Processor speed used to double every 18 months. This meant that in three years your PC was effectively obsolete. However Intel has just announced that it will no longer be increasing the speed of it's CPU's. Therefore older PC's are going to be functional for a much longer time. From my own experience, any PC with a 1Ghz or faster CPU will adequately perform almost all of today's computing tasks. So enjoy your old PC... just buy as much memory as you can afford.
