I need to know how many PC purchasers open up their machine to upgrade
their hardware, whether it be the processor, motherboard, hard drive,
RAM, or any other substantial component (i.e. I'm not concerned with
mouse or keyboard upgrades). The answer would ideally be expressed
as..."xx% of all pc users upgrade their hardware within x years of
their purchase."
I will need a source citation with the answer.
Thanks and good luck!

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Request for Question Clarification by bobbie7-ga on 07 Jul 2005 15:31 PDT

Hello racecar99,  

Please take a look at the following information.


From  a report from the Microsoft User Experience (MSX) team: 
Posted May 07, 2004


?The User Experience team includes the people writing Help for the
next version of Windows. They're conducting a long term study on the
computing habits of 5,500 home PC users. The researchers examined the
same question raised by the MVPs: Given that hard drives and RAM are
now sold at Best Buy and Walmart, are more consumers attempting
hardware upgrades? ?

Their answer: No

?Only 5 percent of users in the study upgraded RAM and none upgraded
hard drives in the last 9 months. To be fair, the research report came
out in March and it acknowledges that its data comes from a small time
period in the 4.5 year average lifespan of a PC. On the other hand,
home users in the MSX study are expected to be a bit more advanced
than average home users.?

http://weblogs.asp.net/expertzone/archive/2004/08/23/219071.aspx

In addition the average PC user will upgrade, or purchase a new PC
about every two years.
http://www.kingstonphoto.com/index.asp?p=3392

On average most users upgrade or replace their systems every three years.
http://www.yuhsg.org/Technology@YUHSG/technology_gift_opportunity.htm

Does this information serve your purpose?

Thanks,
Bobbie7

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Clarification of Question by racecar99-ga on 07 Jul 2005 17:10 PDT

Thanks for the response, Bobbie. Your research is interesting, but
does not really answer the question as specifically as I need. You
have quoted a Microsoft source that tells me that only 5% of a
specific user study group had upgraded their RAM and 0% of the same
group had upgraded their hard drive in the previous 9 months. But it
still doesn't tell me what percentage of all users will upgrade their
machine with any type of upgrade throughout the ownership period of
their PC. The piece from the Kingston website is too vague to be
useful at all.

Unfortunately I need that specific level of certainty in the answer,
since I am going to use the data to do an ROI calculation for a
customer, and if I were to use your data I would be no further ahead
than I am already in my own findings. Perhaps it is an "unanswerable
question", but I was hoping for a clearer answer.

Thanks.

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Request for Question Clarification by bobbie7-ga on 07 Jul 2005 17:16 PDT

Racecar99,

Does any of the following information help?

"A recent omnibus survey by Guideline Research, the market research
arm of FIND/SVP, found that 60 percent of survey participants said
they have no near-term plans to upgrade their PC. At the same time,
less than 30 percent said they plan to upgrade or replace their PC
within the next two years."

"The study also found that nearly 40 percent of respondents said their
PC ran on a Pentium 4 processor, while approximately 25 percent said
they didn't know which processor their PC was using."
http://www.personaltechpipeline.com/home_auto/55300549

Other data collected reveals how IT decision-makers are allocating
hardware budgets for next year:

29 percent was the average (statistical mean) portion of 2005 budget
expected to be spent to "expand" data center hardware
28 percent was the average to be spent to "upgrade existing" hardware 
23 percent was the average to be spent on hardware service and support
http://www.dmreview.com/article_sub.cfm?articleId=1015838

"The survey, comprised mostly of U.S. (44.6 percent) IT managers or
directors (16.7 percent) from companies that ranged in size from less
than 100 to more than 1,000 employees, found that, overall, 72 percent
planned to replace their PCs, however only a tiny 2.5 percent were
going to switch all their old units for new ones. The bulk of the
respondents (30.6 percent) were replacing 11 to 25 percent of their
computers, while 21.8 percent planned on upgrading only 10 percent of
their units."
http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/hardware/article.php/3309081

Thanks,
Bobbie7

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Clarification of Question by racecar99-ga on 12 Jul 2005 11:04 PDT

Hi Bobbie,

Thanks for the new information. The second part of your clarification
request deals mostly with IT managers in an enterprise environment, so
that data is of little use to us. The part about the survey results
speaks about users planning on "upgrading or replacing their PC",
which to me means those users who had plans to move up to the next
level of PC, rather than opening up their machine and replacing their
existing components with newer and better ones. I think that the word
"upgrade" in your clarification request refers to the purchase of a
newer and better model, as in how a car owner would sell his existing
vehicle in order to purchase a new and improved model. Again, that
does not help us specifically answer the question regarding the % of
users that open their machines to replace components.

Thanks for your efforts.