In short
Sometimes, people use computers in a way that taxes their hardware and can eventually lead to CPU or BIOS failure. When it does happen, there might not be any warning. Users can go from using a computer normally to a black screen almost instantly. So:
- Is there a way to tell users in laymen's terms that they will need to repair or replace their machine soon?
- How can machines guide users toward using computers in a way that is more sustainable for the life of the machine and the machine's intended use?
- Are there any studies about this?
More details
When a machine's BIOS fails or especially when its CPU fails, the machine has far less ability to give users helpful feedback about the current system status. Depending on what went wrong, users may be faced with the Black Screen of Death and unable to interact with their operating system's GUI. So users have to resort to documentation that is often not designed for them in order to figure out what is wrong. More often than not, it leads to giving up and buying a new machine - and possibly losing any data that they haven't backed up or stored in the cloud. This may be profitable for computer companies (a dark pattern in customer experience?), but it is bad for users.
(Note: I tagged this as "graceful degradation" not in terms of how that term applies in web design - e.g. using a site with older browsers - but in terms of fault tolerance due to hardware failure. On Wikipedia, "graceful degradation" redirects to "fault tolerance".)
What I would like to know
I'm wondering if any operating systems or computer manufacturers proactively help users to use their machines more sustainably, without making them open an external utility such as Task Manager and with using plainer language than Task Manager uses. I would also like to know if any operating systems or computer manufacturers monitor users' machines to let them know that parts are about to fail or need to be replaced, without making them look at documentation and guess after a failure occurs.
In particular, I'd like to know if there are any studies or research (not subjective opinions) showing how this can be done and if/why current ways of doing this are not supporting the interests of end users (i.e. supporting their goal of not having their machines die).
There are utilities that measure CPU heat and other metrics at a low level, but these tend to be geared toward expert users, who have to know that these tools exist and have a fairly strong knowledge of computer hardware. I'm asking this more in line with how more average users can more easily process their computer's "end of life" and avoid losing their machines.