibalizing parts from another unit and is still in perfect working order and I use it at home to run two scanners that my current rig is too newfangled to support. Latest unit, Computer #5, is only two months old.
Not problem-free, therefore (and two hard drives bit the dust along the way, along with some peripheral storage devices), but nothing like “death beyond cost-effective repair every 2 years”. Only the first computer’s fried motherboard would really count in that vein and it was already long in the tooth when I bought it used.
Buy better computers 
Based on my professional experience, one would be wise to pay attention to electrical power as a factor.
If your PC’s building has prehistoric or shoddy electrical wiring, shares a circuit with an industrial chiller, or is located in a storm-prone area, this may decrease your MTBF, EVEN IF you use a UPS. The kind of UPS you get for $150 at an office supply store does NOT enforce a clean wave pattern in your PC’s electrical input during times when it is fed unclean power.
Both the Eniac and the Univac I (don’t know about the II) were vacuum tube machines that had a technician with a box of replacement tubes inside them at all times to replace blown tubes. The Univac I had, for example, three adders and considered an addition correct if at least two of them agreed. So a lot depends on what you mean by “work”. The Univac I had a mean time between failure of about five minutes and made a complete memory dump (onto tape) every few minutes, so it could restart a computation in the middle. It had to; if your computation lasted a half hour (and many did) your chances of carrying through without stopping were negligeable.
I still have an original IBM microcomputer, bought in 1982. The last time I tried (I think about 15 years ago, it booted and ran (and we actually used it as a terminal to the internet). Probably the boot diskettes would no longer be valid, although it was made to boot a kind of very basic BASIC by itself.
I still have (and booted within the last year or so) a 1995 vintage laptop. I still have (and use occasionally) a 1998 laptop. I am writing this on a 2001 laptop that I am using because my 11 month old has had to be sent to the manufacturer for its second replacement mother board. The third time, it will no longer be under warranty and I will junk it and say goodbye to Toshiba. But I have no problems whatever with any of the others, all Toshibas (leaving aside the keyboard replacement necessitated by spilling a cup of tea on it; I was in Japan at the time and got to take it to the Toshiba factory in Tokyo-Shiba).
What option should folks look for in an UPS if AVR is not enough?
There are still some 386 DOS boxes humbly chugging along where I work.
I queried the onboard CPU temperature sensor. I don’t know how to do it in Mac or Windows, but in Linux you just read the file located at: /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature
Right now it says:
Temperature: 50 C
You can also find the readings of your CPU and system temperature sensors by entering the bios on boot up and visiting the “PC Health” section (may be named something different on your BIOS version.) Those readings are probably suspect though because your computer is completely idle. Under typical load it would be much warmer.
That’s really interesting. I’ve never used a UPS at home, just surge protectors.
Rent in the greater Los Angeles area was a killer (with 1 bedroom apartments easily going for $1,000/month) so I often lived in badly maintained buildings without grounded outlets in the bedrooms or livingrooms. I don’t know what the electrical wiring looked like behind the walls, but in the last place, the phone went out everytime it rained and rarely, computers would reboot as the lights flickered.
My environment certainly wasn’t atypical. I wonder if early failure is a regional problem. :eek:
I’ve definitely had more than six computers. Lots of overlap. Like, right now I have my desktop computer, my wife’s desktop computer, and a laptop in working order. It seems normal to me, but that’s because I’m a programmer who works from home.
You know, I should probably clarify something. What would usually happen when I had a computer fail, it wasn’t the entire computer, just an expensive component. Like one day I’d hit the power switch and the motherboard would start beeping, or BIOS would report a strange error, or I’d get one blue screen too many. Really, frustrating situations. So I’d troubleshoot what was wrong and then rationalize that it wouldn’t be that much more money to upgrade the case, motherboard, cpu, memory all at the same time for another $150 or something and wouldn’t you know it, a $130 CPU failure prompted all new core parts. I could have say, replaced an angry motherboard with nearly the same part, but I can’t remember any time I’ve actually done it. I guess I’m a sucker.
I’m starting to see a pattern of me poorly treating my computers by letting them run hot, living in unairconditioned apartments with bad wiring, and not using power conditioners. Shesh, at least I’ve never smoked around them.
Strike that. I haven’t priced a UPS for a while. My job doesn’t involve buying, just supporting.
You CAN get AVR for under $150, sometimes less, nowadays. A few years back, it was a little pricier.
You can, however, still buy a UPS without AVR. My wife managed it last year, getting an $80 APC unit that looks like an oversized surge protector.
And I should clarify that AVR IS what I would like you to look for going forward.
I had CHRONIC problems with a PC built around a twitchy, custom PCI card installed in grocery stores. The salesman specced the units without any UPS, and then when there were complaints, he specced a UPS without AVR.
Even in a well-run name-brand store in a new building, sometimes you can’t count on good juice.
My home computer is about 10 years old and runs fine (although the hard drive keeps filling up) - about the only things I remember about it, is it has a 1gig hard drive (snerk), 64meg processor (snort), and a super deluxe cooling tower. I’m guessing it’s the cooling tower that has kept the thing going this long - it’s certainly not my confuter maintaining skilz, 'cus I have none.
Actually, I was just dicussing my lameo confuter last night - I think I’ve almost been shamed into buying an upgrade.
Well, except I have no idea, whatsoever, what to get. At all. even a little. I should probably start my own thread…
My previous computer was about ten years old when it died last year, and even then, it wasn’t due to old age (though, to be fair, the processor fan was starting to get a bit flaky). I sat down and touched the mouse after walking across the room, and gave it one heck of a static shock. Near as I can figure, I fried the keyboard, mouse, and serial ports, but I think the drives and the processor are still OK. One of these times, I ought to buy a cheap used no-drive computer to put the drives in, so I can at least transfer data off.
Maybe you could clarify what AVR is, like what those intials stand for, just for the sake of readers who don’t know this stuff?
And is “AVR” what it will say on the box at the store, or is there something else they should be looking for?
I think you have heard some exaggerated stories about these vacuum tube computers, here.
My uncle helped develop the Univac II (also vacuum tube), and he never mentioned this. The workers over in St. Paul all thought of those machines as highly reliable, for the technology. And he told stories about working on the Univac II all thru the night, and being the only one inside that dark & creepy old building. So the idea that there ‘was a technician inside at all times to replace blown tubes’ is a bit exaggerated. Also, I believe that Adm Grace Hopper was working alone on the earlier Mark I when she discovered the first computer bug (a moth) and pasted it into the logbook. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:H96566k.jpg)
My guess is whatever equation that might answer this question would almost certainly involve Moore’s law. If you define regular use as periodically installing new programs, then your computer will break down because of incompatibility. I will also add to what** Mr. Slant ** said by saying that no one can really know what future power source will exist or the nature, intensity, ect. Just like (assuming you’re in the United States) you can’t plug in your computer in Europe without power converters.
I can tell you from personal experience that they’ll last for a pretty long time. All my computers have lasted for a minimum of 6 years. In most cases, this is long after you’re ready to upgrade to a newer computer for other reasons.
My first Mac, a Quadra 610, was upgraded twice: once to slot in a PowerPC chip, basically making it a 6100/60, and once to add on memory. (Woo-hoo 16 megs baby! Feel the power 
) The PowerPC upgrade was done about a year after I got it. I bought it in 1993 and I sold it for a few hundred dollars in 2000. It never had a single hardware problem. I suspect that it might still be in use, if it’s still running, as the woman I sold it to was not the fastest adopter in the world; that was her first personal computer.
My PowerBook, that I replaced my old desktop with, is still in almost daily use. When I bought it early in 2000 it was one of the first laptops with Firewire and the G3 was one of the fastest chips around, which are probably two very good reasons for its continued utility. The only hardware problem I’ve ever had with it was of my own creation. I spilled a full glass of orange juice onto the keyboard while the computer was running. Despite the soaking the rest of the computer took, the only thing damaged was the keyboard, which cost about $90 to replace through Apple’s repair department. I use it for watching DVDs (I hacked the drive to make it region-free), downloading stuff, and running some older games that run better in OS 9 than in Classic’s emulation environment. It’s a dual-boot machine, OS X and 9. I expect that thing to keep running for years still.
That reliability made me overconfident. I didn’t get an extended warranty on my new PowerBook and had a hard drive crash last year. (I’ve never paid for the extended warranty, but it would almost have paid for itself in this case). Again, that may have been partially my fault though. I often have to run to catch the train and the train station is about 2 km away. I suspect that running several kilometers every week with your computer in your backpack is probably not the best way to extend your hard drive’s working life. I’ve only had this computer for a little under 2 years, so I can’t make any real guesses as to how long it’ll last. It might still be running in another 4-5 years for all I know. Heck, my first PowerBook might still be running then.