I have a 10 year old desktop that cost $1,000 to build back then (1.5 GB of RAM, a 74 GB 10k RPM HDD, a 2 GHz 64bit AMD CPU, a 128 MB dedicated video card, Giga

I have a 10 year old desktop that cost $1,000 to build back then (1.5 GB of RAM, a 74 GB 10k RPM HDD, a 2 GHz 64bit AMD CPU, a 128 MB dedicated video card, Gigabyte motherboard, and Centurion case) that runs Windows 8 and Adobe Photoshop CS5 just fine. As long as you take care of the hardware, it will be useful for a long time. It's people who overtax their CPUs with crapware and let their systems overheat (not dusting, bad air flow, etc) which causes their hardware to degrade. I don't have licenses to run newer software, but I'm betting that desktop could handle it.