I too update ever three years or so with a desktop. It helps that technology is a business expense for me. Over the years, we have had a lot of computers around here. When my son was at home, plus two home businesses, we had at least 7, old and new, desktops and laptops.

When it comes to aging technology, there's a point where you cross the threshold of keeping something because it works, and being inefficient. There's a point where the older systems won't run program updates, or the damn thing is so slow it's just frustrating to use it. The mechanics of the computer might run fine, but the processes just slow down. Even if all you do is send email and check the web, sloooooow is horrible.

What we do here, now that my son isn't here to build systems for us, is get custom build desktops. I would never, ever buy a computer from a box store. They are loaded with so much junk programing that it's much slower than it needs to be right from the start. It takes a lot of time and know-how to delete it all. So, we just skip that part. I have a very good relationship with our local computer place. We get bare naked systems with only an OS, security and a few base programs, and have very stable systems with very few problems.

If any of you don't have some kind of backup, well, if you lose stuff in this day and age you should know better. We have an off site backup service for $50/year... that is so cheap and it's great insurance. If a computer does go down, ( and they do on occasion) you can retrieve files and use them right away on a different system. We use off site as a second hard drive isn't much good if your house burns down.