I'm of two schools of thought on this: 1) Some people want to buy new things; just as they don't need a /new/ car, they'll buy one anyway. It's "nicer." More applicable, I ALWAYS see people buy a LOT more computer than they need. People who want to cruise the web and do email do not need a US$3000 monster computer. There should be some kind of exchange program where kids who'd actually use those machines get to have them, and the well-off adults who would have over-purchased instead get the kids' hand-me-down computers with a wall-scroll proclaiming how awesomely generous and considerate the donating person is.
2) Specific to MS Office upgrades, it's much like a virus. When someone in a company upgrades their suite, there are features and behaviors that are inconsistent between versions. So it's an arms-race - if /anyone/ upgrades, /everyone/ has to upgrade. Even in cases where it's not true, there are so many instances where it has been historically true that when someone notices that the versions are different, they upgrade out of fear that an incompatibility may disable them at some point in the future.
Thanks for those ideas. I may just ebay one. I'd never deal with any of those OEM creeps, but for some reason eBay seems a little more safe and/or respectable.
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Date: 2007-06-01 04:37 am (UTC)1) Some people want to buy new things; just as they don't need a /new/ car, they'll buy one anyway. It's "nicer." More applicable, I ALWAYS see people buy a LOT more computer than they need. People who want to cruise the web and do email do not need a US$3000 monster computer. There should be some kind of exchange program where kids who'd actually use those machines get to have them, and the well-off adults who would have over-purchased instead get the kids' hand-me-down computers with a wall-scroll proclaiming how awesomely generous and considerate the donating person is.
2) Specific to MS Office upgrades, it's much like a virus. When someone in a company upgrades their suite, there are features and behaviors that are inconsistent between versions. So it's an arms-race - if /anyone/ upgrades, /everyone/ has to upgrade. Even in cases where it's not true, there are so many instances where it has been historically true that when someone notices that the versions are different, they upgrade out of fear that an incompatibility may disable them at some point in the future.
Thanks for those ideas. I may just ebay one. I'd never deal with any of those OEM creeps, but for some reason eBay seems a little more safe and/or respectable.