It's usually pretty easy to upgrade the memory, and for machines in the $400-$500 range, I tend to recommend going with full-warranty manufacturer refurbished systems from Dell or Lenovo, where you can with some hunting get higher-end business machines at that price range that tend to be much more durable than the consumer machines that sell new (you may still need to put 4gb more to get to 8gb at that price.)

Dell is almost constantly running some sale or another via their outlet, which makes them very convient; I tend to prefer Lenovos for the newest generation of machines, but the Dells aren't bad and at 15-30% off the base refurb price they are very hard to say no to. https://twitter.com/DellOutlet is the best place to watch for sales.

For example, right now they've got:
Day 1 - Latitude 5000, 6000, or 7000 Series and Monitors
Save 25% on any Dell Outlet Business Latitude 5000, 6000, or 7000 Series Laptop or Monitor with coupon* code below!
Limited time, while supplies last.

Coupon code:
3ZFRNJ5M7X3DSN

The Latitudes E6420 and E6430 are a bit chunky (and a good bit heavier than the competing Lenovo T420/T430), but otherwise very nice machines, and the E6430u and E7440 are both very nice business light weight 14" machines; there are some of each for about $525-550 after discount still available.

Although the inventory is looking a mite picked over... the Latitude 3000 series coupon (which is their lower end business line, replacing what used to be Vostro) coming up for later in the week might be particularly intriguing.

--

What processor do you have? If it was a reasonably high-end one for 4-5 years ago, you might do better upgrading the RAM and SSD.

If it's a low-end one, you will probably want to upgrade.

As a rule of thumb to boil down what I said up-thread, anything i5 or i7 should still be good enough for almost anyone (and many, although not all, i3 chips will be good enough for most people, especially since there weren't any ultralight ones yet using i3s back at the beginning of 2010 when they came out.)

Most "Core 2 Duo" chips -- except some of those in ultralight machines -- will be good enough for most people, although there is a very big difference in how happy I'd be with the most basic ones I'd recommend (say, the T7200 or L9400, which are between them the two slowest machines I'd be willing to use today) and something high-end (say, a P9700 which would be a machine I'd still be happy to use today and is faster for some things than some ultrabooks sold new.)

For anything else older (Pentium Dual Core, Celeron, Atom) if it's as old as 2009-2010, it's time to upgrade, and indeed, probably worth shooting a little higher end if you think you may keep this next system longer than a couple or maybe 3 years.

(One other thing to consider is battery life; for some folks, this doesn't matter at all, but for those of us who use the machines heavily on battery, often by the three year mark -- if not much sooner -- if we're not rotating batteries while new, the battery will need replacing anyway. At the low end of the market, a manufacturer-branded replacement batter can be something like 1/3 the cost of the original machine!)

Intel.

My MBP is nearing 4 years of heavy usage, so I gave it a refresh: Loaded Mavericks, doubled the RAM, and replaced the battery. The difference was immediate. If it starts slowing down again, I'll add a SSD.

Thus far, I've spent roughly $250. Even with the biggest SSD available, I wouldn't even be 1/3 of the way to the cost of a new MBP.

In the bad old days when I worked for a company that still used PCs, I went through a Dell Inspiron every 18 months or so. They started out dog slow and just got worse every day until they eventually just stopped turning on.

Yes, but more specifically, is it a Core i3, i5, i7?

I'll have to check at home.

I buy a new one only when one dies or I have to upgrade the OS for new software I need for work and the hardware won't support it. My current laptop, Toshiba Tecra, is 6 years old this month and still going strong. I've always bought Toshibas; Tecras last longer than Satellite models.

I realize you mean "the largest SSD that will actually work in a MBP" but the biggest SSD that would physically fit in one that I know of costs more some configurations of the MBP:
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/San...2/3302909.aspx
(They've announced a 4TB model, but I can't find anyone who's got it in stock yet.)

The biggest and most expensive SSD I know of costs more than houses in some parts of the country:
http://www.solidstateworks.com/ioDri...s0oaAvv58P8HAQ

Buying a consumer-line machine for work use was their first mistake (although a few of the higher-end models in the Inspiron line haven't been bad, most are execrable; the better consumer machines have been sold as XPS for quite some time), and most companies do an absolutely miserable job producing a good windows image. It goes down hill from there.

I was averaging every two years for awhile, then I had a Compaq actually last three. The Dell I'm currently using is at 1.5 years and seems to be doing alright. Thankfully, you can get a decent laptop for $300 now so I don't mind replacing one after 2-3 years.

Lower end machines with 3-4gb probably are 32-bit. You can't add more memory to them.

Old ones? Sure.
New ones? That's news to me.

I'm not aware of any non-ARM/non-Atom 32-bit machines still being sold today -- although there are probably still be a few Z27xx Atom-based systems out there in the channel. Even the current generation Atoms (z3000-series) are 64-bit... although they generally are limited to 4gb of memory for other reasons.) The only reason to even consider one of those is in a cheap, non-upgradeable tablet or hybrid.

(On the AMD side, even their POS Atom competitor the C50/C60 is 64-bit capable, although only a masochist would but a system running one...)

Nor are many (if any) of the machines still worth running from 2006 on 32-bit-only, and anything that were sold since the 965-chipset (aka Santa Rosa) came out in mid-2007 will take at least 8gb of memory.

Even the 2006-vintage systems I'd recommend as the lowest-end systems still worth running have 64-bit-capable processors -- although it doesn't help you get above 4gb of memory as the motherboard chipset (945) limits you to 4gb of which only 3.5gb is usable (so there's not much reason to use the 64-bit capability.)

hehe - sounds like what I'd hope for. :)

I've had my current laptop (Dell Inspiron, nothing flashy except I upgraded the RAM a long time ago) since November 2006. I'd stopped traveling with it (thankfully not often needed for work) a couple of years ago, but it'd done really well.

Unfortunately, while it worked fine it had XP so replacement was needed since I loathe WIN8. I finally bought a WIN7 laptop this week to meet me upon returning to the Western world next week.

I have a Lenovo ThinkPad T420. I actually have two T420 laptops, one spare, new-in-box. I will not upgrade my laptops. May 22, 2012 is the day laptops died (that's the release date of T430 which hav forsaken the old keyboard).

I really like the form factor of the T440 over the T420, but am still getting used to the keyboard. Placement of keys - especially page up/down and home/end/insert/delete take some getting used to. That's not too bad, though. I actually like typing on it otherwise.

The biggest adjustment for me is the touchpad. I'm a big touchpad user and the new one is VERY different. I like that it's got gestures, but I find myself using a mouse more frequently.

My MacBook Air is 3 years old this weekend. Just been in and out of the Apple store and had the trackpad, screen, logic board and some other things replaced (only exception is the battery - to my disappointment). And this was for a very well looked after laptop - I sure did get my money's worth out of the Apple Care!! Hoping for the computer to last 3 more years.

On the other side my wife's white Macbook was poorly looked after with the casing cracking and splitting. Took it to the Apple store at the same time as mine - it is 5 years old in September. The internals working fine (we bought a new battery last year) and with all the fixes required to the plastic casing a total cost of £51. Very pleased.

I'd been disappointed to have had to replace either laptop - still feels too early given the amount they cost!

Yeah, I probably should have been more specific. 1TB would be more than enough, as I haven't even filled half of my 512GB HD as of right now, thanks to network and cloud storage, plus several multi-TB portable drives. I'd mainly want a SSD for the speed and durability.


Between the crap processor, the lack of RAM, and the fact that the Inspiron weighs roughly 20kg, it was possibly the worst choice they could have made for traveling employees. On the plus side, their on-site service was always very prompt, even at random customer sites and hotels. I was further crippled by having never used any Windows product, save for NT4.0, so XP was a major hurdle for me. I was always a DOS, Unix, MacOS user, previously.