upgrade yearly?

I'll probably upgrade every 2 years. I have a late 2010 11" ultimate and waiting on my 2012 11" ultimate.

 

Yup.....I like new sh--........And retired off apple stock so I gotta.......

 

Every 4 years for me...

 

For a $500-$800 device I may consider eating the cost of depreciation and upgrade yearly if I see what I like, alas smartphone/tablet, but definitely not for a $1200-$2500 laptop/desktop. That would have to remain on a 2-3 year cycle, as even for my current usage model most of the time it's overkill.

 

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a hard core Mac laptop enthusiast. I order the newest model at each refresh. Given the fact my Mac's get used for work and most everything else I do, being 95% paperless, it's worth it.

I like having a variety of choices in size and type. MBA's, and MBP's are my favorites. It also insures that I stay up to date via first hand experience.

All my MBA's and MBP's are CTO models, maxed out.

 

I would never upgrade every year. Once I pick a model I max it out and make sure it runs all the software and works with all the hardware I need it to. If I upgraded every year I am bound to run into compatibility issues and that would slow my work up dramatically.

Plus, being a RevA/Beta tester for new hardware is never a good way to spend your money if you don't have a lot of it to begin with.

I buy what's slated to work with what I have, then keep it until it becomes too slow to, or doesn't do what I need it to do. Then it's research into the appropriate replacement, maybe a couple of test runs, then a purchase of either that model, or the model before it depending on price and availability and if it's the best model available.

 

I make my living with computers, so I tend to be fairly current, but my upgrades are not on a set schedule. I tend to upgrade when there is a compelling performance or feature update available. This can be a little as 1 year or as much as several years with the usual being somewhere in-between.

I was very happy with my 2010 11" MBA its first year. Last year when the 2011 came out, it had the backlit keyboard and some performance improvement but wasn't compelling to me. Now my 2011 is relatively a little slower, I feel its memory constraints a little more, and the 2012 is much more compelling so this year I'll upgrade. Next year, who knows.

 

I have been replacing my laptop every 2.5-3 years going back to the late 90's. I can usually anticipate my needs well enough to specify the machine appropriately. My last notebook, a mid-2009 base model MBP 15 was no exception.

I have several computers in my house and they get updated on a rotating schedule. Next up in the rotation will be a quad core Windows machine running Server 2008R2 in a Hyper-V host role (4 guests: Small Business Server 2011, SVR2008R2/SQL Server, and a couple of Win 7 x86 VMs) - this machine is memory bound at this point.