Replying to Computers getting outdated too quickly

So, at the beginning of my senior year in high school a couple years back, I bought myself a decent HP laptop, nothing too intense but still good for the year - 1 gig ram, 80 gig hard drive, 2.0 ghz processor.  At the time, I payed $1200 with a 3 year unconditional warranty. 

Well, I was just surfing dells website and realized that now you can get a 15.4" laptop with 1 gig ram, 80 gig HD, intel core duo processor for $700, and these are the base specs.  Pretty crazy how quickly technology moves, and how computers become outdated in only a year or two.