When is it time to upgrade to a new computer?
It is simply a matter of how productive you feel when you work on your computer. It is impossible to suggest how often you should buy a new computer as it depends on what you use it for. People who do more resource intensive stuff (such as gaming and HD video editing) need to upgrade more often to have the latest technology than those who only have basic use (surfing on the net, Microsoft Office, etc). As time goes by, you upgrade various programs that may get larger with each upgrade, newer programs may be designed to require more power and resources of your computer, causing you to become less productive in general. It is time to upgrade when you feel you are not as productive as you can be because of the slowness, AFTER you do basic trouble shooting such as defragmentation, uninstalling all unnecessary programs, etc. Reinstalling windows often helps with the speed, but I bet you don’t have the time for it. Adding RAM chips may or may not make your computer run fast enough to satisfy
Upgrade when you need/have to. Depends on what you need your pc for, for instance you can pic up a complete Gaming PC that will play any game out at the moment for under AU$700. You just have to know what you want and you will find it. 🙂 P.S. buy parts separately and pay a PC shop $20 to build it for you if you don’t have the time to build it yourself. And DON’T get vista cos it’s the biggest waste of system resources ever! Windows 7 is comming out soon and it has the performance of XP with the features of Vista.
I use my computer a lot. I find the useful life is about 5 years. Then I cannot update the operating system and have to use an older one. This means when new programs that work only in the new operating systems come out, I cannot use them. I never upgrade the cpu. The only upgrades I have done are enlarge memory and cache for speed, and add an external drive for backup. The external drive can be used with a new computer most often. There is not the seasonality like for other products. There is a constant update of technology that works its way into new models. the most costly get the latest technology, and the cheaper ones have 1-2 year old technology. When new models are introduced, prices tend to drop for the existing models which are pushed out to make way for the new ones. Watch the advertisements over time, and you will see these price adjustments in action.
