Jon said:
My, aren't we snippy today.
Yes. It comes of having words put into my mouth that I never said. I can
cause enough trouble by myself, I don't need any help ;-)
The fact remains that the myth of "software rot" isn't entirely a
myth, especially in an Internet-connected computing society. For
example, a Windows 98 computer running on a 200 MHz processor that
was "fine" in its day for web browsing would not be able to browse
the web today, there's simply too much bloat on web pages. In the
business world, IT decisions are made behind the backs of those using
a particular PC, sometimes by second party business partners,
requiring software updates that in turn require hardware updates.
Fair point, and I agree, but these would be an example of changing
requirements. To balance this, lots of companies have old computers running
basic connections to a company database in their factory or warehouse or
something. And let us not forget that talking about Windows 98 or Windows
3.1 being viable today is an extreme example (though I bet you wouldn't have
to go that far to find a business using them).
There are lots of businesses using Windows 2000 quite happily, to use a more
reasonable example.
The notion of a computer doing everything one needs it to over a long
period of time meaning doing the same tasks it was originally
assigned to do is extremely unrealistic, and is reserved for a few
dedicated services like DNS, or for a tiny few bunch of consumers who
will never use a computer for anything more than Microsoft Word and
instant messaging. Maybe throw in the MAME crowd since that's vintage
anyway.
Indeed but I wasn't talking about extreme examples. In fact, I wasn't
talking about the computer at all, I was talking about the operating system,
and the rush to upgrade from the current version to the new version. And I
stand by what I said.
