Rule of Familiarity

I’d rather keep the major problems I understand
than deal with minor problems I don’t.

One only needs to look at the evolution of Windows® from Windows® 3.11, to Windows® 95, to Windows® 98, to Windows® XP, etc. Even though there were significant improvements in each version, people were slow, much slower than Microsoft predicted, to adapt to the better systems.

I could recover from a complete system crash in Windows® 3.11 in 15 minutes. Windows® 95 took most of three hours to rebuild. Sounds bad for Windows® 95, but I only had to rebuild Windows® 95 about once a year. My Windows® 3.11 system had to be rebuilt about 3.5 times a week. Do the math. But I was familiar with how Windows® 3.11 worked to a level that I’ve never achieved with later versions—or had to. But even, I, who likes change, took a while to convince.

Change is not a reason for change.

IBM’s OS2 never replaced Windows®. It added no really new functionality.

COBOL still exists because the “C family” of languages is not enough of an improvement to rewrite old code. COBOL was enough of an improvement to rewrite all the old assembly code.

And of course there is Vista—or as my son called it: Windows® 7 Beta. Even when its considerable problems were fixed, it never was a good choice. Why change? It follows in the mold of Windows® ME, that had all the problems of a DOS based system with the benefits of DOS removed.