[Philip Colmer]

My laptop & mobile phone are company-purchased, so they get replaced on a 2 year & 18 month cycle respectively. Being the IT Manager, I have some influence over the specification of what I get :-)

My PDA is also company-purchased but it is the only one so there aren't any hard & fast rules over when it gets replaced. That said, the battery is knackered and, being an old iPAQ, I can't upgrade it to PPC2003. I am waiting to see the final spec for the X3, primarily because I think Dell will provide better after-sales warranty than other companies. I may end up going for an X3 and then handing it down next year to a colleague if the X7 looks much better & I think I can get away with it :twisted:

My home computer got upgraded last year because I needed to get a new one that was on the compatibility list for the Matrox RT.X100. I went with Dell 'cos I get a good price through our corporate account manager. I think I'll probably replace it some time in 2005.

So I tend to go with timeframes rather than technology and, for the home PC, what my budget can afford. I may have to wait until 2006 'cos I want to buy a stonkingly big plasma screen for my birthday in 2005 (it is a significant birthday 8O )

--Philip

[Philip Colmer]

My laptop & mobile phone are company-purchased, so they get replaced on a 2 year & 18 month cycle respectively. Being the IT Manager, I have some influence over the specification of what I get :-)

My PDA is also company-purchased but it is the only one so there aren't any hard & fast rules over when it gets replaced. That said, the battery is knackered and, being an old iPAQ, I can't upgrade it to PPC2003. I am waiting to see the final spec for the X3, primarily because I think Dell will provide better after-sales warranty than other companies. I may end up going for an X3 and then handing it down next year to a colleague if the X7 looks much better & I think I can get away with it :twisted:

My home computer got upgraded last year because I needed to get a new one that was on the compatibility list for the Matrox RT.X100. I went with Dell 'cos I get a good price through our corporate account manager. I think I'll probably replace it some time in 2005.

So I tend to go with timeframes rather than technology and, for the home PC, what my budget can afford. I may have to wait until 2006 'cos I want to buy a stonkingly big plasma screen for my birthday in 2005 (it is a significant birthday 8O )

--Philip

[Traveller]

New functionality that improves efficiency and effectiveness drives my purchase of new technology. That being said, my latest laptop purchase was a Compaq Tablet PC and I'm surprised no one else has indicated that they have a Tablet PC. It "is" the latest toy to have and it compliments my ipaq.

[dMores]

i agree with the feeling of being left behind.

in the rare case when i NEED to get a replacement because the old unit has gone bust, i look at my current device, compare it to the new ones available and ask myself the question, if i have used it intensively, and if it'll be worth the money to upgrade.

most of the time i don't think rationally and just succumb to the urge.



that's why i got myself a shiny new 15" powerbook G4 8)

[Jonathan1]

I'm sort of at a cross roads here. I've been eyeing a tablet PC for a while. With the introduction of the Pentium M it has made the Tablet PC all the more tempting. However. In the last 6 months I've also been tempted by the dark side of the farce. :robot: That 17" Apple surfboard...I mean PowerBook is a thing of beauty. Its the 2003 equivalent of the 1980's luggable but in this case its 1" thick and weights in at5 6.9 pounds. Add to that some of the cooler features like built in DVD burning, backlit keyboard, BT, 802.11G and I'd be sold if it wasn't for this:
http://www.barefeats.com/al15b.html

The Pentium P soundly trounces the "NEW" 1.33Ghz G4 chip. The M at 1.6 is benchmarking out at twice the speed of the 1.33 system. Now I know Apple has the rep of their systems being overpriced. Going into this decision I knew you paid a premium for a Mac and I was fine with that. I'm not fine with paying a premium AND not getting equal or near equal performance of a PC. For the average user 1.33Ghz and its performance really is good enough. But in my case I want to run VPC which needs as much horsepower as it can get its bits on.
So right now I'm at an impasse. I'm thinking about holding off on a new laptop purchase until a G5 shows up in a PowerBook. IBM it debuting 90nm chips sometime this fall. Current G5 chips run too hot and are too power hungry to run efficiently in a laptop. The new 90nm process should bring the G5's into an acceptable range however these chips weren't designed for a mobile device. I just don't see them getting good batt life even with a shrunk chip. It’s like Intel stuffing the mobile P4 into a laptop. It can be done but at a major sacrifice to batt life.

My current laptop fleet is:
1x Dell Latitude 12" 500Mhz, 40GB hard drive, 384MB RAM
1x Toshiba 15" 850Mhz , 60GB hard drive, 384MB RAM

Both "get the job done. But sure take their time getting there. The biggest reason I've considered a Mac over a PC is Final Cut Express. I've found myself getting more and more interested in video editing and this software looks godlike. That and the iApps. I like iTunes and its music store. Yes I’ve tried Music Match’s new store. Its still very quirky.
If the hardware was up to par I wouldn't have any hesitations. As it stands I can't warrant shelling out 3 grand on a device with half the performance of a PC laptop.