It’s obsolete when Microsoft tells us it is!………..Just kidding.I still use my Dell Pentium 133 laptop to write with when I want to be mobile. It all depends on what you want to do.

I agree with you. I find the same problems that you mention often when getting service calls. Just last week I went to a house that hadn’t had their computer serviced in 4 years and they wondered why they were having problems. After running CCleaner, getting rid of spyware and removing Norton and installing AVG along with a few other things I had them up and running again. I have two computers that are 4 years old and run better than most of the newer ones I work on.

My self-built Pentium 3 system turns 8 in January. While I’m currently saving for a new system, that will be a laptop - not because I need more power (pretty much all I do is e-mail, surf the ‘net, and a bit of word processing), but because I want the mobility a laptop provides. (OK, I confess: I want to play Civilization 4 too.)

If you’re a PRODUCER, your computer is obsolete when it will no longer do the work you bought it to do at a profitable cost/benefit ratio. This is why many businesses hang on to OLD computers - the job is still the same and the computer still works.

If you’re a CONSUMER, your computer is obsolete when it will no longer do what you want it to. Even if you just bought it last week - if this week you decide you want something your computer can’t do, then it’s obsolete.

I tend to agree. Until recently, I was running WinXP on a 400 Celeron with 384M RAM. It was a little slow, but worked fine for email, web surfing, etc. The fastest computers I regularly use at home are both use PCs that I purchased as surplus from a government auction (Dell 933Mhz - my server & a Dell 2.66Ghz - my workstation).

I still have the Celeron - now running Win98 with an All-In-Wonder card. Its mostly used as the television in my home office/cave.