Hard drive reliability is still dependent on how the drive is treated. No-one wants to drop their laptop... it will still hose the drive. Fact is, most spinning platter HD's are not used in high vibration environments. If it is going to get pounded, nowadays, people want a SSHD. And those are just as overpriced, compared to cheaper computer technology, as Yamaha's RAM is compared to off the shelf RAM.

And, it's all very well and good to say that computers get a 'major' upgrade every three years or so, but put the same unrealistic expectations on them as you are saying the closed, custom chip based arrangers should have, and they can JUST as easily be said to be dragging their heels. I keep saying (and you keep ignoring) that closed arrangers are built around custom chips and processors, they AREN'T barebones computers inside. The cost of development and pace of innovation in custom chips has ALWAYS been, and will always be, much slower than software running on off the shelf computers. But the benefit is that bombproof reliability.

For the gigging pro, that's WAY more important than bleeding edge capability