[florianix]

What I was refering to is the "private" user. However... video compression is a good point if done often.
Those "prvate users" now even switch to Ipads instead of PCs (because it also does the job).

Sure, as a professional user (math and signal processing simulations, compiling FPGAs, electrical and field simulations), I also need (and have) plenty processing power installed. But I don't need to update as fast as I needed to some years ago - also there.
There have been times where I needed new machines each year. Now I can use them much longer.

Some of my friends who play the recent games (I don't) always have the latest hardware (they need to upgrade the graphics cards with *each* new generation to get the maximum effects and don't have to reduce quality or get unplayable slow speed).