Over the years, I've built hundreds of desktops for myself, friends, relatives, and clients of all sorts. If you select high grade components and build with a serious eye toward cooling, you can indeed build a highly durable desktop. There are a few keys that have proved important over the years, though.
For example, many people seem to assume that all power supplies are created equal, yet that is very far from the case. The last group of machines I built all used "80+" certified power supplies. Generally, those have had to use better grade components and assembly to get the efficiency up to that level or above. Problems with power supplies are often extremely hard to diagnose, by the way--a power supply that is beginning to act flaky may produce erratic results that often start as very subtle issues that can go mostly unnoticed for some time.
It is also a generally bad idea to upgrade a machine with new processor, motherboard, and video but using the old power supply. In doing a major upgrade of an older machine, therefore, I strongly recommend a power supply replacement as part of the process.
There is also a wide variety of quality of motherboard components. I have found over many years now that ASUS is among the very best in that regard--too many times in trying to save a few bucks I have come to regret that decision. When we specified components for my boy's desktop year before last, I again went with a decent ASUS model and we've been quite happy with it.
As for laptops--I have some periodic medical issues that can keep me mostly confined to bed for weeks at a time. With a laptop, I simply take it with me--while a desktop in our situation would be extremely difficult to manage like that. I rarely take it out of the house, however, and am very careful with it inside. Also, since this machine has one of the ultra low-voltage processors, it makes very little heat to begin with. It has a fan, but the fan is often not moving because the machine runs so cool--and as you probably know, that is a key to longevity of electronic parts. By contrast, my HP this one replaced had the fan running most of the time.
Thus, there is definitely a place for both approaches.
David
--- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, "Paul" <pfrederick1@...> wrote:
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> --- In LINUX_Newbies@yahoogroups.com, "dbneeley" <dbneeley@> wrote:
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> > I have seen quality desktop units that will go that long, but I have yet to find a laptop that will.
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> It stands to reason that laptops would be more prone to failure than desktops just from their physical differences. None of those differences favor electronics functioning in a laptop over fixed desktops.
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> From durability of construction, through thermal considerations, all the way to mechanical trauma laptops are just going to to take a beating desktops rarely receive.
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> Linux support with laptops is often at issue as well. For these reasons and a lot more I've never bothered with them. Mostly because I like to build my own PCs and laptops aren't exactly hacker friendly that way. Also I've no rationale for all the drawbacks to gain portability.
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> Paul
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