It does help if you or someone you know has the technical knowledge to pull a computer apart and put it back together again.

That is one of the difficulties with a laptop, that you cannot easily replace components. However, as you say, they are energy efficient and if you’re using them for fairly light tasks (such as browsing the internet and word processing) and take good care of them they can last a long time.

Often people replace laptops and other electrical equipment not because they don’t work any more but because there is a newer, better, faster version available and they just HAVE to have it. Mobile phones are a perfect example of this. Friends laugh at mine and Jez’s mobiles because they’re really old and don’t do anything exciting like take vidoes but they work fine and all we need them for is to make calls and text messages – so why replace them?

It sounds like your laptop is doing fine, hang on to it

With regards to computers, its great that you replace components as opposed to the whole computer, which I can imagine many people do due to having no knowldge about how computers work.

I personally use a laptop which is quite old but energy efficient yet sometimes frustratingly slow (compared to my work computer). However I will not replace it until its last dying breath, but if something does go wrong with my laptop is it easy to get components to fix it? As I want to make sure that it keeps lasting me (perhaps it may even become a museum piece one day!LOL. If I manage to keep holding onto it)