Does this theatre need a new console?

[RickR]

While there certainly are folks running old systems, you just don't hear about the ones that die suddenly. It's expected and not news, unless it's yours.

As for road houses supplying consoles, I suggest the venues experience is far more important than our philosophy of uupgrades

 

[Jay Ashworth]

I will respectfully disagree with that assessment. Sure, fans die, replace the fan. Power supplies die, again, repair the unit. But to say the CPU or RAM or is just going to stop working is a bit too much sales pitch and not enough reality.

Which is why he didn't say that.

He said *hard discs*. And he's right. 3-5 years is a not unreasonable lifespan for spinning rust; if you're incredibly lucky, you might get the 10 or 11 that our Ion has now.

But I'm pretty sure the new XE has SSD (which has a different lifespan, and a different set of failure modes -- it goes readonly, and bricks the next time you power off, so keep those backups up to date, people), and my experience of SSD is that it won't last that long.

And as for dying power supplies, it's 6/5 and pick em whether it takes the entire machine with it as it goes.

What I've done for the last 3 decades, over 4 generations of machines.