On Having the Oldest Computer Around

I have gotten to the point where I have almost become embarrassed to show my computer in public. Perhaps it comes from the fact that I may just be too good a person to have had enough "problems" to send it back to the Dell company (you all know who you are,) but I have kept my old D610 that I received back in August of '05 when we were instructed that everyone needed to purchase a computer- and a Dell D610 at that. In the company's effort to constantly update, it turned out that by the following year, new students had a new Dell computer, which was different, and cooler-looking than the ones that we all got. Then the next year, yet another new Dell came out, this time with (for better or for worse) Windows Vista. On top of that, there are seemingly hundreds of QU students with Macs who, whenever asked about them will hardly cease to explain all the virtues of having one, and more importantly, the inferiority of personal computers.
The bottom line is that when I come to class, I find myself rather embarrassed every time I have to pull out my 2005 PC that is covered in stickers, missing an "H" key, cannot run without AC power, and is in need of a good dusting. Of course, when we bought the D610's, they only came with a three-year warranty, and the aforementioned problems occurred conveniently just after the expiration date. I can count on one hand the number of people I know that still have their original Dell laptop, and most of them are not in class with me.
Of course my computer is a far cry from the early days of home computers that plugged into your television set and had less memory than many i-Tunes songs, but I know that I among my first purchases when I get a real job will be a new laptop computer. In this technological climate, it seems that four years is much too long to have any computer.