Altair Fan

[Gary Sparkes]

Dang, seems an awful lot to maintain something that, in my
experience, has a very low failure rate... I've had three
harddrives go up on me (Admittingly, IBM DEATHSTARTS), one
motherboard that ate ram for Breakfast!

My current general use machine is a P2 400 I've had for
about five years (IIRC), and it hasn't suffered a single failure
in that time. I do have a faster P4 1.5GHz, but it's in
more of a server roll then anything else.

Though recently, I'm finding I havn't even powered up any of the
machines on my desk and instead just use the iBook I have.

Perhaps a cheap laptop off ebay of decent ability (Say a P2
or similar) would suit you well? Even something with dead
battery (Which, I'm sure you'd get around to repairing :))
I use my laptop in such a capacity, as a portable document
archive.

I understand the urges to be able to repair your equipment,
but dosn't it stop somewhere? :)

Of course, can't refute the argument about the internet
connection :)

On 6/19/05 5:29 PM, "Tony Duell" <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:

>> 
>> If it's really that big of a deal for licensed software, I have
>> About fifty Win95 license & cd kits sitting in a box... :)
>> How about a W3.11 license? Only got about 100 of them :/
> 
> No, it's not that. I believe it's perfectly possible to view and print
> pdfs using free software under a free operating system.
> 
> The exrta costs, over the cost of the PC, are things like the broadband
> connection (I am not going to try to download a 10Mbyte file with a 14k4
> modem...), the equipment to maintain and repair the PC (things like a BGA
> rework station, a faster 'scope and logic analyser than the ones I
> already have, etc), and, of course, a house extension to put said PC in.
> 
> -tony
>