Because most people are currently happy with their current hardware they won't bother to upgrade as often as they have in the past. As I've said before most people don't bother with the lastest hardware, most of the computers at work are 5 years old or older. You just don't need a lot of computing power for what most people use their computers for.
That's silly. Todays computers are commodity peices of junk that aren't designed to last more than 3-5 years. People have been replacing their computers on a 3-5 eyar cycle for twenty years now. Your prediction that people will suddenly stop upgrading their machines because they don't need/want anything faster has been made by countless people over the past ten years.
I only use my PC for word processing, colege work, surfing the net and maybe watching the odd DVD, now why would I need anything more powerfull than my 1800MHz 256MB machine? I've said on many occasions before I was happy with my old 200MHz 32MB machine until I spilt my drink on its motherboard last year.
How many DVD's did you watch on your 200mhz machine? Tried installing the latest version of Linux on your 200mhz mahcine lately? If so, how long did it take to recompile your kernel?
Someone on another forum was until very recently using a 486 and nothing else until it got slow, and it would've probably be ok if he just reinstalled Widnows 98, but he decided to buy a new 2.93GHz machine for some reason.
Perhaps because he wanted to play DVD's and a game or two? Or perhaps he realized (correctly) that his machine was very old and was probably going to die sooner or later anyway.
I certainly won't consider upgrading until a long time into the furture probably at least 10 or more years from now if ever.
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Ten years? Just about every other part in your computer will not last ten years. Commodity x86 parts simply aren't designed to last that long. 5-7 years is feasable, if you buy quality components, but judging by your setup (1800mhz/256 RAM) your mahchine already has a couple of years on it. Good luck.
My bold prediction: You'll do some kind of upgrade to your computer within three years. You will either want a faster computer to run some kind of new hardware/sofware, or some part of your computer will simply die and you won't be able to find a replacement part for it.