Latitude e6540 lifetime

[dmitriygolubev]

Hi all! I own Dell Latitude e6540. According to Dell it was produced in Q3 2013. So now it almost 4 years old. And I am afraid it will die soon. Do you know some links about laptops failure statistic? For example typical lifetime per laptop model. Thanks.

 

[Saga Lout]

It's impossible to predict but it's all the more reason to make frequent data backups to ease the transfer to a new laptop.

I daily use a thirteen year old EeePC netbook running XP Pro and have no problems with it. It's on its third battery and I'll keep it until it dies but I fix PCs for a living and have been known to condemn three year olds as dead.

Does it make any odd noises - fans, hard drive grinding noises?

 

[dmitriygolubev]

Thanks for reply.

I hear noise from the beginning. But i use it very intensively. Say 3-4 virtual machines, each with 2-4GB RAM, Visual Studio and other stuff. So I think that noise is ok for such usage

From other side I agreed that its hard to predict. But for example I own Lumia 930 (windows-based phone). And its known that these phones have problems with microphones. So may be my laptop also have known problems.

 

[Saga Lout]

It's been my experience that the first major part to fail is the hard disk and I've had some laptops for their second replacement drive.

It seems to me there is a kind of what was called in the Seventies Planned Obsolensce, particularly when referring to Ford cars, in the hard disk industry while laptops are fairly long lasting.

At the end of the day, it's all down to the luck of the draw.

 

[BFG-9000]

While laptops aren't made as well as they used to be back when they sold for $4000, all of my laptops from the 1990s including 386, 486 Pentium 1 and Mac Powerbook models, are still fully functional today except for their batteries.

About the only things that actually failed in 25+ years were two inverters and one CCFL bulb, but then I always treated them like the delicate things they are. Modern laptops with SSDs and LED backlighting would be much more rugged if it wasn't for things like underengineered hinges and flex cables.

 

[jaguarskx]

I have a Dell Latitude 3540 that is still in good working order. It was released in late 2013, but I bought it refurbished at the beginning of 2014 (paid less than $500 vs. about $950 new for it's configuration). It works fine today, other than the fact that the number "2" key on the numeric pad sometimes does not register when it press it. Other than that, there are no issues with it, except the typical complaint about the original battery's life not being what it used to be.