I don't get it. If I state that my Honda is more reliable than your Porsche, someone will inevitably observe that I probably drive like a granny to the market, where you drive like Iron Man with a hangover--different hardware, different duty. And its a good observation.
I do a lot of high performance scientific computing. Average CPU load (24 hours a day, 365 days a year) is about 90% on hundreds of machines. We run Windows machines, Linux machines and Mac machines. Typically, we need to replace 10% of our hard drives due to mechanical failure per year. Because they get thrashed HARD. We lose video cards when their fans' ball bearings wear out. Motherboards and power supplies fry because capacitors get old and gassy, or because the room gets too hot. Switches burn out. Memory gets flaky.
And we only have anecdotal statistics on hardware failure rates, pushing hundreds of machines hard, for years. The truth is, except for hardware that is poorly designed, most everything we use is cycled on a 3-4 year period, because of obsolescence.
Want a reliable machine? Buy an SGI (hehe). They're built like tanks, and I've personally have one outside my office that has been running continuously without reboot for more than 5 years. Or even an old IBM server. (Un?)fortunately, this kind of machine was proven economically inviable when the market decided there was no point to engineering computer hardware to last more than 3-4 years.
So who cares? You're not going to run your computer hard at home, and you probably won't be using the same hardware in 5 years. AND you get to pay relatively cheap prices for your computing power. Stay away from hardware known to have reliability problems, and you're good.
