The Col: When I studied business at college, they use to talk about how capital purchase items were only expected to last so long. The need to replace/upgrade in a good business plan was included in budget calculations. When an item becomes too old, generally it becomes inefficient and costs more in direct or indirect costs to use/run.

Sure like Art says.. small admin is good.. but only to a certain point, then again efficiency becomes impaired and costs go up. In one instance I was doing the payments for a firm to it's contractors.. the software was old and required 3 times the effort to a comparable system I used at another company. Needless to say.. it was a nightmare for the company and contractors wanting payment as the process of raising a payment was about 15 minutes for one invoice compared to a couple of minutes.