On Mon, Feb 17, 2003 at 04:08:48PM +0800, John Summerfield wrote: > Linux is Linux. Don't confuse Windows' reliability with the > reliability of IA32-based boxes. They can be built to be very > reliable indeed, and even the cheapest PC clones today are much more > reliable than mainframes of years gone by
Yeah, but gone *way* by. Reliability in consumer-grade machines is pretty dreadful. Especially when you start running them at reasonable loads 24/7, instead of in a desktop situation, where they're usually 99%+ idle, or even in a typical server situation, where average utilization is between 5 and 10 percent. Modern high-capacity drives, in particular, generate a LOT of heat; combine that with power supplies that don't come anywhere close to meeting spec, CPUs that generate somewhere near 100W of waste heat, and crappy (and often hideously underspecced) fans/cooling systems, and thermally-induced failure becomes awfully common. Add this to an inadequately-cooled environment (like most corner-cutting machine rooms), and you're looking for trouble. Adam
