How do you keep a PC updated to the current or future technology?

,Without an incredible amount of money to fund such an effort, any individual is literally chasing a rainbow to even attempt staying abreast of the current speed of technology.....

R&D departments of dozens of high-tech companies are spending Billions of dollars in their pursuit of hundreds of developments in almost every phase of the digital world's gear and are constantly polishing off the "next new thing" for market....

All any individual can do is do the best they can to stay within their own particular budget and "realm of expertise" in this matter....for, trying to "stay up" is...like I said, to chase an elusive rainbow....

A good "rule of thumb" to consider... is to figure on system upgrades somewhere in the neighborhood of every three years.... going to the next "affordable" step up to what will best serve your particular purposes and needs....

One has to understand that what ever the particular system happens to be that is on the shelf at any given time... is simply the latest that is being marketed... NOT the "leading edge" of what is about to be made available....

So, either rein in your desires somewhat on this subject and live within your means... OR, go find the backing of an incredibly well funded entity that has some reason to support your efforts....

☼ ////

That is a tough question. When I built my PC, I thought I had one of the best things out there. About a month after it was running new technology started pouring out that made my system look archaic. The best thing to do is build something that can be upgraded easily in the future, and something that is stable. Just because it is new, doesn't mean it is always better. Some times new technology have stability issues and other problems. I prefer to use proven configurations, so it takes a good bit of time and research to come up with the best technology.

As far as money spent... it can be expensive to try to keep one unit up to the pace of technology. Figure out what you want from a system, do the research, then build it, and be happy for a few years.

The simplest answer is as much as your application requires it.

I still use a PentiumIII 500MHz for word processing cuz I still use Win2K and MSOffice 97.

I built it close to eight years ago. The only thing I upgraded was the harddrive. $100 bucks for 1TB now. I still use the same mouse and keyboard. It looks like Sh1t but it works for what I want it to do without any hassles.

I spent $2.5K (2.6GHz, 4GB Ram) building the latest thing available last year for gaming and video editing, with all the surround sound speakers and gaming keyboard, 21" LCD screen, etc. The Video card alone was close to $600(cheapest one I could find), even the fan casing displayed the temperature in 3D, Neon Blue LEDs.

I use both for different things. If I want to play games I would need the new expenditure. If I want to work, I just need the old one with the $100 upgrade (in eight years).

Again depends on what you need it for. The netbooks and barebone PCs now go for like $300 brand new, all-in. Even includes Keyboards and LCD screens... If you just need it for surfing, facebooking and emails. It almost doesn't make sense to built your own anymore. Let the cheap chinese prison labor do it all for you.

Unless you are a teacher or in the IT Technology field perhaps where you need to keep up with technology both hardware and software, for normal usage is it necessary to keep up, other than to be able to boast that you have the latest version of everything. Surely all software and hardware currently out is more than adequate for most people's usage.

Hello.

If you want PC software keep updated, just turn on the auto-update feature, you can update your software such as OS update, Anti-virus, and etc.

If you want your PC hardware keep in 'high-tech', make sure your RAM and videocard is high.

Join technology (PC) forum is really good to increasing your knowledge about tech, older or newer.

Might help you.