I am writing this blog on a PC that is, essentially, seven years old. It has a Pentium D processor block – so while it has two CPUs they are on separate cores and that shows in terms of speed and power consumption.
But as a workhorse for writing documents, blogs or even compiling the odd piece of code, it does the job.
Should I replace it with something better?
cartesian product ... stuff about computing mostly 
One response to “To upgrade or not”
Pros (for upgrading): Less time wasted while new machine boots; increased happiness using it (until the higher speed becomes your new expectation); insurance against a sudden need to run some new program with high computing requirements (or lots of disk activity); satisfaction of giving old computer to a deserving charity in need of a space heater.
Cons: capital outlay; time spent moving files/reinstalling software; “Hamlet effect” of discovering new bugs (“… makes us rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of …”).
I faced the same decision last summer and decided to upgrade (to a quad-core machine, found at a big box store for a comfortably low price). I’ve no regrets, but one key was the timing: I waited until school was out, so that I could do the transfer/installation stuff at an unhurried pace. The most difficult part of the whole thing was wiping the hard drive on the old box before donating it.