Not true. I was talking to a family friend this morning about upgrading their 5-year old PC to something with a Pentium 4. Not everyone already has multi-GHz CPUs that are "fast enough". The installed base of 5-year old computers is quite large. Back then, the top-of-the-line was a 300MHz Pentium II, while mainstream users were still buying 200MHz Pentium MMX chips. These are just *barely* fast enough to check email and browse the Internet, but for the most part, a computer built with a Pentium MMX chip has a tough time keeping up with many newer apps. They are not fast enough to play a DVD without hardware acceleration. They take 10 times longer to encode an MP3. They can't play 3D games, they wouldn't be able to run any of those photo editors worth a damn, and they are still stuck with Windows 95, which is incompatible with most new hardware.
Five years ago is not all that long ago. More people are considering upgrading their equipment. Even three or four year old PCs can use an update. Sure, Sally Spreadsheet may not think she needs a new PC, but most of the newer generations of consumers do! Thousands of college students every year end up buying new PCs. The same to a lesser extent goes for high school students. It's easy to justify a new computer to Dad when its intended use is supposedly school work. The mistake that most people make is that they think that all users are exactly the same. "Sally Spreadsheet" is supposed to characterize the "common" household wife who wants to write Word documents for her PTA meeting, and send an email to her cousins in Vermont. Guess what? Not all computer users are like Sally Spreadsheet. That's why it's senseless to predict computer demand. Most of the data that you would need to make an educated observation is not within your grasp. Pretending to be an armchair expert only makes you look stupid to those of us who know better.
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