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A Netware server that's been running non-stop for 16+ years

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superboyac:

-Renegade (April 02, 2013, 08:35 AM)
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There's some truth to that. There was a story of a GE lightbulb that had burned for something like 20 years. It became a minor attraction in the town it was in. When it finally failed, it was returned to GE, who desperately wanted to know why.

The analysis determined that too much tungsten (about 4X) had been applied to the filament inside the bulb due to a random glitch in the manufacturing process. This extra tungsten significantly extended the service life of the bulb.

GE's official conclusion: The bulb burned that long because it was..."defective."
 (see attachment in previous post)
Seems that being defective has little to do with function and everything to do with form. Since the bulb was "out of spec" it was therefor "defective" QED as far as the manufacturing engineers were concerned.
 :-\
-40hz (April 02, 2013, 08:53 AM)
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Wow, how revealing.

CWuestefeld:
Just goes to show what drives were capable of when engineered such that capacity (and price) took backseat to reliability.
-40hz (April 02, 2013, 07:51 AM)
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I don't remember a time when disk product designers emphasized reliability at the expense of capacity and price. Indeed, up until the last few years, capacity was a huge concern.

And today, YOU can make the choice between capacity and reliability. The use of RAID technology allows you to decide whether you want to use part of your capacity for additional storage space, or dedicate it to redundancy in order to achieve reliability.

It think that today, putting the tradeoff directly into our hands makes us all better off. If we're all tied to a single decision made by the product designers, then the solution is only optimal for a small set of people. Now we can all optimize.

(I get tired of people pining for the good old days. These are the good old days.)

Renegade:
These are the good old days.-CWuestefeld (April 02, 2013, 11:09 AM)
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*cough* planned obsolescence *cough*

CWuestefeld:
*cough* planned obsolescence *cough*
-Renegade (April 02, 2013, 11:23 AM)
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How about a concrete example, and an argument about how that situation is worse than it was back X years ago? 'Cause although I acknowledge the phenomenon, I don't see it getting any *worse*.

40hz:
These are the good old days.-CWuestefeld (April 02, 2013, 11:09 AM)
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*cough* planned obsolescence *cough*
-Renegade (April 02, 2013, 11:23 AM)
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Not really. The planned obsolescence came later. In the Netware era, servers were supposed to last indefinitely. They were over-engineered - and priced accordingly. When there wasn't a demand for a lot of them, you could easily justify putting the money in. But when demand for network services went through the roof, the old philosophy of "small numbers of high quality and expensive" gave way to "many inexpensive and easily replaced" when it came to hardware.

Each philosophy had its merits and strong points. But numerous, relatively cheap, and 'good enuff' seems to be the way the market and the field has gone. At least for your garden variety networked data requirements like serving web pages, tossing e-mail, hosting social networks, bootlegging media or software, and posting stupid or obscene pictures. But since that's what I'd say 80% of the overall computer use is these days - who really cares? Just get it up and running 'good enough."

So it's not so much "planned obsolescence" (except when it comes to new versions of MS Office :mrgreen:) as it is a question of economics and the "fix vs replace" calculation. The old adage: Speed/Price/Quality - pick any two! has never been so true as it has with computer hardware. The simple truth is you pretty much get what you pay for. And people are not willing to pay too much in the way of a premium just to get reliability. Most would just rather replace something when/if needed. And that lower reliability does keep the upfront costs down. So in an era of financial management where getting your boss to even look as far down the road as the current quarter (as opposed to the current month) when it comes to spending and "making the numbers" is quixotic at best, cheap less reliable hardware wins the day.

From what I've seen, the newer stuff doesn't hold up as well because it simply wasn't built as well. Or tested as thoroughly before it was boxed and put into inventory. And oddly enough, most times it doesn't really matter. If it breaks - they'll send you a new one if it's still under warranty. If not, you just buy a new one. (That's also why reliable backups and continuity planning are more critical than ever.)

For real mission critical stuff like emergency services, financial institutions, banking systems, medical providers, and air traffic control, the "old school" uber-reliable approach still holds sway.

Truth is, in the end, it all gets done. Or not.  ;D 8)

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