Old hardware is an interesting one - the industry is set up to make old hardware uneconomic to service. The problem is that everything companies produce tends only to be tested in common systems around the time the software/hardware is being produced. So generally old hardware gets very hard to support - it tends to be incompatible with newer software. Co-incidentally this happens to be great for the industry for fueling demand for new products. The process is no doubt encouraged by the big players in the industry but would probably happen regardless even without their help. It means that often the 'cost of ownership' for old hardware is unacceptably high - like running a old porche - you can buy it cheap - but getting parts is a killer. The classic example of this I can think of personally is being asked to "help out" a friend with their old windows 95 or 3.11 box - it starts to get hard to find drivers, remember how these systems work, find compatible software etc. It usually would work out more time efficient to work for the same amount of time on contract and buy the friend a new computer! Linux is probably a bit better - maybe a little easier to find old drivers etc. But even so - getting bios patches etc. could be tricky and as mainstream Linux users move to more powerful machines one can expect support for older ones to start to slip. -- Eliot Muir, Chief Technical Officer iNTERFACEWARE mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Voice 1-416-8207050 http://www.interfaceware.com Makers of iNTERFACEWARE Chameleon "Program to the iNTERFACE not the implementation"
