Originally Posted by
oneant
I agree with the business aspect, as well as historical data/compliance/legal reasons for keeping "antiquated" data formats readable, however, let's focus on the very specific example of the OP.
Agreed, but we have no idea if the OP's data was business data or not.
There's a learning curve just to understand, install, configure and use the software to allow the use of the legacy app.
Hell, I'd rather migrate to a new app than go through all that.
I didn't find it to be that complex, but it depends on circumstances. Sometimes latest-and-greatest, sometimes an older more known or stable tool works better.
If you allow your software to migrate along with the hardware, you stay in the realm of "current" and "supported".
Support is non-existent on old apps, but then again, after 15 years, the bugs and workarounds are also pretty much known.
Anyone that chooses to use apps like Word Perfect should have a laptop to match so that we can all spot you on the plane.
Sorry...I mean on the sailing ship.
Easy enough to find -- look for the ones calmly working in a stable environment that doesn't crash vs the ones swearing at Windows 8 because it just ate their presentation
In the end, RFC1925, Paragraph 2, Item 1 sums it up:
It Has To Work