On Wed, 23 Jun 2010 02:19:17 +0200
Henning Brauer <lists-openbsd@bsws.de> wrote:

quoted text
> as rock solid as they might be, at this age, the likeliness of them
> dieing anytime soon is growing. fast.

Hard drives and fans aside, there comes a point where a system has
passed the test of time, and so a system that has run for 6 months can
be trusted more than something new, but of course things do wear out.

Soak or stress testing for 24 hours may find, some of these.

The expensive precious metals are used less and less and so modern
devices have a shorter life. I don't think a pIII would be old enough
to include more expensive and a lot longer lasting parts, but a
particular one may be better than others?, but an even older system
maybe perfect for a trusty firewall, though not the absolute best in
leckie usage.

Market forces make getting higher quality parts more difficult and
specialist, and so if you want them the price is going up and up,
whilst the off the shelf price of alternatives drops and drops.

If your redundancy is top notch, like I imagine hennings is, then
upgrading regularly may be very reliable and give the best cost to
performance savings, considering the price of electricity!!!!!!!