when will you upgrade again?
Have you upgraded your PC’s hardware lately? If so, what were you hoping to do by upgrading?
About four years ago, I built a 2.4ghz system with 1GB of RAM, and a hundred or so gigabytes of hard disk storage. Then a curious thing happened. I kept on using it and the only upgrade I have made on that machine since is an upgrade in the memory and I replaced a power supply whose fan bearings wore out.
To this day, I am still using it to do everything I did with it four years ago. I’m careful to load only software I need onto it, and it still does everything I need it to. Granted, as I have mentioned prior, I’m not a huge game player, so it is fortunate that I haven’t tried to update the video card, since it is an older 8x AGP. I’ve run WindowsXP on it since it was built and used some of the latest photo editing software and audio editing software without any problems.
What’s the point I’m trying to make? Do you remember the late nineties when you could buy or build a new PC and everything was noticeably faster? Remember when the new computer would actually save you a measurable amount of time just in the time it took to boot? While the latest hardware may make a difference in some areas(gaming/3d design/video editing), most other applications won’t benefit that much from them. In my opinion, the biggest benefit of buying a new computer is the warranty on the hardware.
For example, one of the current issues with Windows Vista is related to the “Vista Capable” sticker that shipped on most systems. When Vista was released, it used every bit of available resources form the system it was running on. The Vista Capable sticker basically meant the system would boot with Vista installed. What Microsoft didn’t plan on was the fact that most people were happy with their current hardware and it was doing everything they needed.
When the push to upgrade to Vista came along, the necessary system specs for a usable computer - changed. Instead of running XP on 256MB of RAM, now 2GB is almost necessary to get any performance out of Vista. One of the touted features of Vista, the Aeroglass interface required even more in hardware. This problem is not entirely unique to Microsoft’s operating systems, but it is a prime example.
So, back to my original question, when was the last time you bought/built a PC and are you planning to replace it anytime soon?
