I'm the IT manager at a university physics research institute, and I'm helping wind down one of our astrophysics labs because the PI retired.

I found an IBM ThinkPad 600X connected via RS232 to an old RAID Inc. fiber SAN. The laptop runs Windows XP SP2. I found the password and logged in.

This computer has been sitting there, on, for 2,585 days (7.08 years).

Some more info:

- The laptop really wasn't doing anything. It was just being used to talk to that RAID Inc box with HyperTerminal. The last modified files I see on there are from around 2008.

- I'm the one that did the WinXP SP2 install back in 2007! I'd only been working here about 2 months at the time. I probably also did the RAM upgrade, though that group tended to order machines with high specs anyway.

- Its battery still holds a charge! I moved it from the lab back to my office and the battery held its charge. I did have the lid closed, so it was asleep, but it woke back up happily enough, still logged in.