But most companies (in my experience, before some little punk says "but where's your data") tend to replace all their kit every 3-5 years anyway. Those "old" computers didn't suddenly get slower. Unless you're in a business where raw CPU grunt matters, there's no real reason, but they do it anyway.
It's funny, loads of companies in the late 90s ripped out their Unix CAD workstations and replaced them with high-end PCs running NT . No-one batted an eyelid at that. Now we're talking about replacing average PCs with Unix workstations and everyone's like shyeah right.
I think that cycle is a lot longer than 3-5 years now, especially with the economy the way it is. It probably was that way for a while (and was probably even shorter before that) but there seems to be little justification for it anymore. We're finally at a point where a computer from 3 years ago can do everything we need it to do today, and not too slowly either. That's a relatively new development.
It's funny, loads of companies in the late 90s ripped out their Unix CAD workstations and replaced them with high-end PCs running NT . No-one batted an eyelid at that. Now we're talking about replacing average PCs with Unix workstations and everyone's like shyeah right.