Working vs. Compatible

[Michael]

Some people, myself included, don't consider something that's not fully functional to be "working," so I don't think it would be incorrect to say AIM+ does not work with AIM 5.x.

[harra]

Yes, but people like myself who work in the software industry would refer to it as being "not fully compatible". That means that it works but not as the designer intended. For example, I upgraded my Compaq Armada laptop to Windows 2000 because I hated Win95 and WINNT. The laptop was being listed as not fully compatible with Windows 2000. THe reason being that many of the special hardware buttons Compaq put on the laptop won't work with that OS because they didn't create drivers for that OS and never would create driver. The laptop works, but I lose some functionality when I upgrade the platform upon which those features operate. The same holds true here. IF the user decides to upgrade the platform (AIM) then they lose functionality.

In the case of AIM+, the truely determined can find ways around a few of the shortcomings. THe history is still being recorded, yet the history viewer no longer functions as expected. So you go out and get the History Viewer Master Jedi created and you get around that hurdle.

To me something is broken if its core functionality doesn't work at all which, IMHO, is not the case in this situation.

[Michael]

This is true, but you must admit that these terms do have different meanings for different people in different areas of industries. I work in software too, but I also do technical writing and tech support, so I like to keep in mind what the average user thinks of when they say things -- because, as I'm sure you know, only a tiny percentage of people use all computing terms correctly.