We bought a new computer every year for about five years… P1 133, then a P2 300, then a P3 600, then a P4 800… every year they got cheaper by about $200… The first two have been decommissioned… then I got laid off and we stopped buying computers for about three years, then I picked up 10 P2 300’s for $150 and kluged four of them together into networked game machines for Starcraft & Diablo II. My son just bought a new eMachine so he can play newer games on it (newer than, say, Deus Ex or System Shock 2, which are the most recent games that work on it…). I’ll probably be buying a similar new system sometime this fall.
Every 3-4 years, though I normally buy buy graphics card and hard drive separate from the rest, so really it’s 3-4 years for the CPU, RAM and m-board with a new HD and graphics card in between.
But to be honest as I don’t really play any of the new games I reckon I’ll keep this one until it dies.
#1: 1995 - ? Ex-girlfriend got it in the breakup; for all I know it’s still running, though we replaced a lot of parts.
#2: 1998 - 2001 Gateway, constant headache-machine. Up and died suddenly. (I still have and use the printer that came with it, though.)
#3: 2002 - present $400 refurbished Fujitsu laptop. Still seems to be working OK, but I think I need to add some RAM and upgrade to a newer version of Windows.
First computer I ever had was a 486DX2 that my parents bought in - oh - early '92, late '91. That was bought for what seems like now an absolutely huge chunk of change ($3500), so we used that until late 1999.
At that point I got a cheap AMD k6 Compaq. My mother’s still using it - or she would be if the monitor hadn’t died a while ago. I’ll be replacing that for her - er - eventually.
When I went off to college I bought a used Compaq laptop, summer of 2001. WindowsME! I may be the only person who never had a problem with it. The beast runs more smoothly than it has any right to, but the display’s dead, so I have little reason to use it anmore.
Current machine is another laptop I bought this past Spring - an AMD Athlon-bearing Averatec notebook. Light, runs smooth, plays reasonably well with Linux if you don’t mind crappy acpi support (primary reason I don’t find myself booting into Linux very often anymore). I can’t see myself replacing it for a while, though one of these days I’ll get a desktop machine, to act as a server/remote access machine.
Yet another person who upgrades piecemeal. Four years ago, I started off with a 400mhz pentium. Of the original setup, I only have the case left. Just dumped my old motherboard for a new SLI motherboard/cpu. Now just saving up for 2 nvidia 6800’s, which will probably take about 8 months.
[ul]1993 to 1999
[li] 1999 to present[/li][li] new one on the way.[/ul][/li]
So about every six years.
When I upgrade my PC, it starts a long chain of replacements: my wife gets my old one, her parents get her old one, the next one goes to a friend, etc. This chain is sometimes broken when I need to add, rather than replace, a computer, which happens occasionally (I run a home business of the computers, so I occasionally need servers, alternate OSes, test machines, etc.) I am also “forced” to buy when a new technology that I have to support appears (64-bit windows, Apple’s switch to Intel, whatever).
So to answer the OP…whenever any of the above break down in a manner that’s not cost effective to fix piecemeal. I get a new “something” maybe every 8 months on average, so about a year and a half replacement cycle for each of the main PC and Mac systems. I use the latest ones as my home desktops.
I’d say about every 3 years. I tend to buy my machines as powerful as I can afford to, with the hopes of not needing any major upgrades (meaning, other than RAM or hard drive space) for 3 years or so. My Gateway lasted me almost 5 years though, and was running as my brother’s college PC until he got his laptop in May, without a hitch.
My Dell lasted me about 4 years before I replaced it. I think all I did was add memory and upgrade the hard drive. My current computer is a few years old now, and I’m starting to think about getting a new motherboard and processor. Both of these were the best computer I could afford at the time.
Every three or four years, I guess, although I’ve switched to laptops as my primary machine. Haven’t turned on the desktop machine in a year or so, I’d guess.
Every 18 months or so I’ll upgrade some part of it, like a new hard drive, or more RAM or something. Most recently it was a hard drive with XP Home along with it, which rejuvenated it quite a bit.
But I’ve just last week bought a second computer, so I can do some high end graphics work on that one, and it won’t interfere with my web surfing and other less CPU intensive tasks which I will continue to do on this one. The new guy is a monster of a best, too - dual CPU, 320Gb HDD, 1Gb RAM. It’s zippy!
I bought my first computer in 1998. It’s the one I’m still using. For some reason, I had decided that 7 years would be acceptable life expectancy for a computer. It’s been 7 years, so I’m considering buying a new one.
I upgrade a component about every 18 months. Most recently was my CPU. Before that was my video card. I tend to upgrade my video card the most frequently.
For those who don’t want anything more than a machine for email/Internet/word processing, and don’t need top-of-the-line components, it’s usually cheaper than building piece meal (mill?)
Sounds like the farmer who still uses the same axe his father gave him 60 years ago. It’s only had five new handles and three new heads, and it works as good as new!
OK—can anybody beat this:
It’s been 10 years, and I’m still the using the ONLY computer I’ve ever had-- a 1995 Pentium (233 hertz with 32 meg of Ram.)
Except I added another 32 of Ram, and added Windows 98
Hey, it works fine for email and casual web browsing.Plus, …I like being called a Luddite.
Let me guess; dialup?
I replace mine every 2 or 3 years.
My husband is constantly upgrading his main PC piece by piece, so every few months or so I’ll end up with an upgraded this or that every few months, since my machines are never as powerful as his.
My son’s is replaced in a similar fashion to my husband’s, since he also gets a lot of leftover pieces. Both of those machines were just completely revamped about 6 months ago. They’re ‘gaming’ machines, while mine is pretty much just a surf/email/etc. box.
FTR, I used to simply rebuild my desktop computer. At some point though, the new motherboards were no longer compatible with my computer case, and so I was forced to build a completely new system (except for the hard drive, which I kept as a backup drive).
I just bought a mac. I feel strangely naked without a firewall or anti-virus.
The Mac has a firewall (look in the Control Panels under “Security”); just turn it on if you start to get chilly. 