The curse of software upgrades

Back in the 80's and 90's we looked forward to new versions because of all the cool new features. But all software reaches a point of perfection where more features just make it less useful. Unfortunately, putting out a new release is the primary way to keep revenue coming in so software publishers keep adding features that have less and less value.

Take Excel. The 2003 version continues to be a great version. The 2007 version introduced the ribbon which essentially crippled productivity. It was as if Microsoft decided to dumb down the program to the lowest level of competence and ignore the power users. Like many, I had developed a large library of custom icons in the tool bar that launched frequently used macros. Editing the button image helped define the button. Amazingly the new 2007 version essentially eliminated this capability so I had to uninstall 2007 and go back to 2003.

As an Excel power user all I wanted in a new version was the expansion of row and column limits and a completely new macro language that was designed to specifically work with spreadsheets and not a clumsy, hard to follow VB language.

I recently downloaded the latest version of Snagit from Techsmith. This was a very useful program 10 years ago. Now it's so bloated with useless features it is no longer simple to use for simple screen captures. I finally found something free that does all I need so I have dumped Snagit.

I wish there was a way to just pay annually for the use of a program so the endless addition of useless features would slow.