However, having Vista will reduce the longevity further than not having it due to constant pinging of the hardware. The more times a piece of hardware has to work, the more wear and tear it takes and will eventually stop working. Whether you consider it a significant decrease in longevity or not, it doesn't change the fact that there is a difference.
- No you're not understanding the triviality of this. Hardware working doesn't necessarily shorten it's lifespan, especially when we're talking about this which is like a drop in the ocean, it's completely irrelevant. Even if there were any shortening involved it would be the difference between your hardware failing at Mar 07 2009 16:15 and it failing at Mar 07 2009 16:16 (although it's just as likely to fail at the exact same time or even remotely possible it could lengthen it's lifespan by an equally negligable amount of time). The only major component of a modern PC that can be considered susceptible to wear-by-use like this is the HDD since it's the only macro-mechanical device left. At this point I should point out that Vista has better indexing and searching facilities than XP or any other version of Windows meaning your HDD just might last longer on Vista than XP if you ever use the file search facility and seeing as the HDD is the only truly important component of the PC (being the one with all your data on) it seems Vista is a winner in the hardware longetivity stakes.
There's a lot of things not to like about Vista, but there's a hell of a lot more FUD going around that doesn't stand up to fact or reason. It'd be nice if it wasn't being spread around here.
