I was cleaning last weekend, and came across my college 12Mhz PC/AT. It has a 40Mb Seagate hard drive ($425, new!) and monochrome Hercules graphics. We used that computer into the late 90s; eventually, it’s sole purpose was to run DOS Quicken. We still miss that version — it was fast, minimalist, focused, and did the job very well. If they had added Internet statement downloads, we’d probably still be using it.

Now, Quicken drives me nuts — we’ve “upgraded” a few times, only because Intuit has stopped supporting our old versions. Rarely have we gotten any features we actually want; usually all I get is Kellie’s (justified) complaining about learning a new UI.

This is the core problem with the old software model: the publisher is incented to keep selling you new versions, even if you don’t really need them. I’m still using Office 2000, and in my view, it’s “feature complete”. Office 2008 doesn’t have anything I need or want.

Adobe’s PhotoShop Elements is the worst offender: I bought 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 an then gave up. In successive versions, there were few new features, lots of gratuitous UI redesign, and in some cases, features taken out!

Subscription models are the future, clearly.