IF you were to defend GS, don't defend them from ME!
Remember: I WAS and to some extent will forever remain "one of them", to simplify the statement: they are my buddies:)
In real world you don't control expectations of the client (you can influence somewhat)
A few things I've learned from clients:
-generally expected when buying the latest good price/performance machine you do NOT have to update ALL existing (microsoft, adobe, macromedia, intuit, autodesk) software licenses- especially the relatively expensive upgrades
-ArchiCAD being most essential to the practice is little closest to the "kept up to date", you barely find people working in 7.0 or older while in the autocad bell curve you will even find R14, and just recently the 2000 starts to be on the left side of the adaption curve.
-even 4.0 projects are being pulled out of the archive, dusted off and expected to be worked on it, so sometimes you need to pull out your trusty 7.0 and move the project to the "modern world".
-legacy projects will have a mixture of 5.0, 6.5 7.0, 8.1 library parts, reflecting work done on them, and some of those library parts sneak in into later projects. Like geological layers in the grand canyon you will see them when you try to bring back an old project to life.
This gives consultants and geeks billable hours, but it works again the mainstream expectations- mainstream adoption.
