Unless you play games most people do not need a reason to upgrade. Though that is why consoles do so well. They do not need to worry about if the spec is up to playing the game. If it is a Xbox 360 game it will play. Even if it is 5 years old. Simples. As for why BBC Micros are used? Well if it does its job then why change? I would imagine that as it will have been written in house it is simple to support as well, plus plenty of cheap replacements on eBay if necessary.

Hmm, I've not met anyone who has kept their laptop for more that a few years (that I can think of), but then again most people I know would buy a cheap laptop (<£500), so maybe that is the reason that cases break and things go wrong quicker?

My girlfriend's eldest brother has just replaced his laptop, because it died (a 1Ghz Celeron with 512MB RAM, it ran Windows 2000). Her middle sister replaced her old PC last year, a Pentium 233 with Windows 98 and 16MB RAM. Her niece replaced her laptop this year, she had a Celeron 1.2Ghz Toshiba, with Windows XP, from around 2003.

Most of the family and friend's PCs I get to look at, because they are having problems, are well over 5 years old, most are incredibly under specified, even for when they were purchased.

At work, the average machine was an Athlon XP 1.2Ghz with 256MB RAM, when I started. I have managed to upgrade most of them to at least 512MB RAM and many have 2GB.

The new Mac Pro's are up on the UK Apple store.
Didn't the previous generation RAID card's enable SAS connections? The new one doesn't (and can't be used with the SSD's either).

It has just occured to me, why is Apple claiming the BluRay licensing is too complex/expensive? They sit on the bloody licensing body for BluRay, surely it is easier for them to licence the technology than companies which don't belong to the licensing body?