[John Rogers]

If you are a "gamer" then maybe a year, otherwise 2 to 3 years is about what I see with my computer science students. I usually recommend to build your own and then when the time comes a video card can be upgraded w/o the whole machine and you keep the drives, motherboard and CPU/ When a game comes along that needs more power, a newer CPU and possibly motherboard is cheaper than a whole machine. Many of my students are building one of the new Intel I7 CPU machines with Asus motherboard, Windows 7 and either ATI video feeding a 40 inch monitor or Nvidia card. I figure they'll be happy for about a year?!