I would say you're right for most cases. But not for gamers or "power users":
* Game developers constantly up the ante. Try playing Battlefield 3 at 2560x1440 on Ultra on your 2008 PC and see how you go, if it even starts at all.
* Virtualisation has resulted in consolidation (for me at least). Whereas I might have had to keep around a Windows box to do testing, now I just fire up a VM on my laptop.
* Game developers constantly up the ante. Try playing Battlefield 3 at 2560x1440 on Ultra on your 2008 PC and see how you go, if it even starts at all.
* Virtualisation has resulted in consolidation (for me at least). Whereas I might have had to keep around a Windows box to do testing, now I just fire up a VM on my laptop.