The hardware of the day is always a tricky matter that you need to contend with. On the one hand, you have got plenty of options on your plate when it comes to new hardware. But on the other hand, by the time you get any kind of a new purchase out of the store and to your car, it is going to be about as new and different as an 8 track tape player. So your chances of impressing anybody or having a shiny new thing for any significant length of time or pretty low, in our age of things being out of date an hour after somebody has tweeted them.
Of course, at some point you are going to want to upgrade what you have. As anybody who is still using a Commodore 64 could tell you, you can only slug it out with the same hardware for so long before it becomes more of a burden than an asset to you. And no matter how much you may have spent on your hardware during the Reagan years, the Great Communicator is gone. In the same way, we must also put aside our great and beloved (and ancient) hardware, and look to something new to rule our days.
Of course, it is definitely possible to upgrade too quickly. If you upgrade more than once every three or four years, you are just throwing money into a hole. While technology moves quickly, unless you are a hardcore gamer with a big personal gaming budget and a burning need to have the very best, it is just too much money to be putting into new hardware at such short intervals. So unless something terrible happens to your computer, it is not a good idea to go less than three years without an upgrade. If you didn’t do well when you bought, live with your mistake.