How long should a piece of electronic kit last? Much longer than some do. As an (ex) electronics engineer responsible for mission critical kit, if it failed potentially millions of people would have seen the result. Many failures are now caused by poorly designed kit working just in the edge or over the edge of the specs of the components they use. Then there is no safety margin. The kit I used or designed had a minimum 50% headroom. Just look at the spec of components which will have a mean time between failure rating and then ask yourself, why did it fail so soon?
