it is a market of "Wants dictate" more than "needs dictate".
I so agree with this... I'd love to have the best out there system as a WANT, but I know that what I have is plenty for my NEEDS.I think the fact that I dont like to waste money because Im far from rich also comes into play as well as I can be a penny pincher and as long as a system plays games ok even if all cores are running 95-100% utilization there is no need to spend money on newer hardware! Additionally if your not a gamer, you can get by with a Pentium 4 still with a video card upgrade for video content to play well with streaming movies and other online video content.
My daughter for example I gave the choice of an upgrade from her Celeron D 335J 2.8Ghz single-core which has a 8x AGP GeForce 6200 256MB video card, 2GB RAM, and 160GB IDE HDD running Windows XP SP3 fully patched to a newer Quadcore Intel Q6600 2.4Ghz computer. And she said... she was happy with the computer she had and she doesnt feel she needs an upgrade. It plays her internet games just fine and the older game SPORE with no problems. I said are you sure, its way more powerful than the computer your currently using and she said she doesnt see any problem with this computer. It plays games that she likes to play and it plays streaming video from youtube and hulu and netflix with no problems onto her 17" flatscreen.
A long time ago ( almost 25 years ago ) this one guy who was 20 years older than me and had been working with computers since the early 1970s warned me about speed. Speed comes at a price and speed can be addicting! He was talking from experience that if you dont expose yourself to top of the line computers then you will probably be satisfied with what you already have. You wont have a reference to compare to that suddenly makes your computer that you were satisfied with feel like your in a Model T Ford on the autobahn with everyone else passing you like your standing still in which then your very likely to suddenly have impulse urges to buy a newer faster computer. So if your happy on the back roads with the Model T then stay on them, as for once you turn onto the autobahn and see everyone else zooming by, then you will likely be hooked on speed to have to be like them and as fast as them or faster.
He gave me his 386 SX 40Mhz computer and bought a Pentium 60Mhz around 1993. I said cool thanks for the 386 and so what games are you playing that the Pentium 60Mhz will be needed? He paused and said well.... I dont play any games, but I am addicted to fast computers because at work I work with fast computers as a programmer. So to me that 386 is slow. But to you it will be fast since your now able to get away from your slow 286 12Mhz and use this much better 386sx40Mhz. It lit up a light bulb in my head right there ..... " Perception of Speed " ... wow if I had this 286 all my life and never saw any faster computer, Id probably be happy with it because it does what I want and need. But when exposed to faster and more realistic graphics, suddenly the computers and games of years past start to feel old not as fun and I feel a need to play on a faster computer with quicker load times and better graphics. Well for some people like my friend Steve the programmer this can snowball to where the minute you see something better in a computer magazine with all the advertising speed brag hype you have an urge to replace what you have, that you were happy with until exposed to faster and newer either in advertising or hands on in demo or at work as was Steves situation.
Prior to that realization I didnt care much about speed.... 286 10Mhz, 12Mhz, and 386 16Mhz, 25Mhz, 33Mhz and 40Mhz clocked CPUs, the games I played felt like they ran the same when same graphics card was used. It was all just
will this system run the games I want to play such as Wolfensten 3D, and if it ran them I was happy if it didnt run them I was looking for cheap or free upgrades from those who were bitten by the speed bug who would unload their prior system or pieces and parts inexpensively or free etc.
Today I still have this behavior of using old computers as well as taking parts donations from people who no longer have a need for parts after upgraded etc, and I still use my older computer even when I have newer available. Some of it is, why run the newer computer when the older runs whatever I am doing just fine and the other part of it is that I feel that run hours on a computer are like an odometer in a car which eventually leads to failure, so might as well use the older system still while it hasnt fallen way behind the times for what its still currently plenty of processing power for and keep the usage/operating time mileage off of the better newer computer. BUT.... If I need a ton of processing power for a game that needs it, or a program i wrote that is crunching numbers and I want the end result sooner vs later, and I want that 4.0Ghz clock, I can turn on the heavier AMD FX-8350 8-core 4Ghz system and use that as needed. Lastly the older system I have runs on less electricity than the current gaming/crunching computer so I save on my electric bill by using the older system as well.
So I guess I am running my older computers until hardware failure or obsolescence of my needs in which they get retired. These days I rarely turn on a computer lesser than a Dual-Core CPU system. As time goes by eventually the older Quadcore systems will follow to where its not economical to run them and never will be needed on a daily basis mainly as the internet or games I run become more complex and they eventually lag out, but I guess I am not in any rush to have the latest and greatest because to me it would be costly. Its cheaper for me to stick with buying reduced cost hardware when better becomes available and I buy a few generations behind the times and able to build what would have been a $1000 computer when parts came out 2 years later for around $300 or $400. Sort of the same as not buying that brand new car for $30,000 but buy the one that is discounted because its old stock and needs to go so I am able to get it at a heavy discount at say $19,000 for a 1 year old but brand new car that just wasnt bought up because more cars made then the demand, so wait to buy up the excess inventory item at much lower than retail new. And with computer hardware there is always excess inventory at bargain prices as say they created 300,000 of a CPU and only sold 289,000 and the remainder 11,000 of them are sold at ever increasing discounts until all is sold or they get destroyed and recycled