Accelarated Obsolescence!

I get a rather aggravated by how often IT manufactures have over the years introduced "New Editions" of products when the old ones were still working perfectly. In most cases they persuade us to get the new which are supposedly more sassy and avant garde and of course.new to the market. I am currently using MS Windows 10 Suite at work, which replaced Windows 7 and Prior to that Windows XP. To be honest I do not get that much difference other than the icons (for example representing the folder)are different. The programs' ribbons on the component programs are mush more elaborate on the 10 giving us more ways of using the programs. Like many other unfortunate consumers of these products, I have to re-learn to navigate a program I  have used for years. But many of the bells and whistles  are rarely used by a mundane computer user. Microsoft (the manufacturer) and the computer vendor shall we say Best Buy, will tell us that after all they are all bundled in the suite. By the way many of the programs on the suite new or old are NEVER used by a mundane computer user! How often does he/she use MS Infopath; MS Groove;  or MS Onenote or even MS Publisher! which are found on MS. Office Suite.

To view accelerated obsolescence from another angle, I have just thought about how many cell phones my family and I have thrown away in the last six years many of which were still working well.. I was on the New York subway one day and I observed a gentleman in a nice suit using my first edition cell phone and it was working properly! Such stubborn reluctance to waste products is not peculiar to New York. I visited a relative in Germany about three years ago and I had to use their underground metro in Bonn. To my surprise, again a well dressed gentleman was using our first edition Nokia cell phone! It was also working perfectly or so it seemed.

Is there a conspiracy theory among manufacturer and marketers to promote consumerism at the buyers expense? By the way, there is a host of other products in our markets that fit this theory. Perhaps respondents to this blog will provide us with some.

Akai


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