Twiggys [was: Re: ka... ching!]

In a word: yes. I am being a bit tongue in cheek when I say that but not entirely. Initially this may not have been true - i.e. in the 80s people upgraded so CAD applications would run faster, or 1-2-3 worked faster but at a certain point (I say early Pentium era) computers got fast "enough" for 99% of the business applications out there. What continues to drive the needs for faster/newer systems has been bloatware (specially the OS which requires more and more and overhead) and games/entertainment (e.g. initially playing DVDs, then BD, then streaming, interactive web sites, Flash, etc..). I seriously doubt anyone needs a new graphics card and upgraded CPU every six to twelve months to make sure Excel is running "fast enough". The people who are going through voluntary frequent upgrade cycles are the gamers who need the fastest/latest machines to play the newest games. As I type this I am using a nine year old Thinkpad w/ a HDD (not SSD). The only thing I have done is upgraded to a full 8GB of RAM. I run Win 7, Office 2007, and IE for the most part in this machine and it is still as zippy as it was when I got it. So when you look back at the last twenty years of PC development new HW was essentially developed to continue generate profit for the manufacturers and this was justified by more and more demanding games/entertainment software. -Ali