Slashdot Mirror
Companies Keeping Systems Longer Than Ever
Ant writes to tell us ComputerWorld is reporting that based on a study done by the Yakee Group Research company out of Boston companies are leveraging the durability and reliability of computers to extend the lifespan of desktops, laptops, and servers. From the article: "IT's life-cycle demands have raised the bar for vendors. "There's more pressure on [the vendors] to make the boxes last a longer period of time."
We're using Windows 2000 Pentium-III machines for the most part in the company. We just have no real motivation to start using Windows XP or 2003 server anytime soon. (Apart from the fact that some of our apps will in time force us to upgrade).
Most applications require Windows NT/2000/XP, which means they can still run on the older Windows NT 4.0 machines. So why upgrade?
I think microsoft dug themselves in a hole with Windows 2000. Its everything companies need, and Windows XP offers not a whole lot more.. (prettier screens? faster bootup? DirectX 9.0c?) Most app vendors have standardized on Windows 2000, and Microsoft will have a tough time to force them to Windows XP alone, or Longhorn, which will force customers to get new hardware as well. In doing so, they'll also force some app vendors to more to Linux, which will happily and freely run on older hardware. Time to sell that Microsoft stock.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Also drives this need to keep hardware around longer. A major piece of software for internal corporate IT might take several years to build, and then last a couple of decades. Suddenly it becomes important to have a fairly stable hardware environment.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
So we bought a new middling-low-end server from IBM, 1U, Opteron... The manager of the site basically asked me for a machine which would last them a decade, if possible. Which may just happen. Sure, we may replace a disk between now and then, but we should have more than enough power to run everything we want and more between now and then.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
W2K does everything we need right now for both developers and users in the company. The only reason I can think of to upgrade would be ongoing support from Microsoft for the platform. We call them once in a blue moon, mainly due to there being so much information elsewhere for most domestic stuff, only calling them when something weird goes on with something like Exchange (which is an expensive call in itself and not related to our desktop installs). We don't need the Fisher Price interface just something that works so we don't have to fix it.
If you went to our CIO and said "We need to upgrade all our PC's to XP" and gave one reason, even if it's a good one, he'd get out the calculator and say no. It would have to be a reason like "We have to upgrade to XP otherwise the company will explode killing all executive management". Then he'd probably sign a check.
Task Mangler
What are most people in offices doing? Email, a little Word and Excel. How much power do you need to do that? If the machines aren't broken, and they're letting people do their jobs, then what's the impetus to make managers spend the money for upgrades? Unless you're doing heavy-duty number crunching or playing the latest and greatest video games, there's no reason to have the top of the line machine.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
...I'm having a hard time getting over a one year warranty on IDE drives. I'll start to believe that people care about hardware lifespan when SCSI drives with a five year warranty start to become the norm again.
For a variety of reasons, IT at work has given to me a Windows 2000 Desktop system that's 5+ years old. (HP Vectra VL).
:), and I need Windows for e-mail, corporate VPN software, etc.
It has a randomly failing hard drive. Sometimes, the system won't recognize the hard drive, so it helps to pull the cord and rock the system back and forth, left and right. If this doesn't work, disconnecting the hard drive and cleaning the IDE cable as well as the power cable to the HD with compressed air usually does the trick. (I also spray the fan, the RAM, and anything else dusty while I'm in there)
This may not happen for weeks, but when it acts up, I can spend several hours fiddling with it before it boots.
The replacement systems that IT has given me are similar, older models, with identical failure modes. (Swap drives - same result, swap systems - same result, copy drives - fails)
Is it possible to copy its 20GB Windows partition to another hard drive with different tracks, sectors, etc? If I get a new hard drive, which brands come with software to automatically do that?
Alternatively, what open source software, if any, could I use to boot a virtual 20GB image from this hard drive? I have a newer computer with Windows XP Home or Fedora Core 3 ready for this task.
I actually do most of my work on a newer, inexpensive Linux system that work paid for as a line item in a travel budget, but I haven't been on any trips recently
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
An engineering firm I worked at recently upgraded their dozens of PCs to AMD 64s and XP. The BSOD problem is largely dead. They won't be needing to update machines for probably 5 years.
The last blue screen problem I had with XP was due to a fan failure. More annoying is when Firefox freezes (due to memory issues?) but session saver fixes that most times.
Why get rid of perfectly good equipment? The major reasons I have seen for PCs to run slowly is:
1. Spyware/adware.
2. Antivirus scanners/firewalls/spam filters taking up most of the RAM.
3. Unnecessary software getting loaded every time the user plugs in a new printer or USB device. You can't just load drivers anymore. The user is prompted to insert a CD which installs gobs of crap, many of which are not even full apps but trial versions. It is just submarine marketing.
4. Fragmentation. I still remember the good old days when Microsloth claimed that NTFS doesn't fragment.
5. "Upgrading" the system from the OS it was designed for to anything newer, i.e. 98 to 2000 or 2000 to XP.
A few years ago I loaded some version of DOS, WordPerfect, and Lotus 1-2-3 on an old 386/25 laptop. I was blown away by how fast it booted up and by how fast the apps ran. Recalculating a spreadsheet took a fraction of a second instead of the microseconds it takes on my new system, but scrolling around a sheet full of data went so fast that I couldn't even stop where I wanted to. Instead of scrolling over to column G for example I kept overshooting and ending up at like column AK. Windows and Windows apps seem designed to slowly bury your PC under an avalanche of bloat forcing you to upgrade the hardware just to stay even. If this gets modded redundant it's only because everyone knows it's true.
I just retired two servers that were with the company longer than me. They had NetWare 3.12 on them when I got there and NetWare 5.1 when I removed them from the tree. After about eight years of service they had only gone through two OS upgrades.
whats wront with my Celeron 300A, 128RAM and 3GB hdd ?
.. but cant be bodered with such nonsense.
Altrough it does not run the last Redmond OS !
No BIOS updates, cant mount HDD >32Gb, cant bay >40Gb.
Do I need a new system ? Oh my God I do need a NEW system..
---
apt-get update;
I'd say one reason is the declining acceleration of CPU's
It's harder and harder to get the "usual" increase in processor speed due to issues with heat dissapation, and perhaps even the speed of light.
Light is fast, 5878499810000 miles in a year, but in 1/4000000000th of a second (4Ghz) it only goes 7.4 centimeters. You can cram the components really close together, with really short wires, but that just concentrates the heat produced, and I doubt a CPU would work properly when it's gold contacts turn into a liquid.
I wonder if someone could make a functional computing device with liquid 'wires', the conductors being liquid metal flowing through nanoscopic ceramic/carbon nanotube tunnels...
Until new software takes full advantage of multiple cores, there isn't much reason to buy them.
Once multi-cores are an assumed feature of all systems, I wonder if Preemptive multitasking will die out...
I think linux will read your >32GB disks just fine.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Sounds a lot like everyone elses work. Sounds like a lot of people out there are using PIII machines with Win2K on them. To be honest though I don't really need anymore than what I have. I can browse the net with 50 tabs open in mozilla, have notepad open, be downloading a couple different torrents, have my three work related apps open, and trillian running all at the same time with not too much of a slow down.
We seldom regret saying too little but often regret saying too much.
We use p3-500's. They put in a terminal server that is fast and everyone connects to that. Its a good solution I guess and it saves money rather then upgrading all the systems in the room. Those with the cost of PC's today its not that expensive to upgrade.
I can't believe its not butter!
I have two AMD XP 2500+ systems, one running FC3 and one with XP. They're both quick, and do everything I need. However, 90% of the time I'm running FC3 on my PII 300 Notebook with 256MB/ram and a 6GB HD. It's plenty for everything I do. The screen is nice, the keyboard is nice, everything loads fairily on par with my other FC3 system (except for Firefox, but once it loads it works well), It's portable, Everything on it is supported by FC3 and even wireless works well.
Everyonce in a while I find myself looking at newer PC parts, thinking a Dual core would be great, or an upgraded video card or something, but I always come back to the fact that this little PII does everything I do well, and I don't just surf, I write php/mysql driven web pages, I work with gimp on large images, I chat, I program/compile C and C++ programs. It's not a big deal. And if I need extra speed (like for rendering video/photos) I just ssh over to one of the 2500+ systems and X-forward. In all honesty, it comes down to this
Until something breaks, I'm quite happy with what I have.
After all, what I already have works, and it's free/already paid for.
-=JML=-
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
The equipment and software are bought and paid for; why would a compnay lay out good money for new, when the old is up, running, working, and allowing people to be productive? It's inconvenient when you come to work one day and they've decided to replace your desktop box or upgrade the software and you spend the better part of your work week reconfiguring your system to do everything your old system did, only to discover you can't go back. Then more time is wasted learning how to do things on the new system, setting configurations, reapplying you preferences, trnasferring files, and uploading software which you had but mysteriously was not placed on the new machine.
The bottom line: a company needs to be productive and constantly switching to newer and better systems/equipment is not cost effective in the long run, unless you can get 5-10 years out of it.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
"I think microsoft dug themselves in a hole with Windows 2000. "
Am I the only one who sees the irony in the above? We lambast MS down one side and up the other. Then they go and do something right and it's "digging themselves a hole". So in other words, it would have been better if they hadn't done a good job, and we still could lambast them.