Re:Maybe people expect too much from software. (Score 1)

From the text to which you replied (and quoted): ".... The key CD is now scratched which hangs the authenticator forced a quite ungraceful reboot and corrupted my hard drive. (Perhaps a $150 upgrade will help. I'll never know.)"

IMHO, you mistate the case to suggest that the software designer cannot be expected to anticipate that the CD is "now scratched", because the designer does not need to anticipate that. Rather, s/he must anticipate that _devices_ can and will malfunction and fail in any of many ways, whatever the cause, and make provision for such eventualities in the software. IMX, it isn't that hard to do. :-0

".... The last time I used Word a drive filled during a save operation and left me with just a mutilated copy of the original file. (I will not use it again.)"

There is scant excuse for Word, or any other program, to fail to handle an exception such as that. Then again, a prospective "disk full" situation is not necessarily easy for an application program to detect before it begins sending the file system (operating system) the data to record. What the application can do depends upon the operating system. However, what the OS is probably going to do is tell the application that the file-write has failed, after the fact (whether it also indicates why), so the application must be designed to prevent loss of the file in that context.

That said, I understand your point, although I seldom encounter a situation in which the software (designer) can or should be "excused" for its malfunction or failure. My two cents.