QOTD: What Determines Your Upgrade Cycle?
By - Source: Tom's Hardware US
|
171 comments
Keeping your PC up to date is expensive, which is why most of us choose to build a new PC at a specific point in time. Throughout its lifetime, we may perform CPU, GPU and RAM upgrades, but at a certain point we decide that it's time to start completely fresh with a brand new box.
At which point do you decide that it's time for an upgrade, either a full overhaul or just a simple drop in/swap part?
In other words, for our QOTD, we'd like to know from you exactly what determines your upgrade cycle?
Discuss
Ask a Category Expert

I only do the GPU upgrade if a new architecture has been released, or if I am adding a second card.
But for the 1st time in a long time, I am truly satisfied with my desktop computing experience. Quad core, 2+ Ghz, 8GB of RAM (4.5 of which is rarely used) Raptor Raid 0 array, connectivity, the ability to use any application I throw at it and get it to run in a timely fashion, from encoding videos to running web-apps... It can all be done and done with little to no lag. With the new OSs I get more functionality out of my TV tuner and have turned my system into a multimedia station. Plenty of screen real estate (2x22" LCD's). I am golden. Thousands of gigabytes of information available... My biggest upgrades involve increasing my storage space (and redundancy).
Now all that holds me back is my mobile computing experience. Even with the upgrade to SSD, and it was a great kick in the pants to my tablet, I still don't use it as a proper extension of myself as far as scheduling and communication. It is just too bulky, and the processor, weight, and short battery life hold it back.
iPhone is getting close to what I am looking for, and my (extremely) preliminary experience with the G1 is promising, but the data plans hold the whole thing back, and as with any 1st generation device, I question its longevity...
So in short, when they find a way to make the snappiness of my desktop right now fit into a tablet that weighs less than 2 lbs, with a battery life that exceeds 10 hours for a reasonable price, and when they come out with a phone that has the features I want with a plan I want, my upgrade cycle will effectively be limited to when I get popped capacitors.
QFT
That approach is bad enough lol, and anything more is certainly a waste of time and money.
At work I got a new CAD workstation 8 years ago. We replaced it after 4 years with a new workstation, but the old one was performing fine. After 3 years the replacement was very slow, so I replaced it recently. Unfortunately software demands increase as fast as hardware speed and force upgrades. Eight years ago my AMD single core machine running Win98SE and AutoCAD 2000 was as productive as my current 3.8GHz core2 machine with WinXP and AutoCAD 2009. The new computer is approx. 8 times as fast as the original one, the new software is 8 times as slow as the old software. No net gain.
Based on lost productivity at work, I think I should replace my workstation at less than 3 years of age, but my home computer should last 4 years or more.
Lastly, I have a 5 year old laptop that I use for travel. It still works fine, but I needed to run some of our CAD apps so I bought a new laptop recently with P9500 processor. Right now I alternate between the 2 laptops but eventually will phase out the old one.