I am running OpenSUSE 12.2 on an aging Dell Latitude D630 that I bought in 2007 It has been a really solid machine and I have no complaints about it. It has a 2.2 Ghz processor, 500 GB Hard drive and 8 GB of RAM. I have docking stations, several power supplies and seemingly no issues with this computer. OpenSUSE 12.2 is real snappy, I do mostly office work and the most intense thing I do is run a WinXP VM. So, I’m trying to figure out, when is it time to upgrade my machine? The only feature this computer has that I wish it had was a backlit keyboard and USB 3 would be nice but that is really it.
Here are some other thoughts, how long before there is some catastrophic hardware failure? I assume it is inevitable as everything breaks down eventually. I don’t have any signs of degradation as of yet.
I am starting to wonder, when is it time to upgrade my machine? I have all the capacity I need, currently. A few applications have been moved to a server (also rather old but the price was right, FREE) in my house, as well as most of my data. In fact, my machine is getting less and less stressed.
Whenever I do upgrade, the machine has to be nice and stout like this machine and Latitudes aren’t exactly cheap either. Dell has served me well and I plan to continue that, but most certainly not one of the “consumer grade” units. Business grade machines aren’t cheap either. I find, if you stay on the cutting edge of technology, you’ll bleed to death.
I’m open for any discussion on this. Any guidance would be great.
So considering what you have said, my thoughts are as long as you can get your tasks done, there is no reason to upgrade. The battery will go first and then the hard drive. You can replace both as hard drives are cheap, though you can not use SATA I think, but IDE. So, if you don’t buy an extra now, you may not find one later. The same goes for the battery though there are surplus places that may sell one that has some life left in it. I used to have a Dell D610 at work and it worked very well for me some three years. In the end, my suggestions to you are very simple.
Keep the the laptop clean using caned air to blow out the heat sinks every six months or so and do it regular.
Buy a USB2 external hard drive and keep your personnel data backed up. USB3 is best used with the next generation. Buy a 2 TB sized unit and it will work for you just right.
At some point, something important will die in this laptop, but it is very hard to say when that will be.
Keep an eye out for a new Laptop or PC that really fits your bill and buy it when the price is right.
Well, when you have a real need for slightly more computational power or efficiency. What you are running absolutely kills what I am running. And it runs openSUSE 12.2 like a champ. I never touch swap or anything. So just keep an eye on it, especially hard drive. As said make backups so if something goes wrong you have data still!
I need to get with the new century on my hardware but it is not a priority right now.
Not yet. It seems to have plenty of life remaining.
I have a 2007 Del Dimension that is still going strong, and that was bought at the end of the Dimension line. So your system is newer in design and capabilities.
The thing that I have going for me, is that I also have a laptop. If my desktop should unexpectedly fail, then I could manage with my laptop while shopping for a replacement.
In your case, you need to evaluate how vital this box is, and whether you can manage without it for a few days in case of problems.
Hmm. Another point. We recently purchased a new desktop for my wife. It failed after around 6 weeks. It was a memory problem, and reseating the memory fixed it. The point I am getting at, is that old hardware that has been running reliable is no more likely to suddenly fail than new hardware. It will eventually fail, but that might be years away.
As others have said, keep good backups (always a wise practice, no matter what the age of the system).
I probably should have stated that I did do some upgrades to this laptop. I put in the SATA 500 GB hard drive and upgraded the memory to 8 GB. I have also replaced the screen once because, to no fault of my own, the computer was mishandled by somebody. I do blow out the machine and periodically pull the keyboard to keep its innards clean. I do back up my data fairly frequently to my server which uses a RAID 5 configuration. I do only have a little over 1 TB of storage so that would be my next upgrade.
I do like the fact that replacement parts for this machine is relatively inexpensive at this time. I believe that my touchpad is starting to flake a bit and a replacement on ebay is only $5, used. I certainly like for things to be economical. Perhaps when there is another major advancement that I cannot live without I will look into the latest and greatest equipment again.
Touch screens, any thoughts on that? I get annoyed when people touch my screen so I imagine every day of using a touch screen computer would annoy me…
On 11/11/2012 05:16 AM, futureboy wrote:
> Any guidance would be great.
be steadfast with your backup regime
if it ain’t broke don’t fix it (or replace it)
the most likely (in my experience) fails will come from
a. dying hard drives – if you don’t have it install SMART and figure
out how to monitor your hard drive’s health…if your disk can be read
by SMART you will probably have plenty of warning prior to full fail
b. weakening power supply – if you start having lots of little,
seemingly unrelated, and intermittent problems suspect a
weak/failing/overtaxed power supply unit (PSU)…there are PSU testers,
most all “computer repair shops” will have one…
c. CPU heat due to accumulated crud inside the box; on the heatsink;
on fan blades; and dried out thermal grease/paste – heat has to be
dealt with: crud must be removed and that thin layer of heat
conductive gunk between the CPU(s) and heatsink must be effective and
efficient in moving heat from the chips to the moving out of the box air!
d. bad circuits caused by tiny build up of insulating oxidation at
connect points of plug in parts/cables/ etc – to 'fix, just (for
example) with all power removed just unplug the cables from the hard
drive(s) to the mother board–unplug both end and then re-attach…do
the same for cd/dvd drives, floppy drive etc; remove and reinstall the
RAM, unplug and replug all external connections (monitor, keyboard, etc
etc etc—CAREFUL, lots of those connections require a little knowledge
of how to unhook correctly…there is NO place that a lot of force is
required…do NOT crack your motherboard trying to unplug something
which has a latch holding it in place!
Just for kicks, I thought I would do a SMART test on my drive to see what it said.
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
# 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 11259 88946551
# 2 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 711 -
# 3 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 576 -
# 4 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 336 -
# 5 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 184 -
The result was a “PASSED” so I should be good for now and looking further, this would lead me to believe that I have 469 days of continuous operation left in this drive. Is that accurate or am I not reading this correctly?
As has been stated here, I sometimes wonder if I was pushing it too much by continuing on with my laptop since it is now four or more years older. In the Windows world people will tell you to get an upgrade because it means newer windows, ( plus if you aren’t technical ) Windows will be choking on itself after 4 years if haven’t reinstalled because it still has dll hell, and a registry to choke it to death over time.
My linux computer just keeps on working and it still has tons of power for anything I need to do. I really don’t even see it lag for general usage.
Do the system checks as listed and clean your computer and as long as it seems to work go keep going with it. A new one could die on you too and have trouble.
If you don’t have some immediate need for hardware upgrade, the good thing with sticking to your current system is that it likely will continue to work. If you get a newer computer you just get that chance of a less supported piece of hardware, whereas on a system a few years older if things have been working then likely all the drivers have become rather stable by now, so in most cases they should continue to keep working for you.
I certainly want to stick with this system as long as possible. I really just hope that it holds out for at least another year.
What I think is interesting, is that with each newer version of Linux, it seems as though it is less stress on this system. 12.2 appears to use fewer resources than 12.1. If you turn off the eye candy, 12.2 running KDE runs great on an old P4 desktop with only 1 Gbyte of RAM. I’m truly impressed with the state of Linux and openSUSE these days.
On 2012-11-12 22:26, futureboy wrote:
>
> Just for kicks, I thought I would do a SMART test on my drive to see
> what it said.
I did not read this before or I would have commented.
> Code:
> --------------------
> SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
> Num Test_Description Status Remaining LifeTime(hours) LBA_of_first_error
> # 1 Short offline Completed: read failure 90% 11259 88946551
> # 2 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 711 -
> # 3 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 576 -
> # 4 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 336 -
> # 5 Extended offline Completed without error 00% 184 -
>
> --------------------
>
>
> The result was a “PASSED” so I should be good for now and looking
> further, this would lead me to believe that I have 469 days of
> continuous operation left in this drive. Is that accurate or am I not
> reading this correctly?
Nope. The test aborted at 90% because there was a read error… A look
at the full output could tell me more, but my guess is that you have a
non zero Current_Pending_Sector value.
That is serious, and not unexpected of a HD of that age. How serious,
depends. If the bad sector count is stable, it can be ignored. If it
grows, replace the HD ASAP.
And that was with a short test… there could be more problems reported
with the long test.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.4, with Evergreen, x86_64 “Celadon” (Minas Tirith))