The thing is, I could still be relatively effective using Office 97 on my XP machine (not so sure about if it will run on Vista). As it is, I *am* running Office 2003, not 2007.

For home users without a corporate budget, being able to move their $200 software package with them to newer, fancier hardware is a benefit.

Having a piece of software tied to a particular machine and no clear migration path to your new hardware platform is a liability.

Now, at some point, you move on, and it all gets thrown out. I get that, and nowhere else is this more clearly seen than in console gaming where emulation or backwards compatibility very rarely have any significant value - more clearly illustrated in the most recent generations of console games.

But for business, productivity and entertainment machines in general, software longevity becomes an issue.

Wiki was simply the first hit on the google page. There were dozens of other pages. If you want a definitive answer on custom chips in the ST, I'd suggest you check out the forums at atariage.com where you will find some real die-hard Atari Fans from the original pong units all the way through to the Jaguar and Falcon and Flashback 2.