[Nowhere Matt]

This topic starts off silly and gets even more silly. You very serious minded sorts will have to ignore me again.

Just for the sake of discussion, let's ponder the age of an average dslr. But I am not talking production dates here so you can see how silly this will get. And perhaps quickly.
In terms of a living creature how can we fantisize about how a dslr ages. For instance you would think that most dslr cameras get a lot of work and develope or age the most in the first three years of ownership. So can we say it reaches it's teen age years two years after production and then it's twenties and thirties four to six years after production?
Now for the Pentax brand it may be that due to the low level of popularity with consumers, our cameras age a but quicker. And technology advances pretty quickly so this is another reason all dslr will age very quickly.
Because of build quality, market share, and technologies some of the film slr cameras probably aged slower in their respective decades. But what can we say about modern dslr cameras and their age?

[tsangpo]

They are consumer electronics and with few exceptions my more expensive and bettter built consumer electronics have tended to have a life around 5 years or less. This includes a laptop, my original point and shoot, MP3 player, noise cancelling headphones. By the time they start to fail in small ways, start falling apart at pressure points they seem like they have reached the point where an upgrade is definately worth it. My k7 is built quite well and I feel that it should last beyond 5 years but probably only as a back up body to what is out then.

I doubt that in 20 years there will be people still using any current DSLR that has been serviced and serviced like they do some of the classic SLR's