Newsflash: Home PC Owners are using their older PCs longer Why not? Throw up linux on an old box, use it for email and word processing.

<i>Nationwide, just less than half (49%) of U.S. home PCs were bought in the previous two years, where this was 61.5% only two years ago, in 2001</i>

Certainly don’t need a cutting edge machine to run basic word processing apps, despite all the zillion features added by some of the new word processors which have evolved into the virtual equivalent of a knife that has a hundred different uses (corkscrew, toothpick, scissors, nail file, etc). With the price point of desktop machines plummeting: $500 will get you a decent lowend system today, where it would have taken two or three times that five years ago.