Lifetime of a PC / Laptop

Computer Repair & Replacement Statistics

Information Based on Personal Experience and guided by Statistical Principles

The approximate lifespan of an office administrative computer (purchased new) is 4.5 years, give or take about a half of a year.

The lifetime of a cluster of new computers could be viewed as a statistical "bell curve" (left).

Based on normal statistical averages, your budget should expect that:

• Approximately 3% of your new computers will need replacement or parts replaced within 3.5 years.
• An additional 13% will likely need replacement or replacement parts within 4 years.
• Within 4.5 years a total of half of your computers will probably need replacement or repairs.
• After 4.5 years the computers will begin to become obsolete and will become more likely to fail or slow down significantly. The recommended action is to replace, rather than repair machines after the 4.5 year mark.
• By 5 years an additional 34% (Now totaling 84%) of your machines will fail, slow down or become obsolete.
• By 5.5 years a total of 95% will need replacement.
• Within 6.5 years you can expect to have replaced most or all of your machines.

Interesting Points

• Desktop computers are tending to become cheaper with each passing year. Although you probably wouldn't describe the price reduction as "significant", it is measurable enough to slightly affect the bottom line. If one could determine the rate of price decline for a pc, they could factor this in to budget projections.
   
• The lifetime of a PC can be extended with occasional "cleaning". Having a repair person remove the dust every 3 to 6 months is helpful. An additional consideration is to have an air filtration machine present in smaller rooms with expensive and important computer hardware (especially in smaller, enclosed rooms)
   
• Laptop computers have been comparatively steady in price. We are not likely to see a significant reduction in laptop prices in the next 5 years. Laptops have a shorter lifespan, due to heat issues. Their life can be extended a good amount with proper care.
   
• Many users are not aware of how a laptop should be properly handled. (For example, if you have a laptop running on a bedspread, it traps heat in causing wear and tear on the components, slowing performance and leading to eventual permanent damage.) Although it would seem obvious to some, a little bit of education could go a long way when it comes to the health of a computer.
   
• The statistics cover an unchanging set of computers. If computers were purchased in batches only, this would be a very accurate measurement. As they are often repaired or replaced as they are needed, only a handful of computers are purchased at a time, creating some disconnection between the math and the reality. 

The Tallest Building in Town

"There are two ways to have the tallest building in town: either build the tallest building, or tear somebody else’s down. To build the tallest building, you have to take risks. You’ve got to go borrow the money. When everybody else goes to lunch you’ve got to keep building..." - Tony Robins

Can Social Media Create “Real” Social Change?

Recently I posted a YouTube video entitled “Making the Impossible Possible” wherein I expressed a strong optimism about the ability of social media technology to reach out and affect real change in the world. 

I would like to attempt to revisit that discussion using additional context from the article “Small Change: Why the Revolution will not be Tweeted” (Gladwell, 2010)

After reflecting on Malcolm Gladwell’s article, I realize that perhaps my assertions were a little bit one-sided. Having never been a part of any “real” revolution, my thoughts on social media’s role in activism are influenced by a very limited set of information sources, none of which are personal experience. 

So far, my humanitarian deeds have been limited to a few high-school abortion protests, some Christian leadership retreats and the occasional donation through Goodwill or at a Walmart checkout counter. I help the people around me and try to give time to people when they need it. Sure I’m making progress. But, in reality, not one of these utilizes social media channels to get the job done.

I “like” posts related to causes that I feel connected to. I am a Pitbull lover. I have 3 in my family and all of them are sweeter than any other breed of dog I’ve met. I don’t understand why people fear them so much and why a breed specific ban is in place against them. Whenever I see a post in support of banning the Pitbull ban, I almost always click the like button at least and sometime I share it. I know that because I clicked like there is a chance that some of the 200 something connections on my friends list will see it and maybe they will share it. I know that it might create buzz about the topic. But, when I really think about it, it usually doesn’t result in “real social change”. 

Clicking a small link on a busy Facebook page in hopes that somebody else might see it on their busy page, at best, will probably result in them doing the same. By the same token, there is always the off chance that one of those people might be looking for a pet and – seeing that post – decides to adopt a Pitbull, saving its life.

The way that the average person normally uses social media is probably not going to lead to a revolution. We have seen seeming exceptions to this rule, when somebody starts something huge using the power of a tweet. However, they are probably not what you might think of as “average people”, but are in actuality extraordinary revolutionaries and organizations. For example, the #Occupy movements which took off in late 2011 and throughout 2012 and still continue – though on a lesser scale – to the present day. (See this Wikipedia article for more on the occupy movement.)

Social media is nothing more than a new vehicle which can be used to communicate in new ways and with fewer boundaries. Like a car, truck, train or plane, some of these social media sites have more potential momentum than others, but all of them stand still without somebody piloting.

So, yes, I think social media has the potential to help assist people in bringing about real social change. However, I think that large scale social change is still fueled by the people behind the scenes as it always has been. Social media sites provide new ways to communicate. It is up to the activist individuals and organizations to harness those communication tools and to put them to use to create change.

(See: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell)

 

Citizen Journalism: Making the World Aware

 ‘The concept of citizen journalism … is based upon public citizens "playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing, and disseminating news and information."’
(Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism) 

Photo by Roger H. Goun (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sskennel/)

In the age of information, nearly everybody wants to say something - and people are more enabled than ever to record, write and publish their own journalistic pieces for the world to see. When an amateur, or non-professional produces information of journalistic nature, it is sometimes referred to as citizen journalism.

A debate exists among various socialists and academics about whether or not citizen journalism is a good thing for our society and there are some strong arguments to support each viewpoint. 

For one thing, there is the question of trust in the information provided. News from citizen journalists sometimes present opinion as fact. Yet, any individual who boots up a computer can publish an article with the same potential visibility as any large news organization.

We have come to trust the more traditional media sources because they are held accountable for the legitimacy of their information by the public and by law. They check and double-check their facts, confirming their truthfulness before ever publishing an article.

Citizen journalists rarely have their facts checked before publishing, so the validity of their information is often uncertain, and we can’t hold them accountable to the same standard that we have for larger organizations. 

This would be dangerous except that, if something is “important” enough, people instantly start talking about it to each other on social media sites, blogs, forums, chat apps and more and you can be sure there will be somebody among the hundreds or thousands of people who see this information who will go to the effort of checking the facts.  If proof - for or against the facts - is found, links to any related information can then be attached to the original post or article via commenting or “sharing” and disseminated back through the same network from which the information originated.

This same phenomenon is pushing the bigger news organizations to be more responsible than ever with their information. Just as obscure indie journalists are automatically fact-checked, news organizations are also being scrutinized. They must produce rock solid facts to ensure that they are looking out for the interests of their readers. Otherwise, readers will simply go elsewhere for their news.

But, trust isn’t the only factor in the debate. There are other considerations. Citizen journalists are not required to attain any kind of certification. All they need is a computer, a subject and an internet connection to begin reporting. As a result, poor grammar, spelling and structure veritably litter many of the articles we now read. Since we often learn writing styles through reading, this can perpetuate into more unclear and/or inaccurate writing. 

That said, while the above said issue is close to the heart for this author, it must be conceded that the above concern for the quality of grammar is mostly vanity. When faced with the next element of the debate to be discussed, citizen journalism as a political device, grammar is not exactly a priority.

Events are happening in the world that certain governments wouldn’t allow traditional media access to, given the choice. China, North Korea and many other countries around the world have strict rules about what their citizens can publish or read.

The Syrian government is attacking its own people, starving them and shooting unarmed citizens down in the streets and, while the more gruesome clips are not easily available, they do exist. Renegade ‘citizen journalists’ gather footage for the world in an effort to help the Syrian people (“Al Jazeera exclusive: Homs under siege”, Al Jazeera English, YouTube.com, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMAgeCpr8t4) 

We are aware of this information because of people like these who desperately risk everything in order to gather footage, crying out for help. Their offerings attract food contributions and other assistance from outside sympathizers that might otherwise have been in the dark about what is happening to real people in war-torn countries.

‘iReport’ by CNN is an online repository for citizen journalists to submit articles that CNN can republish about subjects that are often truly important from a human perspective. Encouragement from a survivor of extreme bullying (http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1047896) and inspiration from a once-bullied teacher (http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-1048465) are some of the things you might find when CNN requests that their user base submits stories about bullying. 

Early printing press machine, one of the first
technologies used for citizen journalism purposesImage provided by Wikimedia
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/
Handtiegelpresse_von_1811.jpg)

While citizen written articles are often not as high quality as we would expect from those of us with higher education, they give us far more access to information than we once would have had. As more people begin to use social media tools to publish and read their news, larger organizations are pushed to be more responsible and society can begin to hold even entire countries accountable for their actions.  

So, on the whole, this author believes that with citizen journalism the positive outcomes outweigh the relatively minor losses. Of course, this is opinion, so feel free to fact check if you feel so inclined.