A five-year-old laptop has seven-year-old performance, which historically has not been useful for anything more than the most basic use cases.
I just bought a MBP for my daughter who is going into college next month. I am hoping to get at least 4 years out of that machine.
I picked up a 2.16ghz C2Duo back in 2006.
If you have applecare then you're protected for 3 years, and if your laptop survives its first three years without problems it will probably last for five years, since it means that it has no faults and you treat it decently.
Five years? I'm lucky if I can get two. I'm too much of a geek, i'm always craving the newest.![]()