It's a 2011 Lenovo T520, I bought it refurbished. I'm only expecting 2 to 3 years. What do you think?
Added (1). http://www.amazon.com/...ge_o00_s00
Added (2). I got a really good deal + free extra RAM, so I didn't mind buying it.
Added (3). I will be using it for programming and music editing.
2-3 years probably it will work. Always better to buy new.
Should last for 5 years, if you take good care of it
It's impossible to say without knowing what your going to be using it for.
general use, the battery is the first to go on laptops, around 2-3 years before it needs replacing, so depending on the company that refurbished it, they might have replaced the battery (hope they did, their expensive) and you'll get 2-3 years out of it, or the battery is used, so anyones guess on the life of it.
Lenovo also have a battery program that may double the life of the battery, depending on if the previous user used it, you might get a few more years out of the battery.
the HDD is next to go, you'll have on average use, 5-6 years (that's around 4-7 hours a day use).
if you have the one with the Intel HD 3000 graphics, it should be okay for light-moderate gaming, it also has a decent CPU.
For web browsing or word processing, it should last 4-5 years. For video intensive things, like games, you will be lucky if some run at all, else expect a year or two then the hardware will be so outdated, modern games will not run at all…
Perhaps. For all you know in four months the motherboard stops working. Never a good idea buying older refurbished products. That processor is over 4 years old. The heat stress associated with that processor is especially troubling.
Apart from the battery, and if you don't need it to be mobile so you can just plug it in, the hardware doesn't have a set limited life. In IT, it's the software that drives change.
So long as it does what you want it to do, don't worry. Just back up your files to an external source.