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Receipe for "future proofing" your investments in technology.
#1. Modularize! - That means keeping data and processing separate. Put you data on a flexible data storage and your computing on another machine. An example would be keeping your music on an external hard drive and the playing software on you computer. you plug in your external hard drive into the computer to play music. Why? Example. Computer goes kaput, (or you just need/want to upgrade your computer), you get a new computer and plug the external hard drive into the new computer. Off you go. Same should the external hard drive fail. Copy the backup (you do have a backup?) and plug it in. Plug it in and once again, off you go.
#2 Don't buy unmodularizable equipment, no matter how fancy it is. Otherwise, you've just stuck your neck in a noose.
#3 Use open source answers as much as you can. The odds are much better that you can do data conversions to new standards in the future with open source.
#4 Use popular data formats. Some obscure data format may actually be better, but you'll have better, more common support if your data is in a common format.
#5 Replacable batteries! Buy the gadget with a replaceable battery whenever possible. And the more common the battery, the better. A gadget may have a replacable battery, but if nobody makes a replacement, it doesn't mean anything. (AAA! AAA! Use NiMH rechargables.)
#6 Don't buy or use "activation required (phone home) software". If you do, you are dependent on somebody else to let you use the software in the future as you end up changing machines. And they may not let you. Someday, Microsoft is going to turn off activation of XP machines. Then you'll be flat out of luck running XP, for example.
#7 Upgrade only when you see a benefit. If it's already working, you don't have to fix it. You're just swapping one set of bugs for another. You already know the current bugs...
#8 Avoid non-local storage. Your data is then no longer under your control! If the non-local business keeping your data fails, you lose you data. Bad show!
Example of all these combined - I have 4 (AZTAK/BeBook One) 6" readers. They have replacable batteries and use SD card for data storage. I keep all my books on a SD card (with backups). When one machine dies, I'll just start using the next one, until it dies. I'll probably use them until I croak. The battery used is a Nokia cellphone battery. They're more likely to me manufactured that most other batteries, and are designed to be user replacable. See how this works? Modular, (data separate from the computer), no "phone home" activations required, the data is kept (mostly) in standard, open source standard (Epub), replacable battery so I'm not dependent on the battery not failing. that's about as "future proofed" as you can get.
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