How Often Do You Buy a New Laptop?

[guru]

The basic problem with any "melt"down, is, um, well, heat related. With a laptop the keyboard may also function as a heatsink. All semiconductors generate heat, so keeping the CPU, graphics chip and memory sufficiently cool are tasks that laptop manufacturers are constantly grappling with. Anything that interferes with the ventilation of the system is not going to help. Hope this does.

It does help. Thanks. I keep my laptop in the living room for the most part at home, and it has been known to find it's way on the arm of the couch occasionally. I'm sure that doesn't help the vents on the bottom. I will pay more attention to avoiding that in the future.

[tlb747]

Every two years, since 2003 (although my first lap top was free).

[Guest]

I use a laptop with docking stations, keyboards, and monitors both at home and at work and just take the laptop with me. Therefore, I am never without a file I need!

[MJD]

I plug keyboards into my laptop. I wouldn't use them if I had to type on the laptop itself.

Um . . . doesn't that sorta defeat the whole purpose of a LAPtop . . . portability . . . work anywhere . . . only one thing to carry around?

I have a couple of keyboards. It is like a docking station. That would include a printer, scanner, speakers, etc. Travel very rarely with it.

[tafnut]

I plug keyboards into my laptop. I wouldn't use them if I had to type on the laptop itself.

Um . . . doesn't that sorta defeat the whole purpose of a LAPtop . . . portability . . . work anywhere . . . only one thing to carry around?

I have a couple of keyboards. It is like a docking station. That would include a printer, scanner, speakers, etc. Travel very rarely with it.

I'm missing something here - if portability is not an issue, and you have all the peripherals, why don't you just use a desktop model?

[MJD]

Because I use it in 4 locations and sometimes travel with it.

[Mennisco]

Because I use it in 4 locations and sometimes travel with it.

On frugality:

http://www.thetaoofmakingmoney.com/2007/07/09/430.html

[bambam]

I have typically gotten about 3-4 years out of laptops. Now on about my 4th-5th one - started having laptops in the early 90s.

[Pego]

Apparently I am not destined to ever use a laptop (except in dire emergency), because I can't keep some part of my hand off that stupid little touchpad, so the cursor is always appearing in random places when I'm trying to type something. :evil: :evil: :evil:

Ditto.

[countryclubber]

school district has bought laptops for teachers for about 7 yrs. they change every 3 yrs with the teacher getting the machine after 3 yrs if they do a number of things, like inservices etc.
HS uses PC, MS and Elementary use Mac (another story). My wife works at MS, I at the HS. I didn't want mine. don't like to type on them and ditto the cursor thing. At school only used it with mouse attached. I use a Dell desktop at home. Wife wanted hers for some reason (she hates computers) but since it came home it has never been out of bag.

The district buys 40 to 50 laptops a year with PC's one year, Macs the next 2. Each year about 5% are screwed up out of the box. Another 5-10% screw up the first year with another 10% get screwed up by the user during the first year. 20-30% need to be thrown away after 3 yrs, 40-50% work fine for people years after they take them home and 10% seem to be able to work in a rainstorm in the jungle downloading anything and everything with no problems what so ever.
It doesn't matter what type it is or where they got them from percentages are same..