How long does a Macbook last?

I have an iMac Intel Core Duo (early 2006), and it still does just fine with music, movies, pictures, and even some more advanced stuff like a little web development and Photoshop Elements. I'm assuming, at five years old, yours has the same Core Duo processor. I just depends what you're doing with your computer. I'll probably upgrade pretty soon so that I can run Lion, as it requires Intel Core 2 Duo or better.

The age of the computer should have no bearing on how fast or slow it is.

That is technically true. But, as a computer gets older, generally it is upgraded to a newer operating system than it came with new, and the hard drive is slowly filled up, both of which usually slow it down.

My experience with Macs is that they chug on for years, but are rendered obsolete by newer technologies. Even so, you should be able to get at least 5 years out of any computer before it's completely outpaced by later models.

Bob

perhaps latest updates/version of applications that we run on our old version Mac that slow down the machines. almost all applications promote user to upgrade to their latest release rather than stay on using the previous version.

do we have to updates both the machine and application? 😕

My 1998 G3 powerBook is still chugging along fine. It's slower than my MacBook of course because it has only a 250mhz processor and 512mb RAM. But it's good for software that runs under OS 9.1 but not 10.6.