They don't make software like they used to...

If you haven't already figured it out, much of the software available today is crap.

Yes, I know. I'm a software engineer. No, I don't think I'm bad at what I do. No, I don't think I'm the greatest. If it were completely up to me, and given infinite resources (most importantly time a stack of books twice the size of the one I currently own, and some good help), there wouldn't be bad software in the world.

But this isn't a rant about the poor quality of software today. It's about the folks over at http://www.oldversion.com/ .

They saw the wisdom of preserving copies of old software, which we can use today- years after it was released and abandoned.

What is that useful for? Well, for starters, if you actually own an old computer running Windows 98 SE, you can still get a decent Adobe PDF viewer that will not cripple your processor or eat up 100+MB of your hard drive. I still run version 4.05 wherever I'm forced to use Windows- I just downloaded it a minute ago for the machine I mentioned in the previous post.

Another classic is Winamp 2.81 . It came before a small hike in footprint (space it takes on your drive) and before the stupidity that was Winamp 3.x and later 5.x. Sure, if you like waiting for your music player to load, or *need* fancy graphics, go ahead and download the latest. Me, I keep the thing hidden while I'm busy working, so as long as I can install an .Ogg add-in, I'm happy.

Give them a visit and enjoy the nostalgia.