how often do you replace your laptop?
 

Mine is about 3y now, and its struggling running recent software.

Time for a change? Or am I just being dpoiled? ;-)

You're just being spoiled. Make sure it has the latest & greatest updates for stuff that's running all the time (Windows, Flash, AV, etc.). Make sure to uninstall software you aren't using anymore.

If it seems a little sluggish, you may want to consider an OS reinstall (though that can be pretty painful, even if you have the original recovery disk). Another option to look at is perhaps upgrading RAM, or upgrading from a rotating disk to SSD.

Depending on the specs. My laptop is 2.5years old and is still going good. I haven't reinstalled the OS (yet) but all my software is up to date. Only thing I may replace is my battery as its at 15% wear, but I may hold off till it gets to 20%

This what I've been thinking about doing for the past few months. Keep putting it off because of the "pain" involved. :)

4-5 years? I replace when it dies on me.

If it doesn't already have one, get an SSD. And maybe some more memory.

Then re-install the OS (regardless of whether you got an SSD or not).

And you won't know that you don't have a new computer!!

how often do you replace your laptop?
 

my lappy is a sony vaio x, 128ssd, 2gb ram, atom z530 1.6ghz

dont think I coulf upgrade much in there

I've managed to avoid the whole OS reinstallation issue by keeping it relatively "pure," installing only basic office productivity software in the host OS and all of my development environments, VPN clients, testing tools, etc. in virtual machines. Not only does it keep the laptop running well, it makes migrating to a new model a breeze. All of my VMs get copied over and I'm pretty much ready to go.

Z530 is 6yrs old http://ark.intel.com/products/35463/...Hz-533-MHz-FSB And the machine itself appeared to come out in late 2009.

At the time, it looks like the specs put it at a high end netbook/low end laptop.

Still, I'm not sure what recent software (other than games) would be straining the CPU. Lots of multitasking?

It is pretty much an old netbook. If you look at the cpu benchmark on z530, it is listed at 281. My 4 years old i7 laptop is benchmarked at 5800+. The newer 8" tablets with atom process are mostly over 1000 in cpu benchmark.

So yeah I think it is time for you to buy a new one. You could turn your old netbook into some kind of media device for the TV. That's what my bother did with his old netbook.. install XBMC on it an connected it to the TV. It was fast enough to stream 720p videos.

Not a benchmark/index/score chaser on hardware - somebody out there always managed to get a better/faster mouse trap. For my needs, as long as I'm satisfied with the OS, which is mostly Win7 Pro/Ultimate and updated with the latest drivers/patch & Apps to run on, and there's at least 2 or 3 GB of memory and a good HDD, I'm good. Mod'd the Media Bay on 5 years old Dell Latitude with SSD card for a little extra boost, keeping the "junkware" out & clean, and it's fine for a while. Only the Intel wireless card got replaced (G to N)

As for replacing it, not planning to happen - got another (older & light) Dell Latitude running Linux Mint for "play" at home (optional - docking station for desktop use and 22" HDTV for multimedia :D) Both Dells had its OEM batteries and 1 set of DIY hinges replaced.

It helps as the HDD were partitioned so it's easy to reinstall the OS & to run a full backup overnight to external drive first - only time consuming when not viewed as a weekend project while "grounded".

Almost forgot, 2 years old 11.6" Sony Viao, optimized for travel with (downgraded from Win8.x to W7U 64 bit, upgraded 8GB memory & 750 HDD re-partitioned (SSD upgrade planned) w. USB 3.0 & HDMI out, etc. A faster notebook will only yield marginal gains as it's not for gaming & graphics, and perfect when sitting in Y without an upgrade.

My Toshiba satellite (i5, 6gb ram) is about 5 years old ...I would love to keep it if I could figure out why it is just shutting down intermittently.

My research suggests that the fan needs cleaning. Will get that done if it is under $100 to hang on to this laptop.

Buy a can of compressed air, unscrew the access panels on the bottom of your laptop (keep track of all of the screws), find the fan, and blow the compressed air at it. I would recommend doing this outside.

I would change my laptop every two years religiously, but I've been hanging on to this Lenovo ThinkPad for three years. Really don't want to get rid of it. Battery is dead, rubber parts have fallen off, but it still runs smooth as silk (and can handle Fallout 3 and Bioshock Infinite :cool:).

I used to replace them every 2-3 years but now that the tech is pretty stable I usually keep them until they die. My previous MBP lasted 4 years and my current one is just under three. Unless something happens to it I figure a 2GHz quad i7 with 16GB RAM should last me quite awhile. Once 1TB SSDs drop a bit more I'll probably replace the internal drive with one.

Similarly, my laptop is also 4 years old with an i7 CPU. It was pretty high end when I got it, and still handles the load pretty well, although I probably should look into adding RAM. It has 8GB and gets really slow when I exhaust that. I did upgrade to a 7200 rpm drive a year or so ago when my started flaking out and that seems to help a bit. Everyone in my group got laptops at the same time, and I haven't heard anything about replacing them, I wouldn't be surprised if we don't go another couple of years.

Back to the OP's situation, it sounds like that system wasn't very peppy when new, so after 3 years, replacing might not be a bad idea. Buying higher end to start with will give you a longer usable life.

Depends.

Had my first Mac laptop for 6 years. Had my second for 4 years. Just got a new Macbook Air...not because of any defect in my last Macbook, but because the Macbook Air is just too convenient for traveling.

Still kicking myself over selling my 1st Mac (that lasted 6 years)...but yeah, nothing beats the Air if you're a traveler.

FWIW, I think PC products have to be replaced more often. They're just more susceptible to poor performance (and viruses)....maybe that's some of my Mac bias peeking through, though.

I am on laptop #3 in 8 or 9 years. Seems that the charger connection goes out long before the laptop becomes obselete. My current Gateway is 3 1/2 and the charger connection has to be just right for it to keep the power.

We're on year 5 with our HP Core i5 laptop. Still runs pretty well, although the fan could maybe use a deeper cleaning than just compressed air. It's also been a while since defragging. virus/ad/malware scans are fairly regular, also. Then again, this is our home PC used mostly to stream movies, play a few games, web browsing, and bills/taxes. Nothing intensive.

My work laptop is replaced more frequently. Since 2007, I've had a Dell Latitude D410 (2 years), D430 (2 years), 2 different Lenovo T420 (2 years, 6 months), and a T440 (got a month ago).

My white ibook last 8 yrs before cd player died, traded up for 2008 aluminum macbook, upgraded ram, new HD and still in perfect shape! Been toying with MacBook Air but haven't pulled the trigger as I use iPad when on the road.

My ThinkPad T60 will be 8 years old in November and is still my main work machine. I haven't replaced a single part on it and the only modifications have been to max out the RAM and move from XP to 7 a few years ago.

I like the 14" 16:10 display much more than the current widescreen displays, and also the compact size for travel. It'll get replaced within the next couple of months, almost certainly with a T440P, but in part only because Windows 7 won't be available on new machines after ~October. I'll enjoy the new machine with an i7 and SSD but I'm going to miss the T60 that hasn't skipped a beat in nearly 8 years.

Thanks for the tip.

I wouldn't think it would need upgrading unless you specced a minimal system before. I've got a laptop much older than that and the only reason I would even want to replace it is that it's not 64-bit and the 2.75gb of available RAM doesn't exactly cut it.

Mine only last about 18 months, but my uses aren't typical. Gaming on laptops gets expensive.

That was a very slow machine even when new.

Yes, you should upgrade.

There are plenty of 3-year old machines that would not be worth upgrading today, at least from a speed perspective if you don't play video games or do particular sorts of professional work that need all the speed you can get (architecture, mechanical or structural engineering, some kinds of software development work, etc.)

A mid-range business laptop back to about 4 years ago (with say i5-520m processor, say) is going to be fast enough for just about any "general use" these days, and a mid-range business laptop from late 2006 (with say a Core 2 T7200) will be sort of the minimum tolerable speed. The latter probably came with a gig or two of memory, and really needs to be upgraded to the maximum it'll take (4gb, with 3.5gb usable) to still be worth keeping around.

Compared to either of the above, a brand new midrange or even low-end business laptop will mainly be lighter, run cooler, and have better battery life; it'll be much faster than the 2006 model, but so will the 2010 version, and the speed difference between the 2010 one and a brand new one won't be that noticeable to most people (assuming it doesn't have an ultrabook processor, which may be not much faster than the 2010 version even on paper.)

There are some very good refurbished deals on 2010 and 2011 laptops these days; the Lenovo T410/T410s/T420/T420s/X201/X220 are all great machines that can be had refurbished for the price of a new low-end piece of junk.

With 8gb of memory and the hard drive replaced with an SSD, virtually anyone will be happy with one of these for general use. I still use my X201 (with 8gb and an old Intel X25M SSD, hardly a barn burner) day to day to carry to meetings and on short trips when I don't need to do coding (or can do the coding remotely) and when I don't expect to have time for gaming.

I found the N280-based system I got (very cheaply) in mid-2009 -- which was itself a step faster than the Z530 -- too slow when it was brand new; it bogged down on Javascript-heavy websites by the much more limited standards of the time, let alone the current generation of them. It was just tolerable with Office 2003 and with Office 2007 except for whatever it was that changed in Outlook.

Viruses are readily avoidable.

XP and older Microsoft OSes tended to have corruption issues requiring re-installation eventually; Vista (for the few of us that used it) and newer mostly fix that... although eventually you'll want to reinstall. My wife's laptop just hit the 4 year mark and it's starting to show its age. The specs are still quite good (i5-540m, 8gb, 300gb Intel 320 SSD), and while I've been encouraging her to let me get her a new one (she's been complaining about the weight for ages), I suspect that a clean installation of Windows 7 would leave it feeling quite perky.

Now, physical quality of hardware varies a lot on the PC side, and a lot depends on what you value; higher-end business laptops on the PC side until very recently tended to be built like tanks... super durable (more so IMO than Macs) but heavy and bulky.

Cleaning out cooling often is a BIG help. Depending on the model, how easy it is get at the cooler can vary a lot -- as is the orientation of the fan and heat sink. Some of the worse designs end up basically with a felt of hair and dust stuck in between the fan and the heat sink and no way to remove it without major disassembly.

My current i5 NB is about 4~5 years old, and I believe I will keep it for a couple of years more.
I may change the HD for a SSD model, just to have more speed. Not really necessary, I'm just a little envious of my wife's brand new i7... :cool:

I just replaced my 2008 white iBook this year with a MacBook Pro. The iBook still worked fine, but wouldn't support Mavericks. So, I generally hold on until Apple "makes" me upgrade. I have to say the SSD is a revelation. Will never get another computer without one.

When I was primarily living in China or Taiwan, I did change my laptop every two years. I didn't want to go through the pain of laptop repair in a country where I couldn't speak the language properly. Plus I was totally dependant on my laptop working. It was kept on 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It got pretty cooked by the time a couple of years were up. I had the fans cleaned out every 6 months but it's not meant to be left on all the time.

Now that I am living in Japan and go back to Canada more often, I don't worry about changing the laptop as often. When it dies, I am confident I have options to purchase another.

My wife is still rocking a 2008 Aluminum Macbook (C2D, 4gb Ram, upgraded 1tb HDD) with no complaints. After college and until recently I'd been using whatever work gave me which put me on around a ~3 year upgrade cycle (Dell D630, Lenovo T410, HP EliteBook, now a Dell E7240 ultrabook). What they gave me didn't matter all that much as I would only take it off the dock when going on work trips... for casual use at home leisure travlel I'd use my iPad/Android tablet (of which I upgraded about every year).

Recently I bought myself a closeout MS Surface Pro which is ideal for travel, replacing both the work laptop and personal tablet. It's not an excellent tablet (weight and app ecosystem) but even on my other tablets my use has always been 75%+ in the browser, so using 90%+ in the browser on the Surface Pro isn't too big of a shift. As a laptop replacement it does fine as well, running full Office/Outlook and typing with the Type/Power cover (which I only use when traveling and chose one depending on the length of my flights) is leaps and bounds above touchscreen or most small bluetooth keyboards. To consolidate into one device for everything is well worth the tablet shortcomings.

Mine is over four years old and am wondering whether to replace it. It was around $400-500 when I bought it. When I look for laptops in this range I still seem to see only those with 3-4GB of RAM which is what I currently have. After 4 years I thought one could expect more.

My work MacBook Pro is 4 years old, and my personal MacBook Pro is 7 years old.. Both are still going strong, with no need for a new machine.

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.)