"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in
:

In message , SC Tom
writes:

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote
in message ...
In message
31,
DanS
writes:
[]
And again, going from 32 bit to 64 bit. CPUs with new
added instruction sets and other advances in hardware
architecture can require changes to take advantages of
it.
[]
Yes, but _take advantage of_ is the significant phrase.
You should
still be able to run existing software (in the case under
discussion, printer drivers); if it doesn't _take
advantage of_ the new features, that's your problem.

If I had a car that could do 200 miles per hour, I would
accept that
I might have to pay for access to places where I could
take advantage of that capability; however, I'd be pretty
peeved if I _couldn't_ drive it on ordinary roads (and,
obviously, I'd accept that I couldn't do 200 on them).

Sort of a bad analogy; there are plenty of cars that will
go 200MPH, but you can't drive them on regular roads
without a lot of modifications (Nascar racers), and some
that wouldn't be legal no matter what you did to them (drag
racers come to mind). But I get your point :-)

OK - when I said "car", I meant "street legal car", not
grand prix engine-on-wheels (-:! There are plenty of
"supercars" that can do a lot higher speeds than are legal
in UK or US (in fact I think hardly any car on sale today
can't exceed those speeds), but are still usable on
ordinary roads. But you got my point, which was that if I
bought such a car, I'd at least expect to be able to use
it. So if I buy a super new computer with the latest OS,
I'm more than a bit cross that I can't use much software
and hardware I already own: I don't expect to get the
benefit of all the new whizzy bits of my new machine and OS
when running older hardware and software (though actually I
do expect it to do so somewhat faster than the previous
machine), but I do expect to be able to use it - and I
don't see why I shouldn't be able to.

OK, so with complete honesty, how much s/w have you actually
had to replace because it *really* wouldn't run, in any way
shape of form, from a Windows OS upgrade. (Hardware drivers
aside.)