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james_s:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on March 20, 2020, 11:45:41 am ---Software doesn't wear out but hardware does and software will always need to be modified to run on newer hardware. Try installing MS-DOS and 3.1 on a modern machine and using it to post here and watch YouTube.

--- End quote ---


The cycle is much, much longer today though. DOS/Win3.1 on a modern machine is a HUGE gap, but you can install WinXP or Win7 on a new machine in a lot of cases and you can install Win10 on a 10+ year old machine. It may not be the most painless experience but it will work.

Hardware and software used to both evolve rapidly. I remember being able to upgrade my 2-3 year old PC and get something that was dramatically faster, I could do who categories of things that the old machine wasn't capable of. It's been a LONG time since I've had that experience, even several years ago when I built a new core i7 to replace a 10 year old Pentium4 the difference was not *that* dramatic. Today it's not that a big stretch to use a 10-15 year old system for productive work, while a 5 year old machine is absolutely fine for all but high end niche stuff. That would have been absolutely unheard of in the 90s and early 2000's.
SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: james_s on March 20, 2020, 06:15:29 pm ---It's been a LONG time since I've had that experience, even several years ago when I built a new core i7 to replace a 10 year old Pentium4 the difference was not *that* dramatic.

--- End quote ---

Yeah, well I also remember going from a P4 (with HT I think) to a i7-920. For computing-intensive stuff, the difference was very significant, but for more mundane tasks, it was almost unnoticeable. So yeah it all depends on your needs.

Another major point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law

which makes hardware upgrades progressively look like they are insignificant.

But we're still seeing major improvements with the trend to add more cores. Of course it's useful only for software making full use of that. For servers, the gain is obvious. For desktop computing, it will show only with very specific software such as video or 3D rendering, intensive simulation stuff, etc.
nctnico:

--- Quote from: james_s on March 20, 2020, 06:15:29 pm ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on March 20, 2020, 11:45:41 am ---Software doesn't wear out but hardware does and software will always need to be modified to run on newer hardware. Try installing MS-DOS and 3.1 on a modern machine and using it to post here and watch YouTube.

--- End quote ---


The cycle is much, much longer today though. DOS/Win3.1 on a modern machine is a HUGE gap, but you can install WinXP or Win7 on a new machine in a lot of cases and you can install Win10 on a 10+ year old machine. It may not be the most painless experience but it will work.

Hardware and software used to both evolve rapidly. I remember being able to upgrade my 2-3 year old PC and get something that was dramatically faster, I could do who categories of things that the old machine wasn't capable of. It's been a LONG time since I've had that experience, even several years ago when I built a new core i7 to replace a 10 year old Pentium4 the difference was not *that* dramatic. Today it's not that a big stretch to use a 10-15 year old system for productive work, while a 5 year old machine is absolutely fine for all but high end niche stuff. That would have been absolutely unheard of in the 90s and early 2000's.

--- End quote ---
For the PC platform that is true. I replaced a core i730 (IIRC) with a high end Xeon a couple of years ago and the difference in processing power isn't that much. In the last decade the best performance upgrades I have done where parallel RAID and SSD.

However on the ARM platform there is huge progress. For a project I'm working on I do development on the ARM platform itself. It runs all the tools and IDE necessary. I'll admit it is a bit slower but not immensely.

james_s:
The main point is the issue of software "wearing out" is not really a thing anymore, it used to become rapidly obsolete but that has slowed to a crawl, hence the push toward subscription. They cannot entice people to shell out money for a new version every couple of years anymore because the software is mature, the 20 year old MS Office 2000 is still totally usable today, for the average home user who wants to write a document, print a newsletter, put their household budget in a spreadsheet, etc it simply does not matter. Going to subscription allows the company to keep extracting the money that would have previously been spent on new versions while not really having to deliver anything of substance. I mean what more compelling functionality can really be added to Office productivity software? It's a very mature area, it's a solved problem.
nctnico:
Agreed. On the topic of MS Office: the older Office software works much better. Try to use style formatting in the newer Word versions for example. It is a total mess compared to Word 2003 and earlier. Learning a new UI is something I can overcome but a newer version being worse compared to the older one is just sad.
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