They should outlive CD heads, given the occassional disk upgrade as the years go by. Even the Mk.1 continues to benefit from software upgrades, with most of the new features in 1.1 being equally applicable to Mk.1 and Mk.2 players.

We get very few Mk.1's in for service (putting aside the Tosh 6Gb disk problem and the display supression problem, both of them fixed ages ago) and I suspect that if any components start to fail in the distant future it will be easily replaceable connectors.

Rob