I am spoiled but hey, this is one of my hobbies and hobbies cost money. I don’t watch much tv so I have a big old clunky tv but a nice flat screen cpmputer monitor and lightening fast internet. I prioritize and a nice fast computer and a nice fast car are things I enjoy the most. gardening too… I can drop some cash on plants. Clothes are fun…
But an old fart puter?, no sir, not fun when you like to watch video’s and go world traveling online. I even have my own computer room.
4 Macs, none of which are older than 2 years. All MacBook Pros (2 17", 1 15" 1 13") all maxed out.
My Toshiba laptop is at least 5 or 6 years old, but I keep it clean and it still performs well.
My desktop is for gaming, so I upgrade the video card every couple years and the motherboard and CPU every 4 or 5. It’s a dual core with 4GB memory and a NVidia GTX 250 video card, runs a lean and mean XP without even antivirus.
Well, I feel spoiled.
My one-year-old HP a6700y has an AMD Phenom X4 9150e Quad-Core Processor and 4G of memory. As far as I understand that’s pretty decent.
But the crowning glory is my Graphics Card - ASUS ATi EAH4870 Dark Knight 1 G. That’s computer-speak for ‘‘kicks ass!’’ I bought the graphics card separately and installed it myself. I have always wanted a gaming computer - something that can handle anything I throw at it - and I finally got it. Runs ESIV Oblivion without breaking a sweat.
Looks beautiful on my 19’’ LCD monitor too. I know I don’t have a custom build or 27’’ monitor like some of you, but I feel so lucky because I’ve never had anything this good.
I also have a Samsung Netbook. For several months my gaming computer was not working, and I am AMAZED how much that little netbook can handle with only 1G of RAM- Microsoft Office 2007, PowerPoint, regular browsing, Picasa photo editing, streaming music and video, and pretty much anything for regular use. It got me through my first year of grad school no problem. Lots of performance in that tiny little machine, and – I shit you not - 8 hours of battery life.
I’m a programmer, but the real thing for me is that I’m also a gamer. That said, I’m also rather frugal, and I don’t buy a system just because I can, and I don’t buy the latest and greatest regardless.
I buy a new system approx every 3-4 years. After 3 years, I generally can’t play the newest games anymore, but I’m OK with that for a year or so. At some point, I just can’t handle not being able to play new games anymore so I buy a new system.
I almost always buy desktops (I hate small keyboards and find touchpads and eraser-head mice to be physically painful), but I recently got a job that requires travel so bought a laptop this time (I bought because I needed it this time, and not because I couldn’t play games).
I’ve never spent more than $1000 on a system, including the laptop. It’s generally less. I also generally gather the parts and put it together myself (yay, Newegg!).
The nice thing about my timing recently was that I was able to skip the whole Vista debacle by buying a desktop with XP right about when Vista came out and getting the next machine shortly after Win 7. 
As an important side-note, my XP desktop is still capable of running everything I’ve tried and is now 4 years old. I find it likely that the hardware and software curves have diverged a little.
I’ve got the good stuff at work, but my personal systems are always hand-me-downs from my wife (who has crap at work). For what I do on my own time, it makes absolutely no difference to me.
I got one 3 year old desktop - 2 Gb RAM, Intel Core DUO machine with dual 22" screens running Debian for software development work. I’ll probably upgrade by the end of the year depending on how well business is doing - I can probably use it for another year if I have to. Also have a white macbook that’s a bit over a year old (cheapest one I could find with 2 Gb RAM) for on-location work, which also runs Windows XP in Virtual Box so that I can connect with whatever I run into at location.
There’s also 2 netbooks that I rarely use, a broken laptop that I keep around for the hypothetical hardware projects and a second-hand intel server in a data center to run my online stuff.
This is my usual modus operandi. I’m a BIG command line, linux compilin’, open sourcin’, gentoo messin’ kinda guy. That just REALLY lends itself to cheap hardware. I’m constantly amazed at what the $300 cheapie HP Christmas Special can accomplish, once you throw away Windows. That $300 box, with a $120 graphics card (that went for $400, just 8 months before) was a video encoding MONSTER. The $1100 replacement, sure, it’s CPU is 120% faster than the old computer’s GPU in video encoding, but it doesn’t FEEL appreciably faster, because the older computer spent 98% of it’s time idle, and the new computer spends 99.9% of it’s time idle.
(But for all the times I go cheap, those one or two times I drop the big coin, I giggle like a school girl.)
My desktop is three years old. It was mid-range when I bought it, and given that I’ve done a bunch of upgrades, I don’t need a new one since it’s very functional. But gosh do I ever want a new one! Since I’ve done the upgrades I’m trying to sternly say that I don’t need a new one yet…but I’m used to replacing them every three years or so, so the urge is there.
Piffle… newbs all.
I own a freakin computer shop… I would go through the specs, but I have to sleep. 8 machines counting my laptop. I would have like 5 more but I tend to rebuild existing boxes.
Shoot, Mang, you should see my day job. 300 mb/s at the perimeter. Peaks to 450 mb/s
Well, if nothing else this thread has got me off my fat arse and made me connect one of my old computers to the Internet. I am now marvelling at Windows ME, Iternet Explorer version 5.5, a Celeron chip with 500 Mhz and a huge hard drive of 15 GB.
Soon to the Windows 98 machine.
I am now.
A few months back I was running an older single core socket 754 Athlon 3200+ with a slightly less old x1950 card ( but agp, natch ). It was chugging along just fine until I tried to slip Dragon Age past it. Nuh-uh. It started rapidly failing on high tempertures - like in 5-10 minutes. In fact often enough to permanently damage the chip.
So “forced” to upgrade, I stepped up to an I7 860 w/ a 4890 card ( and 1 TB drive, custom cpu cooler, new case, blah, blah, blah… ). Now I’m MUCH happier :).
Video cards aside, I kinda like doing the full replacement upgrade every few years thing. Feels like more of a big deal.
I have an off-brand laptop that I got around 1997. IIRC it has a 166 MHz processor, which was moderately fast for the time. It ran on Windows 95, and I only used it if I needed to travel and wanted email. I had to upgrade to Win98 when I could no longer open my webmail with the lower encryption. This machine booted up and ran last time I used it, back when I put 98 on it. That must have been around 2003. Every so often I think I should pull it out and hook it up to an external monitor and keyboard and mouse so I can play Blood. That game won’t run on the 500 MHz desktop I got around 2001 (and which I retired when I got the Mac).
I still own my first PC, and it still works. An original IBM PC, model 5150 that dates from 1981. Amdek amber monitor with Hercules graphics card. AST Six-Pack and RAMpage expansion cards.
Currently use two Lenovo w700 laptops I bought in April. In between about a dozen plus laptops and desktops (Dell, IBM, Lenovo, HP, custom). All the laptops still work, although the desktops have all been cannibalized. I also have all operating systems software, beginning with MS-DOS 1.0 through Windows 7, except for that POS Windows ME.
Since I last replied in this thread, I got my new computer
It’s beautiful and I love it so. I’m still marveling at how fast it is.
Wow, that’s pretty cool.
I had an Apple ][+, s/n 32767, bought in (I think) 1979, for quite some time, but it suffered from chip-socket disease where the mobo chips would unseat themselves when the board got warm and basically hang the machine. It was my first computer. Eventually, I willed it to my brother, who later gave it away to a vintage hardware enthusiast, and I don’t know what became of it.
Spoiled? Me? I still have (and occasionally use for a few things) Apple IIs and Commodores. And pretty much a representative sampling of everything since then, up to my current main machine, a 2GHz Athlon. I’ve never bought a new machine, and most of the PCs were built from scrounged (ie free) or used parts. I have bought the occasional new part (HDD, CD, memory), but for the most part, you people getting rid of your 3 year old machines have kept me in dirt cheap perfectly good computers since forever. Thanks, spoiled brats! Keep it up! 
8? Piker! I’ve got THAT many built prior to 1985!
Gotta say, I was dowloading photos on my iMac the other day and moving them around. Sure was fast and easy…