Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2001/08/22
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]In message <OE47JaGh5puZTIvjqGD0000bbd0@hotmail.com>, "Mxsmanic" <mxsmanic@hotmail.com> writes: >Doug writes: > >> How long will that $600 worth of software >> be usable? > >Forever. Software doesn't wear out. > That's simply not the case. Software (and digital information for that sake) does wear out, and rather quickly too. You are correct in the sense that the bits resembling a particular piece of software do not change as the software gets older. But any piece of software depends on many external variables in order to run correctly: application interfaces, operating system interfaces, screen geometries and color representations, data representations, and so on. In order to prevent that the functionality that a particular piece of software represents does not wear out, that piece of software needs to be maintained and updated to work as the external variables change. So, when you purchase a new version of PhotoShop you are not only paying for all the new features, but also for the product to continue to be compliant with other (software) components on your computer. If you still don't believe me, then consider the following. Take any a 20 year old electronic document and see how many modern word processors that will process it. And the other way around, find your favorite 20 year old word processor and check if it will process MS Word 2000 documents. And, if by chance any of these of these old/new combinations do work, do you find the results acceptable according today's standards? I think not. BTW, these are some of the reasons why I still shoot analog film... :-)! - -- Arne