What's the longest (in years) you've used a single program?

Hagar · 7 Apr 2011 at 13:37

MS Dos 5 for 19-20 years.
Several DOS based work programs since 1992 written in Quickbasic.

Reason, they are quick, accurate, tried and tested. need only a very low spec machine 1Mb (not Gb) of ram is adequate.

Downside, network printers are a no no.

SiriusB · 7 Apr 2011 at 15:12

Nearly everyone's posts don't count! Especially people mentioning OSs, unless they steadfastly refused to install a single patch or service pack over the xx years they have been using them!

XP, for instance, is what, 10 years old? It has had 3 service packs in that time. So the longest you have used the same version is only going to be a few years if you updated each time!

If versions did not count, the longest I have used a piece of software is probably Winamp. It was one of the first things I installed when I got Internet access over 10 years ago and still use it to this day.

lsg1r · 7 Apr 2011 at 15:13

Main programs are pretty regularly updated... suppose golive 9 (no longer sold and I don't like dreamweaver), winrar, hjzplit and notepad (the built in windows one - it hasn't changed if you think about it) would probably be my longest running programs.

I used windows xp from release till about last year (ignoring sp's), so that's what 10 years give or take, and I've used windows all the way back to 3.1.

Hagar · 7 Apr 2011 at 15:33

SiriusB said:
Nearly everyone's posts don't count! Especially people mentioning OSs, unless they steadfastly refused to install a single patch or service pack over the xx years they have been using them!
.

I dont think there was an MSDOS 5 SP1

I have used later versions ie 6.0, 6.1 and 6.2, (on other machines) however the longest continuous usage has been (Elonex) MSDos 5, the disk has been cloned a few times onto newer hardware. The programs I run have been unmodified or patched for at least as long as I have been using them (1992).

SiriusB · 7 Apr 2011 at 15:34

nkata said:
I dont think there was an MSDOS 5 SP1

I have used later versions ie 6.0, 6.1 and 6.2, (on other machines) however the longest continuous usage has been (Elonex) MSDos 5, the disk has been cloned a few times onto newer hardware. The programs I run have been unmodified or patched for at least as long as I have been using them (1992).

I did say nearly everyone!