Wednesday, February 8, 2017

My 15- to 20-year-old computer programs run just fine on Windows 10, but a 2010 program? Nah

    We all know that software compatibility is a big problem for those upgrading to a new operating system; programs that worked on Windows XP might not work on Windows 7 or Windows 10. The only solution is software upgrades costing anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand dollars per program, or application as they are called these days.
    Does anybody besides me find it a bit odd that these programs just simply quit working every time Microsoft has a major upgrade of Windows? Either Microsoft is designing their operating systems so that they won't run old software, or more likely, software manufacturers are designing their software so that minor changes in operating systems will render the software completely non-functional.
    I'm sure I speak for a lot of people when I say that I don't need "new and improved." Windows XP set the standard for operating systems; I do understand it had some security flaws and perhaps it had to go, but we, the computer-using public, did not need any non-security-related changes or improvements to Windows XP; once the apex is reached, the apex is reached.
    But we've had change whether we wanted it or not, first with the incredibly dreadful Windows Vista system, then with the XP-like Windows 7, and then the laughably disastrous Windows 8, which was so bad Microsoft skipped all the way to Windows 10 in an effort to distance itself from the tubercular  dog (what kind of stupid fool doesn't include a "start" button?). With each of these upgrades, fairly new software releases simply quit working, and the only way to make them work again was to pay a few hundred dollars per program for an upgrade.
    As evidence of my assertion that modern programs are designed to fail when software is upgraded, I would point to the fact that I have several very old programs that I have continued to use since Windows 98 was the new thing. These programs run just fine on Windows 10 because, unlike newer programs, they were not designed to fail.
    I quit using Corel Draw years ago, but it has a few features that I like to use, and I decided today  to see if I could install my old Corel Draw 7 onto my Windows 10 platform. It installed without a hitch and runs just fine. Corel Draw 7 was released Oct. 8, 1996, but based on my search of the Internet, versions of Corel Draw from 2010 and perhaps even 2012 will not work on Windows 10.
    A few years ago I was upgrading computers and tried to load my tried-and-true Photoshop 6, issued in September 2000, with no luck; my computer said Photoshop 6 was not compatible with Windows 7. In a Hail-Mary effort I finally just copied the Windows 6 folder from the old computer and plopped it down in the new one and then put a shortcut on my start menu. It worked like a charm. I'm sure Adobe has made improvements in their program since 2000, but I would rather have a program that I paid for once that was a little out of date than one with a few extra bells and whistles that had to be upgraded every three years. Many newer versions of Photoshop -- save for the very newest -- simply will not work on Windows 10.
    Few companies have been more draconian in their copy protection schemes than QuarkXPress, but as luck would have it they released one edition of their software that didn't require jumping through a million hoops to use -- QuarkXPress V -- which just happens to be the version I have (I actually bought a newer version, but didn't like it as much as Quark V). Various Internet message boards are wet with the tears of people unable to get their Quark versions to install and run on Windows 10, but when I upgraded my computer Quark V loaded just fine. QuarkXPress V was released in 2002.
    As a practical matter, we don't need any more improvements in operating systems; we don't need "better" software. What we need is for software makers to stop intentionally writing their programs so that they won't be able to run should there be future operating system changes.
    If my 20-year-old computer programs will run just fine on Windows 10, then versions of the same software released five or six years ago ought to be able to run as well. If not, the failure is intentional and somebody ought to go to jail.

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