I believe in only buying things I really need and using them until they are no longer usable.

Then I sell them for a really low price to give them a second life in another household. Leaving devices lying around unused until they become electronic waste is a sin against the environment.

Computers these days are fast enough for almost everything I want to do, except running big LLMs locally. I'm running a used workstation given to me by a friend a few years ago. I tend to run things into the ground. I'm not hugely worried about security, as I'm retired, and pretty much have nothing worth stealing.

I use Backblaze to keep my data safe, and it's saved my bacon more than once.

I'll be switching to Linux once Windows 10 goes EOL for good. I've got to figure out how to migrate away from WikidPad, or fix it to work with Linux before that date. It's the thing that stopped me a few years ago when I had to migrate back.

I try to keep fairly up to date. Selling old stuff to offset the cost of the new thing, while it still has some decent value in it. That said, my upgrade intervals have increased over the past several years. I still need to feel like I'm getting something out of the upgrade.

I did find out the other day one of my Apple TVs is obsolete according to Apple's website. But it still does everything I need and seems to still get updates (which makes me question its obsolete status). I don't see the newer model doing anything I can't do on my current one, so I'm not going to bother upgrading until that changes somehow.

It wasnt that long ago I was using a 16 year old IBM Thinkpad. Wrote a lot of good code on it. It could barely run MATE/Debian.

My policy is that if it contains any closed-source drivers or firmware, then as soon as the manufacturer stops providing updates for those things, it's time to replace it.

Around 7 years. I don’t update software that often either (I’m usually 2 versions or so behind, always)

I use Ubuntu LTS on my older hardware. My file and password management strategies are not tied to a particular machine, OS, or vendor. When I buy a new machine, I configure it by hand rather than loading it up with cruft from an old one. Good luck.