Average market life span of a laptop

Hey!

I'm thinking of upgrading my laptop, but the model I'm interested in is a little too expensive at the moment. However, I'm in no hurry and I can wait till the price drops.

What I'd like to know is, how long does it take (on average) for a given model to disappear entirely from the shelves? I know technology advances quickly and its obvious that at one point it will be better for retailers to get rid of those models entirely than to keep them and sell them for a handful of peanuts.

So is there a safe estimate regarding how long I should wait to buy the laptop at the lowest possible price, but without going "too far" when it's no longer available in stores? I'm certain that even if I buy it two years from now it will be more than enough for my needs (I'm using a 4 year old computer now and it still ALMOST meets all of my requirements).

Depends where you get it from. Bestbuy models disappear after a few months. Walmart ones go bye bye in 6 months. Tigerdirect's models stick around forever. You can still buy Pentium 2s.

Based on what you've written I think it's safe to assume that it's "no longer than a year" on average?

Also, could you provide me with links to those Pentium 2s? I'm curious about the prices, but I can't access their website ("access denied").

On average, I wouldn't think anything will be there for a year unless you go to a specific laptop / computer store that will be stuck with it.

Now that I'm looking at Tigerdirect I'm not sure online that they have Pentium 2s. They have boxes of them in their store I was at maybe 2 months ago. This is the best / cheapest they have >>

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/guidedSearch.asp?CatId=6&sel=Price%3BPrice4

I could find no laptops with an actual Pentium 2 CPU over there -it would not make any sense, either, as those would be over a decade old by now. There are some with "Pentium D" or non-specified "Pentium" CPUs, which however can't be less than Pentium-M or Pentium 4-class, due to their frequencies and memory amounts.

It might be possible to find some actual Pentium 2 or 3 laptops for special uses e.g. hardened industrial/military spec, but those usually come at a premium and are not found through usual retail channels.

What Maes said. The cheapest computers on there were all Core-2 stuff. I wouldn't get a Pentium-II for anything other than free at this point (I have a stack of better computers I got for free anyway) unless it was radiation hardened and I needed that for some reason.

Yeah, the laptop I bought over a decade ago had a P4 in it. I really doubt you can buy a P2 off the shelf. I don't even want to imagine how bad that would run today...

Anyway, my buddy bought an HP laptop from Best Buy and the HDD went in under a week. He got it replaced and maybe six months later the new one was dead. By that time, they didn't carry it anymore, so he ended up talking them into giving him a replacement with higher specs for free.

(The lesson to be learned here is that laptops are shit now, apparently, so make sure you get a good warranty and are good at standing your ground. They tried to charge him the price difference for that upgrade at first.)

I was meaning PCs. My bad. I knew the thread bearer had asked for laptops, but I was throwing out the Pentium 2s as an example of how far back our local PC shop goes to.

geo said:

I was meaning PCs. My bad. I knew the thread bearer had asked for laptops, but I was throwing out the Pentium 2s as an example of how far back our local PC shop goes to.

Well there weren't even Pentium 2 desktop motherboards on the website, for that matter. Perhaps they meant something like "Pentium Core 2"? Those could too be considered obsolete, strictly speaking.

Nope pretty sure they were Pentium 2s 233 mHz. My friend and I were laughing about it. He was looking for something to hook to a TV and be his new DVR / media box, so we went to a physical store. There are 2 or so that I've seen in a 2 hour radius.

Well, you can find Pentium 1 and 2 class machines still in use in some businesses or obscure uses -but I doubt you can find a NOS (New Old Stock), fully assembled, never-used, still unsold, era-correct desktop Pentium 2 still for sale, perhaps with its original Windows 95 still bundled. Such a computer must be used or cobbled together from salvaged components.

Of course, if you try running Windows XP or 2000 on them they will run like shite, assuming you manage to find enough RAM to begin with. Even if you do find more than 64 MB of RAM, only the first 64 MB will be cached, leading to weird slowdowns & speedups. They are surprisingly fast and usable with Windows 98 though.

My acer laptop is from year 2009 and I'm still using it. Occasionally it feels little slow from some unknown reason

Maes said:

Well there weren't even Pentium 2 desktop motherboards on the website, for that matter. Perhaps they meant something like "Pentium Core 2"? Those could too be considered obsolete, strictly speaking.

Intel's low-end market is of dual core Pentium chips. They're surprisingly adequate for daily tasks and games.

How about you make your own desktop? Its cheap to make a device that can do light gaming (300$-500$)