5 years. i would have waited, but I had already lost 512mb of ram, and the system was getting flaky. At that point I wasn't about to spend the days of feeding dvd and cd on a new OS reinstall on questionable hardware.

AMD xp2800 to Intel e4300. If you are building your own, research the the e4300 cpu line. I was going to buy an e6xxx until I did some research. And make sure the Motherboard is Quad core ready, just incase you decide to buy a Quad when they cost $100 in a year or 2.

All of which illustrates why collecting good hardware is a better monetary investment in the long run... Computers are only a necessary evil.

Vintage guitars, for example, have outpaced the stock market for appreciation.

I upgrade when my needs outweigh the capacities of my pc.

The one I'm typing on here is a P3 800 which I use mostly for internet and everything else but DAW use. It's been rock solid for 7 years. No need to replace it for what I use it for.

I have a seperate PC strickly for DAW use. No internet, no garbage, no nothing. Strickly DAW. Just Sonar, Sound Forge and some related programs (plug-ins, softsynths, etc.) It's rock solid as well and I'll keep using it until such time as I need more horspower. At this point I don't, which suits me just fine.

I like this tread, you guys are really cute.

I keep my internet/word processing/other stuff computer for about 4 years before getting a new one. I replace my DAW computer every 2-3 years. I try to get 3-5 out of my laptop since it just use it for email and internet on the road.

I used my 933 MHz PIII for five years- but then again, I also stayed with the same version of Sonar from 2002 until this year.
I built a system with a 3500+ last year. Normally, this would have lasted a while, but I saw the advantages of going multicore, and socket 939
multicores were getting hard to find. My latest is a 4600x2 (socket AM2); I built it in January.

I don't see myself upgrading from this one for a while; it's plenty fast for what I need it to do.

ew

I replace my computer at least three times a day. Of course, I never actually record any music, but I always have the latest technology.

It's been long enough I don't remember but it seems like two years or so. I did upgrde the CPU to a 3.2 ghz P4 and add a second gig of RAM last year. And I just put a new power supply in it. So my systems are never finished the same year I start on them. I have hit the wall on CPU power I can add to this motherboard so I'll be starting over next time. I hope I can build a new one in the next year, I feel like I'm behind with all the core duo and quad talk out there. Sonar works great on my system but I'd like to see what Sony Vegas would do on a quad

ORIGINAL: Jessie Sammler

I replace my computer at least three times a day. Of course, I never actually record any music, but I always have the latest technology.

Great fun, Jessie... Great fun... That really made me laugh

About 2 years sounds right to me. That's about how long it takes for my HD's to start wearing out and technology to leapfrog itself.