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How Do I Provide a Workstation To Last 15 Years?

An anonymous reader writes "My father is a veterinarian with a small private practice. He runs all his patient/client/financial administration on two simple workstations, linked with a network cable. The administration application is a simple DOS application backed by a database. Now the current systems, a Pentium 66mhz and a 486, both with 8MB of RAM and 500MB of hard drive space, are getting a bit long in the tooth. The 500MB harddrives are filling up, the installed software (Windows 95) is getting a bit flakey at times. My father has asked me to think about replacing the current setup. I do know a lot about computers, but my father would really like the new setup to last 10-15 years, just like the current one has. I just dont know where to begin thinking about that kind of systems lifetime. Do I buy, or build myself? How many spare parts should I keep in reserve? What will fail first, and how many years down the line will that happen?"

3 of 655 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Buy any current workstation and... by linhares · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Yes, you can, through dropbox.

  2. Re:Buy any current workstation and... by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Stop spamming your referrals, asshat.

    --
    "You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
  3. Re:Buy any current workstation and... by linhares · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    Oh well, sorry. I did it with good intentions, but it's spam, I guess. I was thinking: provided someone actually joins dropbox, they would be actually getting more space. Oh well, I guess I deserve the troll mod; but if anyone joins it and uses it, you know what? Then I just might have done someone a favor. This is not zero-sum. And I do believe that the best solution here is virtualization with a dropbox synch... so despite the spam, for which I apologize, that's really my opinion.