How Often do you Upgrade you Computer?

[DawsonPointers]

<p>A good rule of thumb is to upgrade your computer when the newest operating system has the 'must have' features that you need, and the software you use is fuly compatible with the new OS. If you have less than 3GB of RAM on your iMac, you can increase it quite easily to 3GB which was the limit on the older iMacs. Run the activity monitor to see how your memory and processor(s) are being used. By the way, you may be surprised. Firefox is a real memory hog. Macs may seem to get slower with time; but that's perception.<br>

Like Cesar, I passed the old iMac to the inlaws because it is stable, I can support it easily at a distance, and they won't acccidentally load it with viruses. We use Skype and they really get a kick out of seeing their daughter rather than just hearing her.</p>

 

[riclan]

<p>A computer is nothing without software. Have I stayed with PSE5, I would not have change. But I discovered LR3 and it has dictate the time to change my hardware. I'm so happy with my new system.... until the next big software upgrade.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p >I wait until I get a virus that I can't fix cheaper than replacing the computer. Or close enough in cost.<a name="00Yo5g"></a></p>

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<p > </p>

<p ><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=452429">kevin break</a> <a href="../member-status-icons"></a>, May 29, 2011; 10:18 p.m.</p>

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<blockquote>

<p>You can fix any virus with a format and reinstall,</p>

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<p>Shhh. Don't tell my wife. How do you think I get to upgrade anyways?</p>

 

[Mike D]

<p>I do upgrade components when there is an advantage in doing so. The problem is that I own (license) several thousands of dollars of software and it all works together perfectly on my 3 year old, dual core, XP Pro PC. I suspect that I will have some problems and lose some capabilities (programs working with each other) on my next major equipment upgrade.</p>

[johne37179]

<p>I plan on a three-year lifecycle for my computers. When I was using Dell equipment, I used a two-year lifecycle. With our Apple equipment we can go three years. Even though the Apple equipment is more expensive up front, the lower maintenance cost (patch management, etc.) of the Apple equipment and better build quality means that our Apple equipment has a lower overall cost of ownership and operation. This is in a business setting. On the personal side I have Apple equipment that is in daily use that is over five years old and working just fine.<br>

You should look at the demands you will put on the equipment. At work I have a full-house iMac with 16 Gigs of RAM, 2 TB of hard drive and it is hooked up to a second 28 inch monitor. That is all hooked up to an X-Serve and 12 TB of RAID five memory and two 1 TB backup drives.<br>

The iMac blows the socks off of any other CPU that I've used.</p>

[mdma]

<p>Jon, I actually have a 27", 1TB iMac. Its quad core, so I can install up to 16GB of ram. When 16GB is no longer enough, then Ill upgrade. Considering how much this cost, I hope its the other side of 2015!<br>

Oh, and I also have a 2007 1.5Ghz Core 2 Duo Toshiba Laptop, with half the ram. Via Google Chrome, It surfs the internet just as quickly as the iMac. Sadly the HD-DVD drive is less useful these days...</p>

[jay_poel]

<p>I build a new system about every 2 to 3 years - mainly for gaming though (I do a lot of FPS gaming online). My wife gets my system and the kids get hers. After the next upgrade, both kids will have decent enough systems for school work and such. </p>

<p>If it were strictly for photo editing, I would say every 5 years. </p>

<p>My current rig - Intel i7-930 O/C to 3.52 GHz, 12GB G.Skill 1333 DDR3 ram, ASUS P6TD Deluxe mobo, two BFG nVidia GTX 260 OCX Maxcore cards in SLI, two WD 1TB Green HDD, one WD 2TB Black HDD, and a Soundblaster X-Fi Fatal1ty sound card, all housed in a Coolermaster HAF 932 case. It runs anything I throw at it quite well. I'm thinking of upgrading the video cards - possibly if nVidia releases the 600 series cards this Q4.</p>

[dan_south]

<p>Approximately every three to three-and-a-half years, when the performance of the old model starts to lag behind what current software expects.</p>

[AlanKlein]

<p>Jay Poel: Isn' it better and cheaper to use something like a Playstation3 or HBox 360 on HDTV for gaming with that big screen and wraparound speakers rather than a computer? Alan.</p>

[anuarpatjane]

When I upgrade, I get the best configuration of hardware available (the best I can afford of course). That

way my computer will last at least 5 good years and I dont have to reinstall all my software every two years

on a new computer. Keep your registry unfragmented and clean, also your hard drives. Install only what

you realy need. I usualy use two internal hard drives, one for OS and essential software, another one for

editing and all sorts of software. For my images and music I use a external hard drive that is constantly

beeing backed up by a NAS server. Always back up!

[indraneel]

<p>It used to be that technology lagged behind me, but now I lag behind technology. Consequently, the requirement for ever loaded computers has become less of an issue. In the late nineties they became obsolete in about a year, now about 3-4 years. But growth is never even, and computers may again start becoming obsolete in a year when the next growth spurt comes, which may be just around the corner.</p>

<p>The way we compute (the software) is dictated by our imagination and technical abilities, and often it takes a short time for the technical ability to catch up with the imagination. We upgrade when the technical abilities have caught up, and makes possible to suddenly create all the software that we have been dreaming of a few years before. Then we imagine further and wait for the hardware and software to catch up... The shortest route between A and B is a curved path.</p>

[stevierose]

<p>I have been using computers since I took Fortran programming at college in 1971 (big stacks of punch cards...). My view: a computer is a tool. I replace the computer when it will no longer perform the tasks that I need it to perform within a timeframe/ease of use that I find acceptable. Most recently that cycle seems to run every 3-4 years. <br>

I use PCs at work and Macs at home. I wish that Apple still offered mid-price tower computers. They allowed a lot more flexibility when it came to upgrades, which allowed me to keep them longer. If a new I/O standard came in (Firewire instead of SCSI, USB 2 instead of USB) you could just pop a new card into a slot, and voila you had a computer with Firewire or whatever. Not so with iMacs and Mac Minis. To get that flexibility now I would need to buy a Mac Pro which is just too expensive. Perhaps Apple's market research tells them otherwise, but I think that a mid-priced tower would still sell well to photographers and other graphic artists. </p>

[RaymondC]

<p>Near 3yr ago for me was a Quad 2.33Ghz. I chose that over a faster Ghz Dual. <br>

I still shoot film, I import my film from B&H to New Zealand and I export my film for processing to Dwaynes. Still under half price to NZ if you incl return postal. <br>

To me I just like slides. Not scanned or printed but just how the actual slide looks. <br>

I don't shoot much even with digital overseas I shoot maybe 25/day on avg. For film maybe 12 or 15 shots. I am wanting to switch my 135 to 120 format b/c 135 format takes me a while to shoot. I went on my Christmas trip right ... I had about 10 shots left and I still have not finished that last roll (the 6th) before I export them for processing. I am just into landscapes and cityscapes. </p>

[jay_poel]

<p>Alan, if you've ever played a first person shooter with a keyboard and mouse - you could never switch over and play on a console. A mouse is a lot more precise and I've been gaming online (on a team) for almost 12 years now. I'm also running two 24" LCD monitors that are 3 feet away and for sound I have a Klipsch 4.1 ProMedia system, so it is like sitting in front of home theater. But I do have an XBox that I play on with my son and daughter.</p>

[rfader]

<p>I'm using a MacBook Pro which is about 3 years old as well. Going the Mac route and thinking about upgrading, I'm going to wait until they work out the kinks in the new operating system, Lion.</p>

[ryanjoseph]

<p>Unless you are doing video editing or running heavy duty filters on your computer, the need to upgrade is largely unnecessary unless you are waiting too long to edit photos. I upgrade my desktop on average once every four years btw. Mostly because I play games, if I didn't game I am pretty sure mine would last longer.</p>

[johne37179]

<p>I have been thinking about what drives my upgrades as it pertains to photography. As I processed images yesterday I realized with the upgrade in the camera and software I'm now regularly processing image files in the 150MB range with custom tools in the 700MB range. If I were still doing this on my older systems it would take much longer than the seconds it does now.<br>

I think the driver for me has been the increase in file size brought about by larger sensors and more complex processing software.</p>

[howard_owen]

<p>I upgrade about 6 years. My current box was built in November of 2005, so I'm due. My computer doesn't seem slow since it's the only machine I ever use for processing (have nothing to compare it to).</p>

<p>I'm kind of stoked about my upcoming move to 64 bits. I'm planning on 16GB of RAM. My first computer had 16 MB. :)</p>

[phule]

<p>Every 5 to 6 years, though I did just retire a 10 year old machine. </p>

[Glenn McCreery]

<p>Although I upgrade my Mac desktop and laptop computers every few years, I rarely buy new. My latest desktop computer is a two or three year old Mac Pro, which I have upgraded to 12 GB RAM and four internal hard drives. As long as it runs the latest software updates and communicates with all my devices, it should last a while. The cost of buying what was the high end computer a couple of years ago and upgrading it is considerably less than buying new.</p>

[harryjacksonjr]

<p>Simply, when your computer no longer does what you need it to do as fast and as precisely, upgrade. Sometimes, you can increase speed when you increase memory.<br>

What's more important is to drop a few bucks on a one or two terabyte standalone hard drive, compress it and back up your data frequently. The older the computer, the more frequently you need to back up. If your hard drive crashes irreparably, the shock can be traumatic. An older computer, too, will break with less stress than a new computer so, the older, the more care you need to take. Hard drive recovery is unbelieveably expensive, so prevention is worth ... etc.<br>

One thing that can save a bit of money, though, if you have an afternoon to do it, can make your computer sort of run like new. It's called system restore. I don't know if this is on the Mac, but I'm sure there's a comparable function.<br>

The process will take four to eight hours and a lot of clerical work. The function will clean your hard drive head to toe then reload the operating system to the condition it was in when you took it from the store. You'll wipe out all of your data, your programs and all of the tweeks you made on your software. You can rebuild the system without all of the clutter that you no longer use -- streamlined.<br>

The good side is when you wipe off your hard drive, you'll also erase that sludge that's accumulated over the months and years. But you need to take the time to record what you want and don't want; once it's gone, it's gone and if you didn't back it up effectively ...<br>

Make sure you have all of the software you'll need to reload; you can't back up software. Find and save the file from your browser's favorites. Get the websites from your freeware and pirated software you used.<br>

Reload your stuff as you need it and your computer will run smoothly. Your bulk will be in the backup.<br>

It's always an option.<br>

Finally, if you do get a new computer, run system restore then give your computer to a Boys & Girls Club, homeless shelter or some other human service.<br>

h</p>

[ljwest]

<p>I haven't replaced a desktop in nearly 10 years, but that's because most of my "work" has been done on laptops since 2001. The last desktop I bought was a refurbished early PowerMac G4. Thinking of getting a current gen iMac, though.</p>

<p>As for laptops, last one was a PowerBook G3 bought in early 2001. That was replaced in early 2007 with my current machine, a Mac Book Pro, 15" Core 2 Duo. I replaced the G3 mostly because I ran out of RAM capacity with OS X. And that's pretty much where I'm at with my MBP now. Were I to upgrade it now, the SOLE reason is that 3 GB of ram (the max for this machine) simply isn't sufficient any longer. New machines can use 8 or 16 GB.</p>

<p>I'm going to be getting a new machine in the next 12 months, but it's a question of which one. Do I get a new MBP 15" (& use it with my 20" Cinema display), or a 13" MBP and a 27" monitor, or do I spring for the iMac 27", with 1TB HDD, and 256GB SSD??? Tough decisions, always!</p>

[tom_thumbnail]

<p>I upgrade when the computer becomes unbearably slow to handle current tasks. It has worked out usually to about 6 years. It so happens the time for me to get a new one is now. I think it's seven years this time, but I'm a little overdue. . </p>

[jon_kobeck1]

Yes i have come to the conclusion that it's not necessary to upgrade right now, and I can probably get a few more

years out of my machine. I really have to stop falling victim to Apples advertising campaigns pushing the latest and

greatest down our throats.

[jon_kobeck1]

Just to add, I shoot all film now and scan everything and then do minor adjustments in Lightroom. So my software

demands as farvas post production are probably not as intense as someone shooting all digital. Plus all my files are on

external hard drives and I only have software on the iMac. The internal hd is 75% free.