As a small business owner myself, I fully understand and support the idea of limiting expenses on software and hardware (and anything else). But what I was getting at as far as companies living with software (and hardware for that matter) that is years or even decades old because "it works fine" is a sign a company is complacent with where they are at. I'm not suggesting upgrades simply because you get some new GUI element, that would be wasteful. But when real improvements are made and a company chooses not to upgrade, it's not a good long-term business decision, in my opinion.
With an attitude like that, a hundred years ago, you would have been saying "who needs a gas powered truck to deliver milk, when horses work just fine. Or years later, who needs to fly when taking a boat or train works fine. Even in the recent past (and some people still live with them) you could argue that CRT monitors work just fine compared to LCD monitors - so why change? Maybe because CRT's waste more energy?
I think an issue that keeps companies from changing relates more to the fact that the model that enterprise software and hardware manufacturers have been living by revolves around complex, customized, error prone, installations done by a subset of consultants who make a living "fixing" the software and hardware that "works just fine" to the point where no one else has any idea how to make things work. That's been my experience in several mid-sized organizations.
And MS is, to a big extent, guilty of continuing this behavior, while other sectors of the market real change is happening and the models for monetizing software are changing. The Surface and W8 are perfect examples - with MS trying to take what they already have and make it work for a new era. They're simply thinking and acting like the rest of the PC market, complacent to just keep doing what they're doing. In all industries, in society, in life in general, you have those that lead and those that follow and MS is most definitely not leading.
