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Damm straight. The benefit of new innovations has become far outweighed by the sheer expense and hassle of "upgrading." I have always thought one of the major reasons Microsoft Vista tanked so badly (in addition to it being gruesomely counter-intuitive-:)) is because consumers weighed the benefits of its new bells-and-whistles against having to 1) get used to a new system after finally getting XP to do what they needed; 2) update a bunch of software/drivers-for-hardware on more than one computer; 3) deal with the innumerable bugs that plague every MS release. And once word got out what a pain Vista was to use, said consumers finally decided that no amount of cool-new-tricks was worth several tons of grief. As you noted, with seemingly every single product going that "upgrade or else" route, consuming becomes a time-wasting, aggravating, bankrupting chore. And, honestly, who the hell wants to put as much energy into getting a toaster to work as they do in bringing their computer up to speed?
