Quote:
Originally Posted by BWinmill
I suspect that part of the issue is that people want to be able to do things that you used to be able to do on hardware that used to support it. Unfortunately, that can be difficult to accomplish if old installers are taken down or if incompatibilities are introduced. Another issue is that some people are willing to make due with the slightly lower performance incurred by older hardware. Keep in mind that we're talking about buying, managing, and reading ebooks on Pentium IV's or later here -- not HD video production on similarly aged products.
I've said this before, and I'll say it again: obsolescence is largely in the perspective of the user. Some people are happy at the trailing edge. Others are satisfied with nothing less than the latest and greatest. In some cases it makes sense for businesses to draw that line, such as Microsoft deriving most of it's revenues from Windows from new hardware sales so they need to produce software which utilizes that hardware. In other cases, it makes no sense at all for the vendor to draw that line. Ebook sales, management, and reading does not rely upon hefty hardware so it makes relatively little sense for Kobo to dictate the latest and greatest.
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I don't mind not always having the latest and greatest hardware. But the issue is, that when the hardware you have cannot run the software you want, then your hardware is obsolete and not only is it not the latest and greatest, it's time to replace it as it no longer does what you want. The way I look at these days, if you get a computer that CAN run Windows 8.1, then you will be able to run whatever software you want. Just don't run XP on it. Run Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 and you can run Kobo Desktop, Calibte 2.x, Sigil 0.8.2.
Running Linux on older hardware that's not Qt5 compatible won't help. It's just a mirage. Yes you can install, but no you cannot run. So all of those suggestions to switch from XP to Linux is not a good idea. The way to do it is check if you can run Windows 8.1 and if you can, upgrade XP. If not, upgrade the computer and XP. It has to be done in order to keep updated. Otherwise, you'll find eventually, you'll have some Reader or tablet that won't work with Calibre 1.48. And for Sigil, you'll find you want to run some plugin that ou cannot because you cannot run the latest Sigil. So just be realistic the hardware is too old and upgrade.
My desktop is not the latest and greatest, but it run all the software I need. It does run Qt5 no problem and thus, I can run the versions of Calibre and Sigil that I want.