Subject: Re: Please move distributed computing discussions to comp.distributed
From: Ed
Date: 03/08/2004, 02:50
Newsgroups: alt.sci.seti,sci.astro.seti

"Stratcat" <none@no.org> wrote in
news:BYBPc.2011$Z56.1807@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com: 

Not sure what your implying here. Tempaerature cycling is exactly what
will SHORTEN an electronics device's life. It's better to run
electronics in a steady state environment, within thier specs.

Electro-mechanical devices may last longer due to thier mechanical
nature, but in general, a great deal of stress occurs during the
temperature cycling phases, and the in-rush of currents that occur
when a device powers up.

Yep. There is a fire house, maybe in NJ, that had a light bulb that 
Edison built still burning into at least the 90's.  Don't know if it is 
still working, but they never turned it off.

The trade off with PCs has always been power usage vs. the life of SOME 
parts.  If you keep a disk drive running all of the time, it will 
probably fail sooner then if you powered the machine off.  Bottom line is 
that the failure issues for computers are not as simple as many people 
think.