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My mid-2011 MacBook Air is still going strong. SSDs changed everything. What’s to wear out other than fan bearings?

by jen729w 8y ago

1stranger 8y ago
SSDs do have a finite lifespan due to limited number of writes they can do before cells can't be rewritten.
- jen729w 8y ago
  Oh, of course. But it’s many times the average spinning-rust laptop hard drive lifespan (for your average user).
  - opan 8y ago
    Not necessarily. There was a story just the other day about how someone's SSDs at their business were failing for unknown reasons without the proper warnings. I must've read it on another device, as I can't find it in my history. I believe I saw it on HN.
    - jen729w 8y ago
      Not necessarily, no. But on the average, definitely yes.
tom_ 8y ago
Probably nothing - but when it does go pop, you're going to open it up, and there's the world's tiniest circuit board, with 100 tiny little capacitors, and if you're old enough to remember the Amiga then they are all too small for your eyes to even see. There are 3 chips, and each chip has 700 pins, and each pin is ~0.5mm from the next. What is the difference between your laptop, model 344 revision 001, and another laptop, model 344, revision 002? - oh dear, the answer is: everything. They redesigned the whole thing. Still, at least you didn't get revision 003, which is not only entirely different again but also coated in epoxy resin! Meanwhile, your Amiga has this enormous motherboard that's full of DIP-size ICs, many of them socketed, and even with your schoolboy soldering you can extract the ones that ain't. And it almost cetainly doesn't matter if you're hoping to get their replacements from an Amiga that's completely different, because Commodore just didn't have the money to make N different versions of their chips, even assuming you're trying to replace the custom ones in the first place. Or was it just the disk drive that fucked up, or one of the power supply capacitors, or something like that? - well, why didn't you say! No problem. Plenty of those about! P.S.: but, all that said: what I was thinking about, when it comes to a modern desktop, is that you'd just replace parts as much as possible, repairing things as required, then when it finally dies just buy another one and restore from your last backup. But while bench repair is more of an option with a desktop than a laptop, in either case you probalby wouldn't actually bother, and you'd just throw it away and buy a new one at the first sign of trouble. So in fact, maybe it doesn't make much of a difference overall.
- mcguire 8y ago
  I do wonder how often they have to have someone squeak the chips on the Amiga.
- jen729w 8y ago
  For the record, my 2nd computer was an Amiga 500. Much loved. (First was the mighty Sinclair Spectrum+. Whywhywhywhywhywhywhy did I sell that thing.) | “What is the difference between your laptop, model 344 revision 001, and another laptop, model 344, revision 002?” This is one of the things I despise about the Windows world. Say you have an HP EliteBook 9460m. Sounds like quite a specific model number. You want the graphics drivers. You go to HP.com, navigate Support, plug in your model number ... and are given the option of the Intel or the NVIDIA drivers. What the hell? Do HP not know which one they put in this machine? Was it just a crap-shoot at the factory? That’s bonkers, in my book.
  - glandium 8y ago
    Is it really Intel or Nvidia? Is it not Intel and Nvidia? Many laptops come with both and can switch between both depending on whether you need a fast GPU or energy saving.

My mid-2011 MacBook Air is still going strong. SSDs changed everything. What’s to wear out other than fan bearings?

1stranger 8y ago

SSDs do have a finite lifespan due to limited number of writes they can do before cells can't be rewritten.

jen729w 8y ago
Oh, of course. But it’s many times the average spinning-rust laptop hard drive lifespan (for your average user).
- opan 8y ago
  Not necessarily. There was a story just the other day about how someone's SSDs at their business were failing for unknown reasons without the proper warnings. I must've read it on another device, as I can't find it in my history. I believe I saw it on HN.
  - jen729w 8y ago
    Not necessarily, no. But on the average, definitely yes.

tom_ 8y ago

Probably nothing - but when it does go pop, you're going to open it up, and there's the world's tiniest circuit board, with 100 tiny little capacitors, and if you're old enough to remember the Amiga then they are all too small for your eyes to even see. There are 3 chips, and each chip has 700 pins, and each pin is ~0.5mm from the next. What is the difference between your laptop, model 344 revision 001, and another laptop, model 344, revision 002? - oh dear, the answer is: everything. They redesigned the whole thing. Still, at least you didn't get revision 003, which is not only entirely different again but also coated in epoxy resin! Meanwhile, your Amiga has this enormous motherboard that's full of DIP-size ICs, many of them socketed, and even with your schoolboy soldering you can extract the ones that ain't. And it almost cetainly doesn't matter if you're hoping to get their replacements from an Amiga that's completely different, because Commodore just didn't have the money to make N different versions of their chips, even assuming you're trying to replace the custom ones in the first place. Or was it just the disk drive that fucked up, or one of the power supply capacitors, or something like that? - well, why didn't you say! No problem. Plenty of those about! P.S.: but, all that said: what I was thinking about, when it comes to a modern desktop, is that you'd just replace parts as much as possible, repairing things as required, then when it finally dies just buy another one and restore from your last backup. But while bench repair is more of an option with a desktop than a laptop, in either case you probalby wouldn't actually bother, and you'd just throw it away and buy a new one at the first sign of trouble. So in fact, maybe it doesn't make much of a difference overall.

mcguire 8y ago
I do wonder how often they have to have someone squeak the chips on the Amiga.
jen729w 8y ago
For the record, my 2nd computer was an Amiga 500. Much loved. (First was the mighty Sinclair Spectrum+. Whywhywhywhywhywhywhy did I sell that thing.) | “What is the difference between your laptop, model 344 revision 001, and another laptop, model 344, revision 002?” This is one of the things I despise about the Windows world. Say you have an HP EliteBook 9460m. Sounds like quite a specific model number. You want the graphics drivers. You go to HP.com, navigate Support, plug in your model number ... and are given the option of the Intel or the NVIDIA drivers. What the hell? Do HP not know which one they put in this machine? Was it just a crap-shoot at the factory? That’s bonkers, in my book.
- glandium 8y ago
  Is it really Intel or Nvidia? Is it not Intel and Nvidia? Many laptops come with both and can switch between both depending on whether you need a fast GPU or energy saving.