[haisaikat]

I voted for 8+ years, but having said that the answer will vary depending on what kind of purpose it is serving.

If its for home or personal use, where it runs only occasionally few times a week then easily 8+ year or until it last considering its a recent model when purchased. We should consider mid life upgrades like RAM / SSD / Storage Capacity / Battery to extend its life and of course OS upgrade / complete restore once every 2-3 years to continue keeping out the performance from degrading. Sometime they start to overheat resulting in including but not limited to shutdown and in such cases cleaning or replacing of interior or exhaust fan is necessary.

However if its used in office for commercial use, where productivity is of essence along with sudden failure can lead to disruption of business or commercial loss, no more than 3 years should be considered as life for the laptop. Usually these are commercial grade laptops and are made to run 10+ hours a day and hence their failures can happen faster. So they must be replaced more often for performance and also lowering risk of failures.

[BlackPearl]

Voted 8+ years or till it runs. As with everything I buy, be it car, watch, laptop or any gadget, I tend to take care of the things and keep them running forever till they give up.

My first laptop was a cheap Acer bought in 2005 and I gave it to my sister before going to USA in 2008. It continued to run till 2015 and I think it is still somewhere around on the house waiting to be revived Next laptop was Sony Vaio in 2008 and it still runs. I had to buy an upgraded laptop in 2015 as I was running a personal project that was resource hungry. It is a Lenovo and it still runs. Nowadays I just play AOE in it. I was happy with the Lenovo and did not not need another laptop till I bought a full frame 36 megapixel camera churning out huge image files. The Lenovo was not able to process those files and hence bought a Macbook Pro in 2019 February. Still continuing with the Macbook and hope it runs as well as the others.

My office Macbook Pro has been running strong for more than 4 years and I don't think there is any fixed policy to change the laptops every few years. I think they change a laptop only when the support gets over or it breaks down.

I think I am a very bad consumer from retail point of view

[DicKy]

HP Pavilion G6 Intel Core i5 (3rd Gen)Laptop. 11 years and still running.

One day dad just send me the laptop, a couple of months after my college classes started. So no idea of the specs and configuration, but at that time it exceeded all my expectations. Friends' laptops with similar specs costed around 50k+, while dad got this for under 30k. Calculated with SAR-INR exchange rate for 2011.

Yes, it was heavy, the screen lid started creaking after five years, the speakers were average, it struggled with video games newer than 2013 and I really missed a backlight keyboard.

But it did survive both my undergrad and postgraduate college years. Endured countless rattling in overhead storage of buses and trains. Got dropped twice on the ground, once in a bus stand, another time at the airport. And for a couple of years, it was mostly kept ON day/night. And now, my kid brother is using it for his college/job. Replaced the screen, keyboard and motherboard(?) for under 10k, and it is still chugging on. Only sore point was when a HP authorised service centre at Bengaluru screwed it up after I gave it for repairs. Went in for a wifi button complaint. Came back with keyboard lights not working and pirated Windows .

[condor]

Voted 8 yrs / or till it lasts. My old desktop is pertty old, may be 10 yrs plus. Today it just supports my RAID based external drive system, and is rarely powered on. Too slow for today's applications too. Regarding laptops, use them till it becomes less suitable to use for current version of software/apps.

Originally Posted by GTO

My sister works with a Big 4 firm and in their office, as a rule, laptops are changed every 3 years which I feel is quite a waste. .

Am sure you would know that companies approach this differently than individuals. Our company replaces laptops every 4 years. This includes a 3 years of claiming duty benefits (company has offices in SEZ / STP zones). So once the duty benefits + depreciation are claimed, the asset is then disposed. Disposal should get the company some cash too.

[roy_libran]

Voted for 4-5 years; reasons -
- Likelihood of vulnerabilities in old h/w
- Significant reduction in performance with OS upgrades
- Increasing backward compatibility issues
- Resale value

[thanixravindran]

Work laptop:
My previous company changes the work laptop each 4 years. The reason is asset is fully depreciated in the books and warranty is also expired. Good part is it is provided to the employee at the scrap cost. I got two laptops one at Rs.500 and another one at Rs.750 (Both Dell Latitude) in 2012 and 2016 respectively after formatting and with licensed Windows OS.

Dell laptops are built to last. First one was used for few years and I gave it to my dad which was given further to a needy student. Second one which is 10 year old now, came with Windows 7, got Windows 10 updates till now and is used by my dad. Only problem faced in both were battery degradation.

Personal laptops:
Poor experience with Acer purchased in 2009 and within 4 years, it had a thermal meltdown and have to be scrapped with loss of data. Got myself a Dell Inspiron in 2015 which works till now without issues. Only issue is the screen got black dots horizontally after my son sat on it. I am able to use it as my usage is very less but now it is seeing some usage to type the posts in Team BHP

So yes, for me, laptops will be used till it works.

[Sahil]

I have been using my iMac for a decade now. However, the reason it has survived so long is because my particular 21inch iMac had some flexibility for upgrades which I did do few years ago.

Stock specs:
2.7 quad core intel i5
8gb RAM
500gb HDD

Upgraded:
Processor unchanged
16gb RAM
500gb SSD

I first upgraded the RAM only and it didn't resolve my hanging issues. Hence I upgraded to SSD and this did the trick.

I was tempted to upgrade to the new gen iMac but I don't think I need to just yet. The upgrade has made my machine future proof for my kind of use for another few years.

[hkanitkar]

Voted for 8 years / Till it lasts.

Been using desktop with a 3rd Gen i5 processor since 2012 as my main work desktop. I had assembled this myself, and have upgraded the RAM and Hard-disks. Added a gfx card in 2013 and upgraded it in 2019.

Never been a Laptop fan, but the Dell Inspiron 55XX that I got 5 years back is running pretty good with additional RAM. This used to be my carry-on-site laptop. Darn heavy !
But got HP Elitebook last year (2016/17 models that came for sale at one of my acquaintances in 2020) - got a well specced machine for 27k (i5, 500GB SSD, 8GB RAM)- box packed, with original Windows 8 licence.

[dileepcm]

Originally Posted by GTO

In a bit of a quandary over when to change my laptop.

Is it still necessary to replace computers every 5 years? My sister works with a Big 4 firm and in their office, as a rule, laptops are changed every 3 years which I feel is quite a waste.

My company changes laptops every 3 years and mobile phones every 2 years. Reason: Warranty/Service expiry.
There is even a printer in my office that gets replaced after 3 years for the same reason.

For corporates, its all about process and risk mitigation as one can imagine. No one wants to hear that an employee could not deliver something on time because the laptop did not work and there is no warranty to call up someone for repair it on time. As far as corporates go, these are all just considered tools for work and having right tools with right health at any point of time is always considered a must have. Corporates are paying their internal IT/hardware departments millions to ensure that the employees have the right tools available all the time.

To answer your question: If your laptop is a critical and time sensitive part of your business/work and having to take a break from work because of a potential issue with a warranty-expired laptop causes more damage to business:- I recommend change your laptop close before warranty expires or in other words, ensure that service is available within a time where it can be managed with low risk to business.

If its your personal laptop where it can wait for a day or two etc for repairs: Use it as much as you can.
For a reference, my personal laptop is 2015 model. It is still runs strong and I will keep it until it does not run anymore.
Probably I am not going to make any expensive repairs anymore due to its age though.

[shancz]

Voted 8+ years.

My 2015 Macbook Pro running Windows 10 is going strong, battery and all. Connected to external monitor, keyboard and mouse. Connected to the power adapter so the battery is rarely used.

Buy the good stuff, use it till either your needs exceed the hardware or it gets excruciatingly slow, applicable to all electronics, IMO.

[vivek.ks]

Voted 8+

I am running late 2011 MacBook Pro 2.4Ghz i5 purchased June 2012 till today. The OS cannot be upgraded beyond High Sierra but serves the purpose of my son's online classes.

MacBook rocks!

[Rachit.K.Dogra]

Originally Posted by GTO

Cost a non-issue, but it's a royal pain setting up a new computer with all your programs & OS settings.

Personally I was very fussy too about taking my new machine, to my existing machine's level of customization and software/games on board.

However, some of this stress/anxiety has gone ever since I moved to Apple Eco system. Just take regular backups of your current machine and when you buy a new machine, set it up like your current machine and its pretty seamless.

My personal Macbook Pro will complete 10 Years in July. Still going strong, although its use has definitely come down. It survived 2 years of use by my 7 year old daughter for online classes too, which I consider a massive achievement.

I was following your macbook buying thread, I think macbooks typically can last longer with more consistent performance throughout their life. Plus today's macbook pros have enough juice, that they should remain relevant in terms of specs even 5-6 years down the line.

I tried editing a 4K video on my macbook pro last year which it was able to do well enough, when there was no 4K when I had purchased it.

Didn't want this post to sound like a Macbook marketing post, but in the last 10 years, I have only bought that 1 laptop.

Office laptops are regular windows machines and have a 3 year replacement cycle. Some last well and still have some juice left, some barely make it. Even though I am a very careful user of gadgets, my last office machine became a pain by the end of its term. I think it depends on specifications as well.


CHEERS!!
Rachit

[hrk997]

Depends on usage. If Its light usage and just some documentary work And the like, its good for 4-5 years. If you’re a software engineer, you’ll have to Replace it sooner. If you like gaming and want the very best of performance, no longer than three years. Technology becomes obsolete very fast, imagine using a 6yo mobile phone.

[Amrik Singh]

Replace / Change - Why?
As long as it serves the purpose without any trouble, continue using it. After all it is not a Suit or dress that you have worn number of times at Parties and would not wear it again.
For home, I have been using Toshiba Satellite since 2005 and bought same brand twice again in 2006 and 2007 for my daughters. Only the trendsetter - the first one has been retired while the other two still remain in service, though for secondary purpose only, as they use Mac in USA. Toshiba are used for Windows only. So as long as they serve the purpose, no retirement.

[CarJunki]

As long as it suffices the intended use.

Companies change these devices due to warranty and parts availability issues. There is the asset depreciation aspect as well for accounting purposes.

For systems owned by individuals, keep it as long as the thing can do what you need from it. RAM and SSD upgrades can fuse new life to old devices. And if your laptop is old enough, i think you can even upgrade the CPU.