Some of the most ridiculous 'advice' I have seen regarding computers and obsolescence.

Firstly- No computer hardware lasts forever and sooner or later you are forced to upgrade. Photoshop is a good example. Adobe CS2 and CS3 were fairly hardware demanding to start with, but guess what? CS4 is coming out soon and the hardware requirements for that are above what the average user will already have. Buying 'down' in terms of motherboards or CPU's is not always the answer either. While you can save a few bucks by scaling those down, you create bottlenecks in another area.

One of these crucial bottlenecks is the video card/bus
Newer motherboards support SLI and PCI express 2.0
which a...

Some of the most ridiculous 'advice' I have seen regarding computers and obsolescence.

Firstly- No computer hardware lasts forever and sooner or later you are forced to upgrade. Photoshop is a good example. Adobe CS2 and CS3 were fairly hardware demanding to start with, but guess what? CS4 is coming out soon and the hardware requirements for that are above what the average user will already have. Buying 'down' in terms of motherboards or CPU's is not always the answer either. While you can save a few bucks by scaling those down, you create bottlenecks in another area.

One of these crucial bottlenecks is the video card/bus
Newer motherboards support SLI and PCI express 2.0
which are critical to video performance esp if you are an animator/video editor/graphic artist.

So how do you do it? Buy the best that you can afford to get the jobs done that you are faced with and use the system for 1-1.5 years TOPS. Do not try to hang onto older hardware as you lose value every day. SELL your system used on Ebay or Craigslist after that timeframe and recoup alot of your initial investment back. This way you can offset the cost of the latest and greatest hardware and always have the performance you need. I have built plenty of computers in my lifetime and even a few for famous people.