My laptop is three years old and slow but it still works. Replace it now or wait a year?

Waiting a year is the better-supported choice for a laptop that is slow but still works. The decisive point is that the device still meets the user's essential needs, so replacement is not urgent and can be treated as a planned upgrade rather than an emergency fix. Waiting also captures a realistic benefit from typical product cycles: the machine the user actually wants will likely be cheaper and better within a year, avoiding the cost of buying a compromise now. The sound decision rule is to replace when the pain of the current device clearly exceeds the value of waiting; here the current laptop remains usable and the one-year horizon has a concrete expected payoff, so the delay is strategic rather than indefinite. The strongest argument for replacing now would be if the slowdown genuinely costs about an hour per day and a current model is twice as fast, since that would create a large recurring productivity loss. However, those figures are not established by the stated facts: a laptop described as slow but still working usually does not lose a full hour daily, and a twice-as-fast claim matters less when existing needs are already handled. Therefore, while immediate replacement could be justified under a credible high-productivity-loss scenario, the more reasonable choice given the actual description is to wait a year and upgrade to the preferred machine when it is cheaper and better.