Movies aren't quite what they used to be. A few years ago, when you saw a movie in the theaters, you could be fairly certain that everyone else was seeing the same movie. If the movie was later shown on television, it was likely that some editing might be done so that it fit into the proper television schedule, although nothing would be added. Today, however, strange things are happening with movies. In some cases, they are being re-released with additional footage or re-recorded sound. A new version, with previously unseen material added, might be referred to as a "director's cut." In any event, the idea is to make you return to the theaters and spend your money once again.

My guess is that those who market movies have taken a page out of the book of software marketing. For much of the software that we purchase and install on our computers, we find ourselves constantly on the lookout to see if new versions of the same software are being released. Each new version, at least according to the marketers, has some additional feature that we supposedly cannot live without. We'll have to pay for that new feature, of course. And a year from now, give or take a few months, we'll find ourselves in the same situation all over again, facing another decision of whether we should upgrade our software.

It might occur to you that one could simply save one's pennies and avoid this endless upgrade cycle. Certainly the cycle comes to an abrupt end when you realize that your computer isn't powerful enough to use the new version of the software, although as I have mentioned in a previous article, you're probably going to find yourself upgrading the computer hardware itself every three years or so.

What happens, though, if you choose not to upgrade your software? Sooner or later you're going to run into some sort of problem with that software, you'll try to call the company for support, and the first thing they'll tell you is, "I'm sorry, but we no longer support that older version. You'll need to upgrade."

Another driving force that will push you toward upgrading your software is that new versions of your computer's operating system may require you to upgrade your other software to a version that can run on the new operating system. As much as you might like to freeze your software just where it is, you're probably facing a losing battle.

You may find it handy to keep a list of all your software together with which version you are using. To find out exactly what version you have (if you're not certain), go to the Help menu of that software, and choose the "About" option. In addition to copyright statements and other information relating to your license to use the software, you should see the name of the software followed by its version. For example, my “America Online” software is version 5.0, my “Netscape Communicator” is version 4.7, and my “Microsoft Word” is version 2000.

As you can see, most software uses either a number (followed by a decimal point and another number) or a year to identify the version. The number before the decimal point represents a major version, and the number after the decimal point represents a minor upgrade. In other words, in upgrading from “Netscape Navigator” 3.0 to 4.0 you would expect to see a major change, while upgrading from 4.6 to 4.7 would involve either a minor change or perhaps simply a new version that fixes the bugs in the previous version!

I'll have more to say about software upgrades in a later article, but in the meantime I'll leave you with this amusing fact: The next version of the Netscape browser will not be 5.0, but instead will skip that number and jump directly to 6.0!

Drew Smith is an instructor with the School of Library and Information Science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He is also a regular contributor to the quarterly journal Genealogical Computing, where he writes the "Cybrarian" column. He can be reached at drewsmith@aol.com.