Basic tasks, on a 10 year old machine? That's nothing. My grandma juat spent 6 years writing her manuscript for her first book. And she did it on a Colour Classic Macintosh. And she had an old Apple stylewriter printer to print it out too. And it worked perfectly. She just finished the book this year. So the computer was 14 years old when she started and 20 years old when it's finished. And mind you this is an elderly person who had little knowledge of looking after computers.
So my point is 10 years is nothing for basic tasks. Can the 10 year old computer still use the latest OS and software?
No, and 10 year old Macs won't run Snow Leopard either, so what's your point ? Way to be "Mr literal", by the way. When I say "basic" tasks, I mean such things as play movies, music, browse the net, office tasks and use competently coded audio programs that aren't resource hogs. It can still use some audio editing programs too.
And apart from the articles it takes people a lot longer to install new OS's to PC's then it does Apple computers. PC's have to worry about defragging, maleware, viruses, yearly or mothly OS reinstalls (for those who care about thair PCs), and backing up data is not as seamless as Time Machine or carbon copy cloner. And all of this takes up a lot of time. And time equals money in business. A computer that just works and does it's job on it's own with less mantainence to keep it running in ship shape in the end costs lesss to run.
I think the real problem here is the type of person who uses a PC and their level of tech education. In all the years I ran Windows, I never had one virus and can recall only one trojan variation, which was extremely well known and spread. I think you got it simply for not having a specific service turned off. As for the rest, I can't disagree with you. It was tedious having to do constant anti spyware and malware scripts, defragging etc..
I switched because I loathed Vista, and with my switch I gained a lot more than what I thought I'd be getting out of the experience. But this whole argument wasn't about anything we've said. You've totally lost track of the original point, which is that a PC can and will last as long as any Mac depending on the user, and a little bit of luck.
Doug