Those in the know understand that a computers lifespan is about 3 years. Mine is 5 years old.
I've been wanting to upgrade my computer for about 3 years now. So many things have changed. I'll list a few
RAM
I'm running pc100 currently the new hotness is DDR2. Ok I've missed 2 major ram upgrades. DDR, and RIMM.
CPU
I'm running a 3200 XP. Current hotness FX 55 939 chipset. Significance here is the 939 chipset. AMD will be moving all of it's chips to the 939 chipset. This solves several problems and unifies mb options.
HD
I'm running ata 100 current hotness is SATAII with ncq. Significance is the ncq here. Old HDs get data in the order requested where ncq will get them in the most effective method. This will make hd access seem much faster without having more bandwidth, or faster drives. I'm VERY excited about this
MB
Mobos are getting quite a few makeovers. Intel is going with a new BTX format to help reduce heat. Their cpus are running hot and AMD is loving the fact that they don’t need to go to btx. Matter o fact, btw could cause them problems because of how the RAM is situated. Nvidia nforce 2 . Like it or not it seems BIOS will be replaced with EFI. There is the upcoming Matrix RAID and wireless usb. Lastly we have PCI express slated to replace the old and busted pci, and agp slots.
If you are pondering when to upgrade your computer, I'd suggest doing what I'm doing. Wait until NCQ is on the AMD, AND when dual core AMD 64s are available. The dual core is the next really big thing in chips and to miss that would be, well, so last week.