I last bought a PC five years ago. Do I need a new one? Mike Collis
The short answer is that if it still does what you want, no, you don't need a new one. But there are other considerations, such as the need to keep your PC working in the modern world, and what will happen to your data when it fails.
If you buy a PC to do some specific tasks, then by rights it should continue to perform those tasks until the hardware breaks down. However, this assumes that the software won't be upgraded, and that you won't want to do new things. For example, a PC that happily ran Internet Explorer 3 will not perform as well with IE7 or Firefox 3. Also, it may not work as well, if at all, with websites that use web 2.0 programming techniques.
Even then, you may not have to buy a new PC. If yours runs Windows XP SP2, then it would probably be OK with a cheap memory uprade. If it needs a memory upgrade, a new graphics card, a bigger hard drive and so on, you're better off buying a new (or second-hand) one.
Another important question is this: if you had to buy a new PC tomorrow (following a catastrophic hardware failure), would you be able to move your data to a new one? Are current PCs capable of running your old software? If not, are current packages capable of importing your old data? There are probably still people happily using BBC Micros with 5.25in floppies and Amstrads with 3in drives, but when they do have to upgrade, the conversion might be a bit tricky. And people get a new appreciation for how valuable their data is when they can no longer access it.
As a rule of thumb, it's usually OK to skip one system upgrade, but it can be increasingly dangerous to skip two, three or more. You don't have to be at the leading edge of technology, but watch out that you don't fall off the trailing edge.
