How often do you get a new laptop?

[Sysman]

Serious question.

I found a couple of colleagues today looking at laptops and knowing that the one who is looking to buy already has a Mac, asked him why not another.

The other chap came out with "too expensive and you are buying for style", and I chipped in "Well I don't want a Fiat, I want a Mercedes."

His response was that you need to buy a laptop every year or two to keep up with new software requirements.

Laptops last far longer than that for me.

How often do you replace your laptops?

[Drewster]

To be honest "When I feel like it".....

Seriously... a few years ago I got 1 and replaced it only months later... then I only got another one a few years later specifically for a role where I "really" needed one (rather than occasionally carried one).....

and I've just recently got another one cos I "needed" one again.... and the old one would need updating S/W wise (and was getting grubby). I don't tend to "need" them for my roles and normally use Desktop/Tower at home (I mean at MyCO HeadOffice).... but now I've got this one (and a matching one for Mrs D) I might retire the Desktops and just use these.... cos home Wireless is much better now.....

[Durbs]

About 3-4 years for me. I was still using my old Pentium M laptop until fairly recently and it was absolutely fine. Old-ish processor, 1GB ram but ran Win 7 beautifully and happily ran Visual Studio 2005/2008 and SQL server.

Nothing at all wrong with it and could still use it now but gave it to a family member as their first laptop.

My other one i've had for a couple of years and is a Core2, 2GB memory and is again, plenty quick enough that i wont consider changing for a good while yet.

Modern hardware is so quick that its not the big jump that Pentium --> Pentium 2 --> Pentium 3 was.

Unless you are gaming on them then every year/couple of years is unnecessary.

Saying that though, if i had the spare cash i'd update every year just for the sake of it, as getting a new 'big' tech toy like a laptop is a buzz. Mmmm, shiny things.

[expat]

When I have to. Well, my first one got dropped, very dropped, after 4 years so I bought a new one. Then 4 years after that I re-assessed my requirements and bought a Mac. If I ever have to buy another laptop, current thinking is it'll be another Mac. But I don't see the need to do it soon.

I have sometimes been an early adopter of things, but never a frequent changer. If it works ......

[doodab]

I normally buy a new laptop every 4 years or so but I usually upgrade the memory & HDD in between.

[RSoles]

Oops, ten years so far. P3 Dell Inspiron 4000
OK, OK, I'm looking............

[Pogle]

Er i don't have one!
I use Mr P's

[MarillionFan]

I buy a new laptop or PC on average every 18 months. Bloody surrounded by kit at the moment.

Have 3 HP Touchsmarts around the house. Two Dells on my desk, one Apple Mac, One IMAC, two advent laptops(one a cheap Roma 1000 which is super tulipe) and some doorwedgy thing.

Then have four towers in the roof gathering dust.

[NickFitz]

My MacBook will be four years old this summer. I'm planning to replace the current 250/5400 HDD with a 500/7200 at some point, mainly because I've only got about 60Gig left, but other than that it's just fine running Mail, multiple browsers, Eclipse, Apache/PHP/MySQL, XCode/Interface Builder, iPhone Simulator, Pages, Numbers, Keynote, Preview with multiple large PDF documents open, iTunes, Transmit, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie... and usually a few other things, all at the same time under Snow Leopard. Oh, and a Windows VM under Parallels when I need one to test stuff on IE or do some debugging in Visual Studio.

I doubt I'll see any need to upgrade until it's at least five years old. In fact, when I get an iPad for general web browsing, email, video, and so forth, there's a good chance the MacBook will serve mainly as a development machine for longer than that.

[VectraMan]

I've had mine for nearly 2 years, and I look every now and again, but can't escape the fact I have no need of a new one. It runs Visual Studio all day, but is more than good enough, and if anything thanks to buying Windows 7 and upgrading from 2GB to 4GB, it's faster now than when I bought it.

Only excuse I can think of is that if I had a new quad core laptop, I could test optimising software for quad core, instead of the measly dual core I have now.