It depends upon how you treat it. Laptops are designed to be move around, but still moving them around a lot could eventually cause problems. The most likely part to go first is the hard drive, as they have a moving head and if it crashes the hard drive could be damaged.
If your laptop stays in one place then it most likely should give you years of use.
Corporations tend to refresh their laptops every three or four years. Usually, they buy them with a three year warranty and once the warranty expires feel the need to upgrade. They continue to improve and change their software, so often need newer hardware. Microsoft pushes the latest OS and since their latest OS's often require upgraded hardware they sometimes have no choice.
Consumers on the other hand, often have simpler needs. Browse the web, e-mail and typing letters or simple spreadsheet. They will often get many years use of a refurbished laptop, as their needs do not change that quickly.
It used to be that a floppy disk drive (FDD) was used for backup and sometimes transporting files. These days many laptops do not even include a FDD.
The easy to use USB thumb drives are great for backing up your laptop. The latest ones are 8GB and you can expect 16GB by the end of 2006. That is a huge amount of data. Another use is to transport files from one computer to another. There are also USB devices that have built-in security that can protect your laptop.
Expect laptops to probably get more expensive. With the huge recent recall of Dell batteries quality batteries will most likely mean more expensive batteries. Since, Sony is one of the main suppliers of batteries and they are taking a 200 million dollar hit, prices can only go up.
In additon, LCD prices have kept coming down so the LCD suppliers are in the process of reducing their capital expenditures. There has been a glut and the LCD suppliers, LG.Philips, Au Optronics and Hannstar Display have all reduced their production to minimize losses. Longer term this suggests prices should firm up.
Sprint recently announced they will, be implementing WiMax technology. WiMax is longer range wireless data tecnology in comparison to WiFi technology found in airports, some cities, colleges, coffee shops and many homes. They are planning on spending billions of dollars and indicate this new service will be designed to accommodate heavy data-usage activities like video streaming without clogging up the cellular network people rely on for phone calls.
