Umm...Maple isn't that expensive in the US...so you must be getting ripped off... (The Professional edition of version 11 is just under $2k, so about 1k pounds...)
is it? last time I got a quote through (~2years ago now) was quoted little under £10k
mmm
I was under the impression that was why MS bought that virtual-machine company, sure break compatability native, but have a more virtual-machine interface for hte older programs.And that's part of the problem with the Windows environment: it is expected that everything just work when things change and that isn't always possible. The more backwards compatability you try to build into it, the harder it is for things to "just work" wihtout issues because that adds complexity. (A lot of older 16-bit programs didn't work when XP first launched...like a lot of my old DOS-based games.)
We are still using DOS at work simply because some of our ARINC software is 16bit and won't run in even Windows9x. Can't get it re-written because the ARINC card doesn't have drivers for anything over 16bit (and forefor you say upgrade your hardware... ever worked in the aerospace industry? if something works and is acredited it aint changing for the life of a product... 35years)