On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 7:12 PM, Graydon <o...@uniserve.com> wrote: > On Mon, May 18, 2009 at 06:53:26PM -0400, John Francis scripsit: > >> And I *do* expect close to a 20-year working life out of this. >> My *ist-D still works just fine after 5.5 years; I expect it >> to make it at least to 10. My old Canon PowerShot G1 is still >> delivering images (albeit now in the hands of its second owner), >> and that's over eight years old. > > It would be surprising if all the chips involved could make it to 10 > years; 20 would be well past surprising and into "how on earth?" > territory. Running a microchip will eventually break it, as the > electrical current causes atoms to move and this eventually makes a > transistor unable to trans. Relatively low power, and relatively low > use (no one has their camera on 24/7, unlike a server) camera chips are > going to last relatively well, but there's a certain amount of passive > diffusion involved, too. All that cleverness isn't really stable; it's > just that the house of cards takes some years to fall over. > > -- Graydon >
Graydon, Design lifetimes on that sort of failure are in the decades. Server failures are generally heat or mechanical failures (something overheated or spindle/fan failures) and often both. I've got functional systems dating back more than 20 years (Mac II, circa 1987) and 2 systems currently up 24x7 that have been running since the late 90's (one PowerMac B&W G3, one PC) 20 years for a camera is easily achievable under light/moderate. The biggest issues will be batteries on those bodies that take proprietary batteries and overall shutter life. Chances are that getting replacements may become an issue and battery lifetimes are 18-24 months. Of course the Pentax bodies that take AA's lack the battery replacement issues. -- M. Adam Maas http://www.mawz.ca Explorations of the City Around Us. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
