As someone who just picked up a reconditioned six-year-old, i7-equipped ThinkPad for a hell of a lot less money than what it would have cost brand-new, I have to laugh. It may not be the Latest and Greatest, but it's still speedy enough to handle anything I'm going to throw at it. The CPU performance curve has flattened out in the last few years, to the point that it's not worth spending lots of money for a modest performance gain.

I'll let someone else take the depreciation hit.