It's been nine years for me, and I'll probably never buy a new PC ever again. I have no desire to ever use my PC as a tablet. I have an Android tablet (which I rarely use) for that. You can upgrade your Windows 7 PC to Windows 10 for free. There's no need to buy a new PC to run Windows 10. The reality is that unless your PC has some defective components or has really ancient hardware, there is little need to buy a new PC these days, unless you use it for gaming, or some other CPU or video intensive software. I don't use my 9 year old laptop anymore as I use a smaller one now. But, I could still it as my daily laptop as it still more than fast enough for everything I need to use it for.
Roger, I know what you mean. This lappy I bought in 2010 and I stuck a new SSD into it and upgraded it to Win10 and it is like a brand new machine, still quick enough to do what I want, and quicker now than with Win7 and a HDD. Things might change though if the motherboard dies for some reason. Acer have never supported this machine anyway and refused to sell me recovery disks when I replaced the HDD a couple of years ago. I have a long, sad story about their support but I won't go into that here. I'm quite happy with my HP running Win7 and I have no reason to upgrade that in the foreseeable future. Edit: To clarify, I first upgraded to Win10 from Win7 on my HDD, then bought a new SSD and did a fresh Win10 installation.
@Krusty13 Yes, upgrading to a SSD is a much beter investment than a new PC. I'm glad I finally switched to a SSD three months ago.
For me it's the opposite, I don't need tablets, I'm really surprised by their popularity. I use my desktop for stuff like browsing the web, video-gaming, and listening to music. I refuse to watch movies on PC's, I think stuff like that should be done on TV's.
I haven't owned a TV in 10 years; I'm surprised at their popularity. Commercials? Really? People still watch those? Why? Tablets are great; they replace paper, notebooks, and a lot of paper books. It isn't a replacement for a PC any more than a radar range microwave oven is a replacement for a stove.
I think you missed my point. I use a PC for many hours a day, every day, and I have a tablet which I only use every few months. I'm just sticking to second hand laptops at the moment, as I don't have the need for a new one.
OK I see, I think it's probably best to buy a PC every 5 year. I used my last desktop for 8 years, that's way too long. Right now it's often crashing probably because of bad RAM, and the HDD sounds like it can stop working at any moment. That's why I have chosen not to copy all data to my new machine, only the most important files. Are you kidding me, for movies and series, you just can't beat the good old TV, I really don't understand how people watch movies on smartphones, PC's and tablets.
This. TVs used to be 27" and several feet away. My monitor is 27" and 2 feet away (or 3 or so if I'm reclined in my comfortable Herman Miller chair); to get the same angular size with a TV on a wall would require a TV larger than what's sold. After 5 years, reformat, reinstall. If your PC still doesn't cut it, then, yes, replace it with one that will for 5 years. If you think you have bad RAM, run memtest86+ to find out. You don't want to run with bad memory; you could lose files that way by corrupting them and forget it if you run chkdsk with bad RAM. Your problem is likely dust and dirt crammed in the heatsinks, fans, and vents; clean it out. Heat will cause problems and moisture+dust can also (moist dust can make electrical connections where they don't belong). Currently, I'm refurbishing PCs that are 10 years old; they work fine.
It is ridiculous to equate your experience with a single PC, with all PCs. If your hard drive is failing, you don't need to buy a new PC. Just by a new hard drive (or ideally a SSD if you can afford one) and clone the old drive to the new one, or do a clean install of Windows, if you don't need to keep all the programs you use. If your RAM actually is failing - do as Rolo suggested and run memtest86+ to find out, it's usually inexpensive to replace. The laptop I use for around 12 hours daily, is probably about 7 years old, and I most likely will not replace it for at least a few years. Despite the age, it is more than fast enough for anything I need to use it for, and Windows 10 runs really well on it.
I've just ordered a new SSD for my (currently) Win7 machine and I've only just upgraded the RAM a couple of weeks ago. After seeing what a difference doing the same has made to my Win10 machine I just couldn't not do it. I may even do a clean Win10 install after Threshold 2 is released.
It should have a lifetime warranty (so, shipping cost). PCs have been increasing in longevity for two main reasons: technological advances have been kinda slow (stupid consoles!) and software requirements not really increasing in hardware demands (stupid consoles!). I like performance and gaming but I can't justify any upgrade from this second generation i5 yet (4+years). Perhaps if eDRAM were to make it into seventh generation...when fifth generation outperforms sixth, it isn't time to buy, it's time to wait until real progress is made in ~18 months or so, which would put this box at about 6 years. The 10-year-old boxes I'm refurbishing do fine with LibreOffice, and PDF editing, presenting on a projector, etc.--can't justify the cost in replacing tools that are serving their purpose just fine, even if my phone is more powerful than they.
My new SSD has just arrived. Now I have to decide when to install it and do the clean install of Win10.
I'm doing mine 10 Nov when Threshold 2 releases and I can download an ISO of it so I can use actual keys/activations.
I couldn't wait. Just finished installing Win10 and my software but I've got an 'Unknown Device' in Device Manager.
So far not impressed withe the current PC landscape. They will need to try harder. And whether they know it or not I'm not interested in using the PC as a touch device.
Get the vendor and device ID from Device Manager and google those. Win10 isn't like Win8 where it's a touch-centred UI; there's really not much difference between using 7 and 10 (except multi-monitor is much improved).
I saw one of those ads, it was some hipster or millennial screaming something. And the spot was so fast I had no idea what was going on. Fail.
To clarify, I'm not saying I'm right, but based upon my personal experience it would have been better if I had replaced my desktop sooner. Like I said, I originally wanted to make a full copy of my data, but the drive is just too old. So now I'm planning to buy a PC every 5 years or so. Of course it also depends on how extensive a PC is used.
LOL, seems like other agree: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015...apple-with-cringing-pc-does-what-ad-campaign/
That's where full backups come in, so you have a recent full backup of your computer which you can restore to another compuer if the need arises.
