Compatibility of old(ish) Software with Windows 7

[Davis, David]

Robert, 
Not wanting to be "on your case" /grins/ but you obviously have a fair amount of IT expertise - many users don't, and I don't think the approach you are recommending is going to suit them.

Using legacy software is generally going to lead to compatibility problems (both with files people want to work on, and with the operating system).
Additionally, vendors support current software with security fixes - whereas legacy software is left unpatched.
And newer versions will tend to be compiled to take advantage of newer processor instruction sets (and 64 bit architecture, ahem ;)   ... so can work harder/better/faster/longer etc.

I've done more than one 'data centre migration' type documentation contract in the past few years, 
Where companies were trying to migrate thousands of servers and apps, and were having real problems because they had important business processes tied to legacy software (where people had taken a "not broken, so don't fix it" approach to upgrades), and had ended up leaving themselves stranded high and dry with no easy upgrade process to new hardware and OS platforms. It is generally a false economy, either on the enterprise or the individual scale.

David


Message: 3
Date: Tue, 25 Feb 2014 09:19:22 -0800
From: Robert Lauriston <robert at lauriston.com>
To: "framers at lists.frameusers.com" <framers at lists.frameusers.com>
Subject: Re: Compatibility of old(ish) Software with Windows 7
Message-ID:
	<CAN3Yy4C8Zpk+4FPpWH1zrYmnEq_kV43tf0q1XxC=PCnyP+xchQ at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

I own FrameMaker 6, Acrobat 8, Photoshop 5, Illustrator 7, and various more obscure apps of similar vintage. They all work fine for my purposes and upgrading would be not just a waste of money but a waste of time having to get used to UI changes.

Buying a newer version of something because I needed it to work with a client's docs is the main reason I've upgraded, but I haven't freelanced with my own software in a long time.

Unicode was added in FrameMaker 8, which remains the high-water mark for that codeline.



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