New Poll!
How Often Do You Replace Your Computer?
This is a pretty simple poll, but here is our quick and simple view on the question. Depending upon your usage and what you use your computer for, we suggest adopting a 4 – 5 year replacement cycle.
The reasons being that most machines will start to fail in their fifth year of operation from all the wear and tear that affects a computer. Some of the wear and tear that most computers put up with include:
- Electrical Voltage Spikes/Lows
- Dust
- Fan Bearings losing oil
- Constant Spining of Drives
- Software Corruption
- Risk of Physical Damage – Liquid, Drops, People, Baseball Bats, etc.
The second reason to replace your computer so often is your computer is most likely running 4-5 year old software and hardware. Almost every 3-4 years there’s a new major release of an operating system, which will bring new features that can save you time. Also, by the time your computer is 4-5 years old, computer hardware has changed so much that doing upgrades to your computer is either too expensive or not worth the cost for the return, without doing a complete rebuild.
Computer hardware gets faster and smaller on the average of every 18-20 months. So a computer from 4-5 years ago will be 3-4 times slower and use more electricity than its modern equivalent.
Based upon the above facts we have devised the following suggested replacement cycle:
Suggested Replacement Cycle
Traditional Desktop Computer: | 4 — 5 Years |
Notebook/Laptop Computer: | 2 — 3.75 Years |
Tablet Computer | 3 Years or as needed |
But this is our normal suggestion for most people, we have seen computers outlast these suggestions. So all we can say is: Your Mileage Will Vary.
What is your replacement cycle like and when do you think you should get a new computer? Post your thoughts in the comments.
RSS Readers will need to make the jump to the site to cast your vote.