<< > As a developer, maintaining backward compatibility is a big limitation
 > to how far you can take the next release.  Microsoft's idea of software
 > development
 > is a perpetual never ending development cycle.  At some point to make
 > revolutionary
 > jumps you have leave convention behind (read old file formats that don't
 > support new functionality).  Question every thing >>

Militch wrote:

Actually, Microsoft deliberately changes the file formats each year to make
it hard, but not impossible, to work with the previous versions.  As soon as
someone in the office, or an external user that you exchange data with, gets
the new version, you have to upgrade as well.  I really like Word 95 and
Excel 95, but I can't read Excel 97 files.  I have held off a long time, but
I can't hold out forever.  How do you think Micro$oft makes so much money -
they don't ever sell anything just once.  Of course, not to be too blatant
about it, they do add new stuff each year.  Trouble is, less than one user in
a thousand uses all the features, and if they just added the new
functionality as a patch upgrade, with some appended structures in the data
files to manage the extra capability, their applications sales would drop by
95%.

Regards

 
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