Support for Sonar 8.5 Dropped!

It's standard practice for software companies to only support 2 revs back. Many only go 1 rev back. It's a practical matter, as staff turnover is high and after a couple of years there isn't anybody left who knows the old versions.

Imagine if automobile service worked that way...

bitflipper

It's standard practice for software companies to only support 2 revs back. Many only go 1 rev back. It's a practical matter, as staff turnover is high and after a couple of years there isn't anybody left who knows the old versions.

Imagine if automobile service worked that way...

 
As far as I was aware, the automobile industry does work that way or Ford and GM in Europe do!  If I go to my GM dealer in London with my 10 year old car, they can still sell me most of the spares and not only that, they'll service it and offer me advice on what to do or offer to do it themselves.  That's my whole point!
 
My GM car is now 3 generations old but what Cakewalk have done is tantamount to my dealer saying, sorry we can't sell you spares, offer advice or service your car for you as we only support the current generation and the previous one.
 
To quote, the parent company Roland don't operate that way and I gave a very good example of that above.  I appreciate that Cakewalk can't offer support for discontinued products indefinitely but in Europe car manufacturers are obliged by law to supply parts for 10-years!
 
As Cakewalk release a new version every year, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect them to support a product for at least 5 years.
 
Also, staff turnover isn't the customer's problem and this doesn't cause major issues in other sectors of the software industry.  Again to quote what I said above, everyone knocks Microsoft but "hello" they're still supporting an OS which has passed its 12th year, hell yeah that's Windows XP I'm talking about. 

Kev999

Try posting your problems here on this forum.  There are plenty of experienced Sonar users who are willing to help.

 
Thanks for that and I appreciate it but I'm just making a point as I think to survive in the current world economic climate, companies have to be prepared to go that extra mile when it comes to customer car.
 
Guys, my last point on this is while I think it is reasonable NOT to expect a company to continue development and fix software issues beyond a certain point (and I wasn't expecting that), I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a company to at least offer e-mail support for some legacy products and in Microsoft's case, their cutoff point is 5 years.
 
I think Cakewalk should follow that example, that's all I'm suggesting.
 
Imagine if hardware companies did that with device drivers!  We'd have to change all our computer hardware and interfaces after every other OS release!
 
Cheers!

Imagine if hardware companies did that with device drivers!  We'd have to change all our computer hardware and interfaces after every other OS release!

They do.
I've been ****ed by hardware companies more than software companies.


I agree with your original premise. Actually, I think if you buy something from a company, they should support it for life (original owner).

Imagine if hardware companies did that with device drivers!  We'd have to change all our computer hardware and interfaces after every other OS release!

It's not quite that bad, but you try getting hold of 64 bit drivers for some older hardware.

Welcome to planned obsolescence.

Speaking on behalf of the 8.5 fan club,, I wonder how many of us are still here? I too have no desire to jump on the beta testing bandwagon and 8.5 is the most excellent version so far.. like windows 7. I agree with you there, an excellent combo. 

Note: My Xp Asus netbook just downloaded and installed about 12 XP related updates,, so support lives on even though they threaten to cut us off. MS now offers a $20 upgrade to W8 for it, but I would loose my Office 2003 suite I paid $300+ for and a few other software items that are all working perfectly fine under XP. So the $20 OS then costs me $ 300 in other upgrades.  

My second-most-important audio software is Adobe Audition, also abandoned and unsupported. But it does what I need it to do, and it didn't suddenly stop working the day Adobe EOL'd it.

For a while I was using CD Architect from Sound Forge 4. That's from, I think circa 2004. Since then I've upgraded, but any CD made with the newer version sounds exactly like one made with the old one.

I still use Ozone 3 from time to time, and I'm pretty sure iZotope does not support it. Still works, though. In fact, I think I still have a copy of Ozone 2 around, and I'll bet it still works, too. 

I have old projects that used Kontakt 2. Still works. In fact, there are instruments in there that NI doesn't ship anymore. That's why I still keep it on disk.

I even installed a copy of Cakewalk for DOS 1.0 a few years ago just for grins. It worked, too!

And yeh, I'll be on 8.5 until it either stops working or X3, X4 or X5 finally offers something I really need/want.