When will my T60p become obsolete in 3 years?

I recently bought a T60p (2623DDU) with a T2500 2.0GHz Core Duo processor, 2GB ram and an ATI FireGL V5200 with 256MB. I really like this notebook, especially the UXGA flexview screen.
I want to keep this notebook for 3 or 4 years and am worried that the configurations will become obsolete after 2 years because of rapid advancements. Have any of you guys owned a Thinkpad for more than 3 years that you still use?
Thanks for your help.

 

i have owned a VAIO for 5 years and still working, I switched to thinkpad because my vaio became obsolete. It is 550Mhz processor and 128 Ram

 

What do you plan to use the computer for that will dramatically change in 3 years? CAD software advances every year, but remains mostly backward compatible. My 3 year old desktop still has no problem running SolidWorks 2007. Your regular OS & Office requirements should stay the same. The only thing that will really change in 3 years are games, but you should still be able to play most high end games if at reduced resolution & detail.

I think 3-4 years is about the right life cycle for a laptop.

 

Keep in mind that up until vista, computers ranging from build dates in 97 to 98 were able to run Windows XP just fine. That is almost a 10 year span! You will probably see a similar life of your current laptop, unless the LCD or other vital part kicks the bucket before that.

 

^^Agreed

Your laptop has good enough spec to run Vista smoothly. Therefore you should at the very least be able to surf the web, do word processing, play and burn DVDs, run your current applications & games and some future games until your laptop dies of old age or when it comes time to upgrade to the next OS.

Otherwise until the time comes that you want to run an application that your laptop no longer meets the minimum requirements you are good to go.

 

I use my laptop to surf the web, spreadsheet (EXCEL) analysis, statistial (SAS) analysis, and to play World of Warcraft.

Glad to see that some of you are still working on your older laptops with no problems.

 

My 7 year old Dell running Windows 2000, Pentium III, 250MB RAM, feels intolerably slow these days. Of course I never noticed this when I first got that Dell. In fact at the time I actually thought that Dell was running pretty fast. Goes to show you how your expectations change over the years with newer technology.

 

Exactly.

Plus, just because modern computers get better, doesn't mean your's gets any worse!

Also, if you keep waiting, you'll never buy it!

That said, whenever possible, get the latest and greatest.

 

If you can afford it.

 

To me, for office task such as excel, outlook and then web browsing, DVDs and light photo touch; Pentium M is more than capable to handle all of that.

I think computer industry is mostly driven by games vendor. Unless you are going in to it, there is no reason to upgrade your equipment. 4-5 years is still an acceptable period.

Heck, even in the office application itself there is not much improvement.

 

I fully agree with this!
Also note that even though most common applications requirements don't change dramatically in 3 years, the small change add up to your new expectations.
I have been using my T42 for over 2+ years and it still runs many of the things I trow at it (even some heavy rendering in CAD drawings from time to time)