Old software never dies (I hope)

I’m known for easily growing attachments to inanimate objects, collecting and cherishing (usually, useless) things with the loyalty of an old dog. I believe that tendency has extended into the realm of software.
I have two examples of programs that were released at the very beginning of the millennium, and I still use them everyday.

ACDSee 32 2.42 (2000)

This is what I use to browse and see images on my computer. It opens very fast (and is very very light), you can explore your folders and see a list of images in them (as well, as any other file) and once you hit enter on any of them you will see it bigger and you can scroll through all the images. Also, you can watch and scroll through them full-screen, which is very nice. All the functions are very basic and lack the modern perfection and polish of more recent products but it still delivers.
It is great for setting up wallpapers (as long as they are the exact size of your screen resolution) as it only requires a simple CTRL+W. And one extra feature that is really amazing and unexpected, is that in explore mode, it will play any WAV file you click. So it’s also a great program for browsing sound files.
This was the last version of ACDSee to be this simple, more recent versions are intended to be the center of operations for all image related tasks and are packed with unnecessary features. A shame.


Macromedia Fireworks 4 (2001)


This is my main piece of software, this is my Photoshop, my illustrator, my web design base of operations, and my overall visuals workhorse. Again, it opens faster than any other similar software and it does a lot. It’s funny, I also have the latest version of Fireworks (currently Adobe Fireworks CS5), because I use it for the final stages of work related projects (I will rarely use it for personal projects) and while it has a handful of features that are nice, it also lacks a handful of features that makes work-flow in Fireworks 4 a lot smoother.
Also interesting to note, the following version (Fireworks MX) already started to change the menu layout, which would then remain in the Adobe versions (since 2005). So, without intending it, I’m using two programs on their last greatest versions.

While computers now a days are able to handle big resource-eating software, is it really necessary to make programs these colossal beasts? I can’t help but to admire the huge amount of power this little programs are able to wield. Programmers need to take note of their predecessors accomplishments.

NOTE: They work perfectly on Windows XP, but they probably won’t on Vista. Don’t know about Windows 7.