I.T. is a fast changing discipline. One of the attractions for me. In general, that is a good thing but I do think the industry needs to pay more attention to backward compatability whilst forging ahead.

For example, my iMac being 5 years old would no longer receive update for the O/S or key programs, like browsers. I have blogged before that I do not like to upgrade any O/S because that is risky and in my experience rarely an improvement. Vendors bring out new O/Ss to support new hardware, in general. If the hardware isn’t changing, it is not worth the risk.

Given the software, the fact that the disk was getting full and that it was starting to run like a dog, I decided a new iMac was required. Very nice: fast, runs Maverick, copied (most of) my files over simply. However…Mavericks is so new that it is hard to find all the software I had on the old one: printer drivers being a case in point. Pages 08 file format will not load into Pages version 5, telling me I have to save in Pages 09. I mean, come on Apple, that’s only 5 years!

So I’ve concluded there is “functional zone” of systems that are newer than four years and older than one. Someone could probably draw a nice bell shaped graph which plotted functionality against years.

I would like to turn off the old system in favour of the new but it looks like I’ll have to wait until it is a bit more mature.

P.S. This blog should really be renamed. There’s not much P2V going on these days, especially for me in my current role. It’s all become kinda commodity now.