For years, I’ve been hearing people say, “Computer technology is such that by the time you’ve purchased your computer and brought it home, it’s obsolete!”
Obviously, it’s just an expression, but just how fast DOES technology advance, and how long do most computers last before they’re way out of date?
It would be rather an exaggeration to say that, but in many or even most cases, if you’d waited a wekk or two, you could have bought a computer with a more advanced/larger-capacity/faster component or two.
‘Obsolete’ is too strong a word; certainly, most computers contain parts that have been superseded, but that doesn’t make them ‘obsolete’ - the industry couldn’t function that way.
I should clarify; ‘obsolete’ implies ‘rendered useless by subsequent advances’, in my mind, at least.
A rather amusing anecdote is that my friend wanted to buy an absolutely top-of-the-line computer a while back. Between the time he ordered the computer and it was assembled, every component except the floppy had been superseded by newer models.
However, if your talking obselence, I would venture that its somewhere between 3 - 5 years for the average user. Many 5 year old computers would have no trouble performing the tasks a typical user demands with no perceptible slow-down.
Not that fast, obviously, or else how did you connect to the Internet?
Having owned a lot of computers, in my experience they’re not truly obsolete for quite a few years. I’m on a 4-year-old computer right now and it’s still not obsolete.
I am an avid online gamer, so I need fairly recent technology in order to satisfy my penchant. I tend to buy a middle of the line computer, spending around $1500. I buy a new computer about every 2 years and use the old one as a back-up. By that time, my previous back-up is fairly obsolete if you want to do more than run a word processor or surf the web.
So, I’d say 4-5 years is a reasonable life span for a middle of the line computer. In fact, it’s probably the reasonable life span for top of the line computers also, because the technology is basically the same as the middle of the line, just with more bells and whistles.
I can do everything I want or need to do, with adequate performance, on my 1998 “WallStreet” PowerBook.
Admittedly, it’s been souped up a bit since I bought it, but I’m figuring it’s good enough to get me through until Apple releases a G5 PowerBook. Or a dual G5 PowerBook.
Offhand: “That’s a joke, ah say that’s a joke, son.”
More detailed:
Computer technology has advanced faster than any other physical technology in the world. If cars advanced as quickly as computers, fuel cell cars would have come and gone in the 1930s and home fusion jobs would have been common by the 1970s-1980s. It’s absolutely phenomenal how quickly things have progessed from the age of vacuum tubes to current superscalar architectures etched onto silicon wafers smaller than a thumbnail.
But obsolete is a very, very harsh word. I own some home PCs, all early Pentium machines, from the early-mid 1990s. They can do plenty, even talk to other computers and run most modern OSes (with a few exceptions), as-is.
Home computers from the 1980s can’t (by and large) run modern OSes, but an IBM-PC/XT (the first IBM PC, and the first PC to use the Intel 8088, the forerunner of all modern Intel chips in PCs) can certainly handle an Internet connection. And, if you’re willing to stretch the definition of `home computer’, the NeXT Cube ran a very nice OS and could certainly do most things modern home computer owners want.
1970s home machines (aka pocket calculators… ;)) are widely seen as hopelessly obsolete, and by most reasonable meanings of the term they are. But a Commodore-64 can handle an Internet connection. How cool is that? 
Antique high-end machines, like the VAX, are still in active use in some places. In fact, San Francisco’s BART uses PDP-8s even today (I think… Google isn’t giving good cites and http://www.bart.gov is silent).
So, has your new machine been built with parts that have newer replacements? Certainly. Is it obsolete? Not by a long shot.
Absoletely not true.
I think it’s an exaggeration. It’s not that your computer will be obsolete, but it could be rapidly declining in value.
Example: In December, I bought a DVD burner for my husband. We bought it on Thursday for $220. Four days later, the price had dropped to $195. It was the faster burner available at the time, but within a month you could buy drives that were twice the speed. As of today, four months later, they no longer sell the drive I bought, but you can buy a drive of equivilant speed for $119, or one of the ones that are twice as fast for $165.
The release of the new, faster burner does not render the old one obsolete. It just means that it’s no longer the cutting edge of available technology. Combine that with the drop in price, and that’s where people get the whole obsolete myth.
[Weird-Al]
[/ Weird-Al]
I’d say it depends more on the form factor than anything else… if cases continue to be ATX then you need never have an obsolete computer as you can just swap motherboard, processor and memory, plug all the drives and other stuff back in and carry on with your “new” computer. But when the technology has a drastic change (PCI to PCI express or ATA to Serial ATA for example) you end up with some obsolete equipment. I really pity the people who paid $700 (CAN) for a Radeon 9700 video card which will be rendered laughably obsolete by any first generation PCI Express video card (which incidentally can probably be had for half the price.)
no more than any new vehicle purchased would be
I wouldn’t say obsolete, which implies useless for its main purpose.
Moore’s Law: “The observation made in 1965 by Gordon Moore, co-founder of Intel, that the number of transistors per square inch on integrated circuits had doubled every [18 months] since the integrated circuit was invented.”
(Please add “approximately” and “on average” to all factoids below )
Moore’s law means that an average computer now is twice as powerful as an 18 month-old one, which is twice as powerful as a 36 month-old one, and so on.
Things really gets interesting after 15 years or so, because you’ve then gone through 10 iterations of Moore’s law.
Now 2^10 (1024) is approx 10^3 (1000).
Thus a modern computer is 1000 times as powerful as a 15 year old one. Or 1 million times as powerful as a 30 year old one, i.e. what put Neil Armstrong on the moon!
The useful bottom line to this is that, a computer will remain useful for reasonable tasks many years (really, just about anything can surf the web and keep up with your typing); however an absolute cutting-edge fastest/largest/whatever -est model will be surpassed within weeks.
Moral: Don’t pay extra to get the cutting edge for computer equipment.
Actually, by 2005, BTX form factor motherboards will very likely be starting to overtake the ATX boards, which will require new cases, power supplies and motherboards.
The main difference, so far as I’ve read, is the BTX form factor will produce better cooling and less noise, and a better layout of components (ideal for smaller systems) than the current ATX standard.
All in all, the next year or two is going to produce a much different computer than what we’re currently used to, introducing amongst other things, I’m sure, DDR2, BTX form factor boards, PCI Express, as well as Intel’s Socket 775 where the pins will now be part of the socket, not the processor itself.
Some more reading from Tom’s about the upcoming technologies:
Also worth a look-see is the picture of Intel’s “vision” of the 2004 computers:
http://www20.tomshardware.com/motherboard/20040301/alderwood-15.html
Actually, those who got a Radeon 9700 or the Pro version probably got one of the best deals in video cards ever. Even now, 18 months after their release, the only cards available that are faster - Radeon 9800, Pro, XT, and the GeforceFX5900&5950 Ultra are not all that much faster. And they can still play even the latest games today at very high detail levels. Of course, the latest gen Nvidia & ATI cards will be out soon, and finely give a significant speed boost, but those who got a Radeon 9700 got a good run.
Also, going to the PCI Express Interface alone probably won’t boost game performance - the jump from 4x to 8x AGP caused barely a 1% speed increase. Even with PCI-Express level bandwidth, hitting the system memory will still be MUCH slower than using the onboard video memory, and thus game designers will strive to keep the game within the video card memory limits.
And Cerri those of us who plan to go with a Athlon64 instead of Intel will probably be able be able to stick with an ATX form factor(I am building an Athlon64 machine as soon as Socket 939 & PCI-E become available) for a longer period of time - Athlon’s aren’t producing the insane heat levels Intel’s latest Prescott chips are throwing out, and won’t need cooling optimizations.
The Athlon 64 will be the processor in my next machine too…I’m waiting for both the new socket and PCI-E, as well as the new Windows 64 OS to go thru a generation or two and work some of the inevitable bugs out first.
As far as ATX vs. BTX, I admit I haven’t read much about how it’ll affect the Athlon 64s yet, so I guess I’ll see what the next year brings on that front. If the BTX factor boards are available and stable by the time I’m ready to build my new machine, I’ll probably get it instead of the ATX board, just so it’ll be that much longer till I’ll need to upgrade.
I just built a new gaming machine this past summer, AMD Athlon 2800+ XP, gig of PC2100 RAM, Radeon 9800 Pro 128 meg, and it should definitely hold me for another year, at which point I’ll build my 64 machine, and this comp will become my backup comp.
My current back-up comp is an Athlon 1800+ XP, 512 megs of PC2100 RAM, GEForce MX2 card, but I really only use it for web-surfing and the occasional two-boxing for EverQuest…my “new” comp (well, it is almost a year old now), is my main gaming machine, and it runs World of Warcraft like a dream, so I’m happy. =)
I’ve never heard anyone use the term obsolete. I’ve heard them say outdated. And that is somewhat correct. Take this board, no sooner do you get the latest version then someone is testing the beta version of a new and better board.
I can use a windows 95 computer for a lot of tasks. One person’s obsolete isn’t anothers.
…and promptly look at a lovely VGA display of a boot failure.
Unless, of course, you can find an operating system that doesn’t care that you’ve just changed the Mobo and proc. Most of the standard ones tend to not work very well after that kind of change.