'Most notably, they are portable, need to stand alone without other helper devices, function as complete computers, and are upgraded approximately every 1-2 yea

'Most notably, they are portable, need to stand alone without other helper devices, function as complete computers, and are upgraded approximately every 1-2 years by most users. TVs possess none of these attributes.' Each of these statements could equally apply to TVs (except, possibly, portability) and the fact that they haven't is merely circumstantial. Yes, for the first 50 years of television's existence people tended to keep the same TV around for half a decade or more. But that's because fundamental changes happened between fifteen and thirty years apart - the switch from black and white to color, then the switch from broadcast to cable and satellite. The rate of innovation, and thus the turnover rate of individual devices, is increasing - just like with the telephone, which remained basically the same for the first several decades of its existence as well, until modern computer technology was invented. Come to think of it the same thing is possibly true of desktop computers. My family was on the same computer between 1984/85 and 1993 - a Mac 512k. Then in 1994 or 95 we got a Performa 475. That lasted for about 5 years until I got a Mac clone - a Motorola Starmax 3000, which had a PowerPC processor. This laster about 2 -3 years. Then I built my first PC - that lasted for about two years. And each year since then I've used the same computer for 1 to 2 years at a time. The turnover period halved exponentially as computers got more and more sophisticated.